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68500-TRABAJO DE FIN DE MASTER MODALIDAD B English on the Screen: Using Audiovisual Resources in the Communicative Classroom Marta Álvarez Pérez-Aradros Tutor: Juan Trancón Máster Universitario en Profesorado de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria, Bachillerato, Formación Profesional y Enseñanzas de Idiomas, Artísticas y Deportivas TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 1 2. STATE OF THE ISSUE: OVERVIEW ................................................................................ 2 3. THE EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT ...................................................................................... 4 3.1 Legal Framework and the key competences ................................................................... 4 3.2 Communicative competence ......................................................................................... 6 3.3 Audiovisual resources in the classroom ........................................................................ 7 4 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ........................................................................................ 8 4.1 Approaches and methods: Overview ............................................................................... 8 4.2 CLIL .............................................................................................................................. 9 5 METHODOLOGY FOLLOWED ....................................................................................... 10 5.1 The use of L1 in the L2 classroom ................................................................................ 11 5.2 Communicative approach ............................................................................................ 13 5.2.1 Communicative classroom ..................................................................................... 14 5.2.2 Communicative activities ........................................................................................ 16 5.2.3 Groupings students .................................................................................................. 17 5.2.4 English skills ........................................................................................................... 19 5.3 Task-Based Language Learning .................................................................................. 20 6. PROPOSAL: PAY IT FORWARD PROJECT ................................................................... 21 6.1 Justification ................................................................................................................... 21 6.2 Task description ............................................................................................................ 22 6.2.1 Pre-task .................................................................................................................. 24 6.2.2 Task ........................................................................................................................ 25 6.2.3 Post-task ................................................................................................................. 27 6.3 Assessment: Tools and grading criteria ....................................................................... 29 7. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................... 30 8. WORKS CITED .................................................................................................................. 32 9. APPENDIX ........................................................................................................................... 1 Appendix I: Pay it Forward (Mimi Leder, 2000) .................................................................. 1 Appendix II: Webquest ......................................................................................................... 1 Appendix III: Example of possible sociogram ...................................................................... 3 Appendix IV: final project guidelines ................................................................................... 4 Appendix V: written assignment rubric ................................................................................ 4 Appendix VI: peer assessment rubric .................................................................................... 5 Appendix VII: oral presentation rubric (teacher) .................................................................. 5 Appendix VIII: webquest rubric ........................................................................................... 6 1 1. INTRODUCTION The integration of the Information Technologies (IT) and Audiovisual Media (AM) in education is a prominent issue in recent debates about the L2 classroom. Researchers emphasize the drastic changes that the use of these technologies can bring about in the teaching and learning of a foreign language such as English. In fact, IT and AM are technologies that have the potential to make a positive contribution in education settings, since research has shown that the appropriate implementation of the new technologies “allows for a more thorough integration of language, content, and culture than ever before and provides students with unprecedented opportunities for autonomous learning” (Warschauer and Meskill, 2000: 316) The starting point of this proposal will be my own experience with this kind of materials and the questions that have arisen when they have been implemented in the classroom. My intention is to answer to these concerns by proposing a project where audiovisual resources and students’ cooperative work will be the central parts. Moreover, the guiding principles will be all the ideas I have gathered and the conclusions I have arrived at during this course. Audiovisual media have a great potential to develop cross-curricular instruction in the L2 classroom while students acquire communicative competence in the foreign language. However, as far as education is concerned, it is really common to use these kinds of resources, for example, as a means to reward the students when they have done something right, when more conventional activities have been completed or when a certain unit has been finished earlier than expected. Once the film has been watched, there is no further reflection about it, nor is it exploited to foster the acquisition of the second language. By means of this project, I would like to change that widespread tendency and try to make the most of it in a way that is coherent with contemporary approaches to L2 acquisition. By introducing audiovisual resources within the four walls of the classroom, we count with an important advantage: the motivation of students. Nonetheless, from the perspective of the teacher, the ways in which these are used, have to be consistent with the curriculum and with our ideas about how languages are learned. In other words, it is 2 essential to consider the conceptual framework from the most general to the most specific and practical level of curricular application, that is, not only at a theoretical level, but also all along the implementation process. In this respect, I will be following the principles behind the communicative approach to language teaching and learning, while aiming for the acquisition of the key competences stated in the Aragonese Curriculum, 2007. On the basis of the above, the main aim of this project will be to propose a termlong task using the film Pay it forward (Mimi Leder, 2000) as the starting point, where the students, in groups of four, will have to create a project based on the one put forward in the movie: think of an idea to change our world. To be more specific, learners will have to create their projects bearing in mind the idea of one of the characters in the film: the pay-it-forward chain. In other words, they will have to think of something to help other people, while being realistic; for instance, organize a recycling program for their community. At the end of the year, the different groups will defend their proposals in front of the class (which will act as a work council), trying to convince their classmates to carry out the project. Since this is a term-long task, during the course, different activities related to the final project will be carried out in order to progress in the curriculum and to provide the students with some guidance. All of them will be included in a webquest designed by the teacher. This dissertation consists in an exploration of the theoretical foundations on which to base such a project, a contextualization of the educational determinants, a critical analysis of the methodology adopted and a description in detail of the task along with the conclusions reached. 2. STATE OF THE ISSUE: OVERVIEW The most innovative endeavors English teachers have undertaken so far, is to integrate media technology in the ELT classroom in order to improve learners’ motivation, integrated language skills and create a self-learning environment. From the perspective of L2 teaching, film offers a wide range of alternatives while being a medium which is globally accessible, even in environments where technology is not widely available 3 (Stempleski and Tomalin, 2001:9). These media can be employed in a variety of ways, from engaging students and stimulating communicative interest to reinforcing linguistic acquisition when combined with exercises that focus on the skills of reading writing, listening and speaking. Jack Lonergan argues that “video in the classroom offers exciting possibilities for language teaching and learning” (1995:1). A large scale survey conducted by Christine Canning-Wilson (2000:2) illustrated that “students expressed a preference for learning language through the use of videos.” This may be attributed to the fact that “videos contain the same paralinguistic cues which are used in everyday communicative structures” (Lonergan, 1995:11) However, what I have learned from my experience is that when working with video in the classroom, teachers naturally tend to focus on materials specifically prepared for language learners. Whilst dedicated ELT materials may indeed provide examples of target language in context, they are usually nonauthentic in terms of their setting, dialogue and plot, and subsequently of little intrinsic interest to today’s viewers. Moreover, in the traditional classroom, students are often expected to interact with more old fashioned tools, such as textbooks. More recently teaching practitioners are searching for increasingly fresh ways to generate student interest in English classes, being the audiovisual resources one of those novelties, since they help the students to “contextualize the language they have learnt” (Çakir, 2006:71). As may be seen, considerable confidence is placed in the value of audio-visual materials to enhance the learning of foreign languages, yet, as Canning-Wilson notes (2000:1), “there is little empirical data and research to support the proposition that video facilitates in the learning of foreign languages.” Research carried out over the past twenty years shows that there are several limitations to bear in mind. First, many of the research has been carried out with visual aids, but not with actual videos or films; and second, many of those studies were not conducted with random groups that were studying only one foreign language, which may lead to different results. Another weak point would be the long-term effects of using audiovisual resources in the classroom, since they would be difficult to measure. Nevertheless, in recent years some of these questions have begun to be addressed. However, since there are several techniques for using films on video (vision on/sound off; sound off/vision on; pause/still/freeze-frame control; etc.) the findings can 4 be applied in limited contexts. For instance, Iva Baltova (1994: 8) claimed that the use of video and sound was more consistent for students’ innate perception of the stories than the use of sound only (regular listening), whilst Ruth Bovy (1981: 206) considers that the strategies used by one learner are likely to differ from those used by another learner. As in many other situations, audiovisual resources should not be seen as the panacea for English learning, because even though they may be a popular tool which offers the learners varied, comprehensible input and a chance to improve the different skills, teachers must not lose sight of the complex process of language acquisition. 3. THE EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT 3.1 Legal Framework and the key competences This proposal targets students of secondary education, and, even though the task that will be further explained in depth is aimed at the upper courses (4ºESO), it could be adapted so as to address other ages and levels. As has been already pointed out, the Spanish legal framework has to be observed whenever a project of these characteristics is proposed. Both, the National Curriculum as established by the LOE, 2006 (acronym for Organic Law of Education) and the Aragonese Curriculum for Foreign Languages (Orden del 9 de mayo de 2007), prescribe a competence-based curriculum, which means that all the activities carried out during the different courses and stages should be consistent with the eight key competences: 1. Communicative competence 2. Mathematical competence 3. Competence in knowledge and interaction with the physical world 4. Data processing and digital competence 5. Social and civic competence 6. Cultural and artistic competence 7. Learning to learn 8. Autonomy and personal initiative 5 To be more precise, the proposal of this dissertation will contribute to the development of the communicative competence of the learners, since it will be part of the English subject course plan, where the general communicative ability increases by adding new skills and securing the ones already acquired through the mother tongue or other foreign languages. Furthermore, the learning to learn competence plays an essential role, because even though the main point of this dissertation is the project proposed above, it is not an isolated task, but a term-long activity, which is regarded as a part of a whole course plan, where every lesson increases overall the communicative competence, providing different resources to improve comprehension and expression. Likewise, this project fosters the ability to interpret reality and will help learners to develop decision-making skills that favor autonomy in language acquisition and use. The social and civic competence is also developed by means of this proposal, because students will have to think about a project that can be helpful for others, contributing thus to their well-being and their ability to value acts of kindness. Moreover, for the learning outcomes of this project, cooperative group work is a key element. In addition, the information that can be found on the net grows larger and larger and a great part of that information is written in English. Hence, knowing this language facilitates the access to the information provided by or available through the information and communication technologies (ICTs). Particularly, in the task designed, data processing and digital competence will be developed, since a number of activities encompassed in a webquest will be carried out in the computer’s room, where the students will have to search for specific information from diverse sources, such as interviews or webpages in order obtain certain knowledge about the future project that has to be elaborated and presented by the end of the semester. These kinds of tasks create real and meaningful communicative contexts, which is essential for students. Finally, foreign languages also contribute to the acquisition of autonomy and personal initiative competence. More precisely, as has been already said, in order to fulfill the task suggested, students must engage in cooperative work in the classroom, and know how to manage personal resources and social skills. The Aragonese Curriculum also provides the contents through which these competences will be developed. They are grouped in four blocks, the first two address the communicative skills and the remaining two are focused on the importance of 6 meaning as the starting point for students to build a conceptual system of the way the language works. Moreover, this regulation takes into account the guidelines of the Common European Framework of Reference, designed by the Council of Europe (2001:4), which is concerned to improve the quality of communication among Europeans of different language and cultural backgrounds, because better communication leads to freer mobility and more direct contact, which in turn leads to better understanding and closer co-operation. The Council also supports methods of learning and teaching which help young people and indeed older learners to build up the attitudes, knowledge and skills they need to become more independent in thought and action, and also more responsible and cooperative in relation to other people. In this way, the work contributes to the promotion of democratic citizenship 3.2 Communicative competence If we want our students to be competent when communicating in a foreign language, we need to provide them with situations that are as similar as possible to those they may face in the future, for, as Tricia Hedge, for example, points out (2000:46), “the goals of ELT have become more concerned with enabling learners to successfully interact with members of other societies.” In order to communicate effectively, the communicative competence must be developed. The characteristics of communicative competence (as opposed to the more limited linguistic competence) affect directly the second language learning and teaching. Tricia Hedge (2000:66), who follows closely the work of other theorists before her, speaks of linguistic competence, pragmatic competence, discourse competence, strategic competence and fluency. Linguistic competence, Hedge notes (2000:66), refers to accuracy in syntax and in grammatical forms of the language, as well as correctness of pronunciation and the ability to express the meaning by means of stress, rhythm and intonation. Likewise, it also contemplates the building of a range of vocabulary. However, unlike previous, more structuralist approaches that focused almost exclusively on these features, communicative competence also comprises proficiency in other features of the 13 We, as future teachers, should be flexible and reflective about our teaching (before, during and after the lessons), because, depending on the position we adopt in each situation, we will be either supporting or limiting the possibilities of our students both to learn the language and to develop autonomous learning resources. As a result, before teachers have recourse to translation, they have to evaluate other techniques and be certain that they either would fail or are inappropriate for the specific situation at hand. Hence, teachers should not switch to L1 immediately after they notice a lack of comprehension. Instead, they should employ different techniques like demonstration or verbal explanation in order to help their students understand. In line with these principles, if similar problems arise during the implementation of the project, I would recommend, for example, to rephrase in order to produce a comprehensible input for the students, to support the explanations with pictures or even gestures, etc. Herem I am taking the side of Phil Hawks (2001:100) when he says that the “mother tongue should be selective and not seen as just an easy option”. What is more, teachers should be extremely careful when using L1 because, as was noted above, it could hinder the resources to learn a language that students bring to the L2 classroom. 5.2 Communicative approach Unlike native language learners, second language students vary in age, motivation learning styles and previous language learning experience. That is, unlike the first language, which is the vehicle for communication in a social context, the second language is primarily learned in the context of the classroom, which is characterized by a limited exposure to the target language and the lack of a real need to use it. This is why even though the communicative approach attempts to reproduce in the classroom the conditions that guarantee that the use of the target language mirrors the use outside the classroom (thus preparing the learners for future life-like challenges), we must not forget that the classroom always conditions language use. As a matter of fact, some scholars like Balasubramanian Kumaravadivelu (2006) have called into question the supposed authenticity of CLT as the contraints posed by classroom instruction cannot ensure real life-like communication. Taking this into account, teachers should prompt communicative situations which are as similar to real life as possible, overcoming – or regardless of – the 14 limitations imposed by the actual teaching conditions. Hence, for this purpose, a thorough understanding of the characteristics of real communication is necessary before we attempt to set up similar situations in the classroom. 5.2.1 Communicative classroom As may be seen, the communicative approach has brought about a number of changes that have led to a shift in the type of practice found in the English classroom. Interaction in unpredictable and uncontrolled situations is now encouraged over repetitive use of the language and theoretical issues are made to emerge from some kind of hands-on practice. In this way, cooperation and real comprehension are brought to the fore. It also gives learners the opportunity to work out naturally and start formulating their own questions. Because of this emphasis on interaction, groups and seating arrangements are a key element of the communicative classroom, which is why pair, group and collective activities, with the emphasis on completing the task successfully through communication with others rather than on the accurate use of form, are the driving force. During these activities the roles of both, the teacher and the students, will vary. For instance, some of the roles adopted by the teacher will be to facilitate and then to monitor the outcome of the activities, without unnecessary interruption, and then to provide feedback on the success or otherwise of the communication and, possibly, on the linguistic performance of the learners in the form of post-activity error correction. As for the students, they adopt a wide number of roles during the communicative classroom: self-learner, team member, knowledge manager, etc. In terms of the organization of the lesson, the classic presentation, practice and production model, where careful input of a particular structure is typically followed by increasingly less controlled and freer practice, is likely to be replaced by a more taskbased approach, where elements of linguistic competence emerge from barley controlled, communicative practice ( and not the other way around) That is, learners are given a communicative task which is monitored by the teacher and then their language use while performing the task is fine-tuned by the teacher in a lesson stage which focuses on error correction or on a particular form that is causing difficulties. This is typically followed by a further task-based stage, where the initial task is repeated or a similar task is performed, ideally with a greater degree of linguistic accuracy than during the first attempt. 15 The kinds of materials employed also change with more emphasis being given to authentic materials, because by using them, students develop in the classroom the skills that they are going to need outside it. That is to say, the materials selected involve language that occurs naturally in communication among native speakers: real newspaper reports, for example, real magazine articles, real advertisements, cooking recipes, horoscopes, etc. Concerning the four macroskills, all of them (reading, writing, listening and speaking) “have to be considered conjointly as they interact with each other in natural behavior” (Nunan, 1989:22). Inside the classroom, as in real life, most tasks of any complexity involve more than one macroskill. There may be occasions when one is simply listening, reading, speaking or writing to the exclusion of the other. Nonetheless, there are many other situations where a number of skills are interwoven into a complex language activity. There is an emphasis on both receptive skills and productive skills in the communicative classroom. However, it is understood in language acquisition theory that receptive skills (e.g., listening/reading skills) often precede and provide the foundation for productive skills (e.g., speaking/writing skills) even if all skill sets are taught somewhat in a dynamic, integrated fashion. Besides, while productive skills have traditionally been seen as a natural consequence of having learnt the language, in recent years a different approach dominates language teaching and learning. As Susan M. Gass has explained at length (2003), output should be regarded as an exercise in developing skills that can hardly be developed unless the learner is put in that situation. That is, output is now seen as a necessary task to develop communicative competence, and not simply a natural consequence of having learnt the more structural elements of the language. As Christopher Brumfit noted (1984), unlike the communication envisaged by previous structuralist methods, communicative activities must rest on the unpredictability of language and on a negotiation of meaning, an idea reinforced by H. Douglas Brown, who highlighted the role played by negotiation of meaning and interaction, which, in his own words, are “the heart of communication” (2001:165). In real communicative situations there is, as Narahari S. Prabhu observed (1987), a gap in meaning that we endlessly bridge through the use of language. We receive and send messages, we interpret them and we collaborate to achieve a certain purpose. Moreover, the language used is unpredictable, and it is the speakers who choose the language that 16 they are going to use ( note that, in methods like Audiolingualism, for example, the language to be used was predetermined by the activities and, even in those cases in which learners engaged in conversation, the language was predictable, so there was no information gap as described by Prabhu or negotiation of meaning). As I noted above, the classroom differs in a number of ways from the conditions of language use outside the classroom and these should also be taken into account if we want to maximize the acquisition of a second language. The most noticeable difference is the quantity and the quality of input speakers are exposed to in both situations. In this respect, Stephen Krashen’s (1985) work is worth mentioning, since students should be given the opportunity to be exposed to input which is comprehensible in order to acquire the second language and, in line with Lev Vygotsky’s Zone Proximal Development (1963), a bit beyond the learner’s current level of competence. What is more, comprehension (and therefore acquisition) is easier if the topic of the discourse is familiar, because as Gass and Selinker also noted (2008:315), the students bring with them a set of beliefs about the world which allows an easier interpretation of utterances. Is for this reason that, the present project is based on a topic that students of secondary education may be already familiar with and that tends to be a focus of interest and motivation among them: a story developed in a high school from United States, where students with similar concerns as theirs are the main participants. Similarly, the input will be varied and coming from different sources, not only from the teacher. Needless to say, the use of audiovisual media will make this easier to accomplish, since the input sources can be practically inexhaustible. However, receiving comprehensible input is not enough for the acquisition of a language, since the learners have to produce as well in order to make themselves understood, having thus the necessity to deliver a message, which is known as: pushed output (Swain, 1985: 248). This is why interaction will be the leading thread all along the course and, more specifically along the project. Besides it is a key tool for providing feedback to learners (output gives them the chance to verify their hypothesis when negotiating meaning with the teacher or their peers). 5.2.2 Communicative activities The activities and tasks designed by the teacher have to aim for the acquisition of the key competences. In order to do so, inside the English classroom the communicative 17 and social potentials of language have to be promoted, and, as Widdowson notes (1978), language teaching should move away from an emphasis on the “usage” of sentences in isolation to a concern for the “use” of sentence in context. Because of this, this term-long project will be based on the teaching of language in context (a relatively modern film with well-known actors that is based on a real social movement celebrated nowadays all around the world). Furthermore, meaningful interaction will be a key element, giving them a real communicative purpose (for instance, defend a personal project interacting regularly with their groupmates, reflecting on the type of interactions they will engage in outside of the classroom). The idea is to fulfill some of the necessary conditions to stimulate real communication, which Hall (1995) summarizes as: to have something to communicate; someone to communicate with and some interest in the outcome of communication. Moreover, materials should give students the opportunity to integrate all the language skills in an authentic manner. 5.2.3 Groupings students In the theoretical framework section, an overview of the different methods and approaches of English Language Teaching has been provided, where it is has been proved that as years went by, the methodologies changed as well. The same happens with the way in which the classrooms are organized. In fact, as Harmer notes (2007: 114) “there is no real limit to the way in which teachers can group students in a classroom, though certain factors such as over-crowding, fixed furniture and entrenched student attitudes may make things problematic.” Before the advent of communicative approaches, instruction used to be teacher-fronted, with all students isolated and facing the teacher, which favored the group rather than the individual and where everyone was forced to work at the same pace. For this reason, many students hardly participated, being the teacher the one speaking most of the time. However, on the other hand, this agreement reinforces the sense of belonging to a group and makes it easier for the teacher to give explanations and instructions. As teaching became more individualized and communication competence was brought to the fore, seating arrangements changed too, with more emphasis given to pairand group-work as a way of fostering cooperative a collaborative learning. As a result, as Long underlines (1990), there is an increase in the target language used by the 18 students, more opportunities to individualize the instructions and a greater motivation for learning. The focus point of CLT, as was already stated, is on meaningful interaction through the use of spontaneous speech during pair and/or group work, where the language is considered a tool for communication which allows mutual comprehension among those who use it. For this reason, several group arrangements have been selected for this project so the students are able to interact with their classmates in different ways: individual activities to develop certain sub-skills in a more deliberate and personal way through the webquest; whole class discussions when presenting the projects, pair and group work in order to design the proposal. Arranging the groups is not an easy task, since the choices and decisions made depend on many different factors. Harmer (2007) organizes them in terms of: 1. The task: If the teacher wants to explain something or give clarifications, it would be more appropriate to keep the class as a whole group because it would be more effective and a time saver as well. However, if interaction is the central point of an activity, small groups would be the best choice. 2. Variety in sequence: As has been previously mentioned, motivation is a key element in ELT and grouping can help to sustain it. Any activity is not an isolated case, but part of a sequence. This means that the teacher can change the group arrangements making the students rotate in order to provide them with several, and thus, more learning opportunities. 3. Mood: Every context is different and so are the students, which means that depending on how they are or how they feel that day, the group arrangement may vary. It is essential to be flexible in order to know how to react or cope with some situations that may arise when arranging the groups. Because of this reason, it is important to invest some time to plan those groupings like teachers do when they design every lesson. One of the most important things in the decision making process is to know our learners as much as possible. Taking this into account, I found interesting to consider Harmer’s methodology to arrange individual students in pairs or groups (2007: 120): 1. Friendship: It is better to make learners work with people who they get along with. 19 2. Streaming: Have a mixture of the most outstanding students with the weaker ones. However, it is also interesting to arrange them in terms of level so when monitoring the groups, it is easier to provide them the specific help that they need. Another way of streaming them is in terms of participation, because a group containing less participative students will force them to interact more between them in order to accomplish the task. 3. By chance: This would be the easiest way to group students, since it needs no previous preparation whatsoever. Another advantage of this procedure is that we foster the nature of cooperative work because of its arbitrariness. 5.2.4 English skills As prescribed in the official documents such as the Aragonese Curriculum or the CEFR, and as it has been already mentioned in this document, all the skills have to be practiced in an integrated way. Nonetheless, this is sometimes difficult to achieve, and the activities will be more focused on some of them than on others. Besides, a given individual never has equal mastery of the different skills of the language in question (for example of oral and written skills, or of comprehension and interpretation compared to production skills), something that will result in the teacher selecting a certain type of tasks depending on each situation. Regarding the proposal of this document, given that the starting point will be a film, it is clear that during its showing, the listening skill will have more prominence, even though English subtitles will be also displayed, which means that the reading skill will be present too. However, final stages of the project writing and speaking skills will be promoted as well, since learners will have to submit a written assignment explaining all the steps followed (based on a guide provided by the teacher) and make an oral defense in groups in front of the class. Nonetheless, it is impossible for teachers to teach their learners all the language they need to know in the short time that they are in the classroom. In addition to teaching valuable new language skills, it is essential that language teaching materials also provide learners with strategies for individual learning, giving them the opportunity to take advantage of the chances to learn the language outside the classroom. 20 5.3 Task-Based Language Learning In Ellis’ words (2003: 9), “if learners are to develop the communicative competence they need to use a second language easily and effectively in the kinds of situations they meet outside the classroom, they need to experience how language is used as a tool for communicating inside it.” In order to accomplish this, a task-based approach seems to be the most suitable means, because learners need to elicit samples of language use that are representative of how learners perform when they are not attending to accuracy. There are a number of approaches regarding task-based instructions that, Peter Skehan (2003) summarizes in four major blocks: 1. Psycholinguistic approach to interaction: It has been highly influenced by Michael Long’s (1983, 1989) writings on the role of interaction with respect to the negotiation of meaning, where the interactional adjustments that learners make to address such difficulties serve to induce their interlocutors to modify the input they are providing. That beneficial negotiation of meaning will be led by tasks, although as Aston notes (1986: 132) those requiring a lot of negotiation of meaning may irritate the students and thus, the relevant feedback provided by that negotiation may not be realized 2. Sociocultural approach to interaction: In this case, there is no particular concern with negotiation of meaning. On the contrary, it is assumed that the interest in a task is to allow participants to shape it to their own ends and to build meanings collaboratively that are unpredictable and personal. 3. Cognitive perspectives: These are focused on the psychological processes typically engaged in when learners do tasks. These perspectives explore how performance can be affected by task characteristics and task conditions. 4. Focused tasks: This approach regards tasks as vehicles for learners themselves to set the agenda during interaction, and as a result, obtain feedback at points of interlanguage development that is relevant for them. From such a viewpoint, the tasks: enable but do not predispose the use of a particular structure, they are more effectively conducted if a particular structure is used; and force the use of a particular structure. 21 For this project, a task-focused approach will be followed, or more precisely, a taskbased instruction that enables the use of a particular structure, since it has the advantages of a task-based approach (which is more appropriate for the development of the communicative competence) and at the same time it has the characteristics of a systematic and planned instruction. 6. PROPOSAL: PAY IT FORWARD PROJECT 6.1 Justification The ability to communicate is known to be the most important goal that communicative language teaching aims to reach. According to Abbs and Freebairn (1981) the ability to communicate consists in being able to operate effectively in the real world, and in order to achieve that purpose, students need plenty of opportunities to practice language in situations which encourage them to communicate their needs, ideas and opinions. The task proposed meets these features, since the learners will have to share their opinions and ideas to reach an agreement about the project and later defend those decisions in front of their classmates. In order to do this, they will have to interact with each other, something that, as it has been already pointed out, is of the utmost importance, because students can increase their language resources as they listen or read authentic linguistic material (in this, case interviews, forums and official webpages provided by the webquest) and also as they engage in communication with other classmates (Rivers, 1987). Through this interaction, Ellis says (Ellis, 1984:95), “the learner can infer what is said even though the message contains linguistic items that are not yet part of his competence and also when the learner can use the discourse to help him/her modify or supplement the linguistic knowledge already used in production.” Furthermore, as has been already pointed out in the introduction section, using audiovisual media and ICTs promotes students’ motivation, something that will make them be more focused on the task, which is a key fact, because as Gass and Selinker, 2008: 298) point out, “attentiveness and involvement are necessary for successful communication”. It has been proved that motivation facilitates language acquisition as well, since students with high motivation, self-confidence, a good self-image, and a low 22 level of anxiety, have a lower affective filter, being those learners thus, better equipped for success in second language acquisition (Krashen, 1985) It is a well-known fact that audio-visual materials are a great help in stimulating and facilitating the learning of a foreign language. According to Andrew Wright (1976:1), many media and many styles of visual presentation are useful to the language learner. That is to say, all audio-visual materials have positive contributions to language learning as long as they are used at the right time and in the right place. In the language learning and teaching process, learners use their eyes as well as their ears, but their eyes are instrumental in learning. Rivers (1981:399) claims that seeing clearly contributes to the understanding of another culture by providing indirect contact with speakers of the language, through both audio and visual means. This contribution supports the fourth block of contents prescribed in the Aragonese Curriculum: Sociocultural aspects and intercultural awareness. In recent years, the use of video in English classes has grown rapidly as a result of the increasing emphasis on communicative techniques. “Being a rich and valuable resource, video is well-liked by both students and teachers” (Hemei, 1997:45). Students like it because video presentations are interesting, challenging, and stimulating to watch. Furthermore, video shows them how people behave in the culture whose language they are learning by bringing into the classroom a wide range of communicative situations. 6.2 Task description As is has been previously mentioned, this project proposes a term-long activity prompted by the film Pay it Forward (Mimi Leder, 2000) whose objective is to engage the students in a task that can be enriching not only for their competence in the second language, but also for creating positive attitudes towards the target language and the culture and developing self-esteem. What is more, this activity allows students to become a positive force in their community. Its time frame will be the whole course; the viewing of the movie will be the starting point and it will culminate with the personal pay-it-forward-project that students will design in groups of four. 29 6.3 Assessment: Tools and grading criteria “Any language test is a procedure for gathering evidence of general or specific language abilities from performance on tasks designed to provide a basis for predictions about an individual’s use of those abilities in real world contexts” (McNamara, 2000: 11) It is of the utmost importance to know which our objectives are, so that the appropriate assessment instruments are selected in order to elicit evidence that verifies if our students are able to communicate in the second language. For this project, a number of performances have been planned and interpreted to make claims about the students’ abilities. However, it is difficult to guarantee that in real communicative situations the learners will perform as good or bad as they did during the assessment. The main task to be evaluated is the final project designed by the students according to a criterion in the real world, more precisely a project, where students have to design a proposal of their own choice in order to help other people of their community. For this matter, three rubrics have been designed, one for the written assignment that the learners will have to hand in at the end of the course (Appendix V) and two further rubrics for the oral presentation, one for the students (Appendix VI) to encourage them to share in responsibility for assessment, in line with McNamara’s proposal (2000), and another one for the teacher (Appendix VII). The intention of this test is to measure the student’s proficiency to derive evidence and see how they would to cope in real life (for instance, when they have to defend a personal project at work). Furthermore, the activities carried out in the webquest will also count for the final mark (Appendix VIII) Regarding the grading criteria, it has to be taken into account that this dissertation is only a proposal and that it will not be implemented in the classroom, which is why the grading criteria proposed below are just a possibility. However, I consider that establishing grading criteria can make the process of grading more efficient and consistent, which is why I decided to include them in my 30 proposal. Furthermore, providing these criteria to students can help them perform better and prevent confusion or frustration about their grades. As has been pointed out above, this project, in the event of putting it into practice, would be part of a whole course plan, which means that all the tasks described on the previous section would be only a fraction of the final mark, which will be composed of other tests and performances. Considering this, the grading criteria followed for this project would be: GRADING CRITERIA Pay it forward project 60% Webquest 20% Other possible tests 40% Project 40% Written assignment 30% Oral presentation 10% 7. CONCLUSION Languages are not fixed, but constantly changing, and so are the audiovisual resources, which are an extraordinary source of language in use. Hence, the use of this technology needs to be exploited as much as possible so as to expose foreign language learners to the target language. For that reason, the use of technology and its integration into the curriculum developed by foreign language teachers has gain great importance. Particularly, the use of video has received increasing attention in recent studies on technology integration into teacher education curricula (Özkan, 2002:1). Still, teachers should encourage the learners to watch the films actively, by using the supplementary materials, such as worksheets prepared by him/her or supplied with the films. Furthermore, the learners should participate in the activities, if possible, or elaborate projects in the target language like the one proposed in this dissertation. Moreover, it is of the utmost importance that we, as future teachers, promote autonomous learning and personal initiative, because learning is a never ending process. 31 Hence, learning strategies are a key element for learners, because they help them to consciously control how they learn so that they can be efficient, motivated, and independent language learners (Chamot el al. 1999). This is the reason why this project provides the students with autonomy in order to carry out a term-long project, giving them the opportunity to organize themselves. Moreover, teachers are no longer the only source of information, which means that they are not anymore the only source of knowledge, but helpers that guide the students in their process of constructing the knowledge and develop the competence in L2 use. In other words, all the sources available to foreign language teachers are only a means to improve language competence, not an end in themselves. Bearing this in mind, the audiovisual media are thus, only one of those options. However, due to their variety, to introduce them in the communicative classroom can be very enriching but also very challenging, because these media should not be used simply to entertain the students whilst filling up class time (something that happens regularly in secondary education). Instead, they should be employed “discretely, for specific and concentrated periods of class time” (CanningWilson, 2000:4) during which “learners should be actively engaged” (Lonergan, 1995:6) and should be integrated with other activities. This project is just one of the almost inexhaustible options available to move forward to the acquisition of the key competences that the students are going to need in the future and to achieve a successful learning, because, as Ellis put it (2003:10), “the goal of theory and research in SLA is not to direct teachers how to teach, but rather to advance a number of “provisional specifications” that teachers can try out, adapting them to their own particular teaching context.” 32 8. WORKS CITED  ABBS, Brian, FREEBAIRN, Ingrid. 1981. Developing Strategies. Students’ Book. 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Oxford: Oxford University Press.  WRIGHT, Andrew. 1976. Visual Materials for the Language Teacher. Essex: Longman Wilson. 1 9. APPENDIX Appendix I: Pay it Forward (Mimi Leder, 2000) Appendix II: Webquest