123
handouts. It is also agreed on that home activity during confinement play a significant role in determining
teachers‘ expectations and teachers and students E-achievements. The more students engage in different
daily life activities such as practicing sport, playing games, and even online jobs, the less E-achievement
they obtain in finals and exams. The solution is moderation and students should manage their time
throughout the week which is a compulsory course in distance education.
REFERENCES :
1.
Bouderbane, A. (2020). Student social background and teacher expectations: The self-fulfilling
prophecy.
Cross-Cultural Communication, 16
(1), 17-22. doi: 10.3968/11500
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Brophy, J. E. & Good, T. L. (1974).
Teacher-Student relationships: Causes and consequences
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New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
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Darley, J. M. & Fazio, R. H. (1980). Expectancy confirmation processes arising in the social
interaction sequence.
American Psychologist, 35
(10), 867-881. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.35.10.867
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Gershenson, S., Holt, S. B. & Papageorge, N. W. (2016). Who believes in me? The effect of
student-teacher demographic match on teacher expectations.
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224. doi: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2016.03.002
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Lobos Peña K, Bustos-Navarrete C, Cobo-Rendón R, Fernández Branada C, Bruna Jofré C and
Maldonado Trapp A (2021) Professors‘ Expectations About Online Education and Its Relationship With
Characteristics of University Entrance and Students‘ Academic Performance During the COVID-19
Pandemic. Front. Psychol. 12:642391. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.642391
6.
Manuela Paechter, Brigitte, Maier Daniel Macher
(2010) Students‘ expectations of, and
experiences in e-learning: Their relation to learning achievements and course satisfaction. Computers and
Education (54)1:222-229.
7.
Rubie-Davies, C. M. & Peterson, E. R. (2016). Relations between teachers‘ achievement over and
underestimation, and students‘ beliefs for Maori and Pakeha students.
Contemporary Educational
Psychology, 47
, 72-83. doi: 10.1016/j.cedpsych.2016.01.001
8.
Tauber, R. T. (1998). Good or bad, what teachers expect from students they generally get (Report
Number EDO-SP-97-7). Washington, DC: ERIC Clearinghouse on Teaching and Teacher Education.
(ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 426 985)
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Tiedemann, J. (2000). Gender-related beliefs of teachers in elementary school mathematics.
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Xu, Qingyu ; Abu Baker ; Kiramat, Shah (2020). The effects of communication barriers on
distance learners achievements.
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DOI ;10.24205/03276716.2020.1027
TYPES OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES AND THEIR ARRANGEMENT
Paluanova X.D.
DSc., prof., Methodology of teaching English language department,
UzSWLU, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
tel: 90 594 06 76
Abstract
: This article deals with types of communicative activities, their arrangement and techniques of
communicative teaching. There is the description of four different types of communicative activities,
which achieve different learning goals. They are best suited to different kinds of tasks, require different
kinds of seating arrangement, and draw on or encourage different kinds of social relationships.
Key
words
: Communicative activities, superior-inferior activities, types of arrangement, learning goals,
combining group, different task.
Different scholars define some different types of communicative activities. D.Gross states, that
there are three general types of communicative activities:
informal learning groups, formal learning
groups
, and
study teams
.
Informal learning groups
are ad hoc temporary clustering of students within a single class
session. Informal learning groups can be initiated, for example, by asking students to turn to a neighbor
and spend two minutes discussing a question you have posed. Teachers can also form groups of three to
five to solve a problem or pose a question. They can organize informal groups at any time in a class of
any size to check on students' understanding of the material, to give students an opportunity to apply what
they are learning, or to provide a change of pace.
124
Formal learning groups
are teams established to complete a specific task, such as perform a lab
experiment, write a report, carry out a project, or prepare a position paper. These groups may complete
their work in a single class session or over several weeks. Typically, students work together until the task
is finished, and their project is graded.
Study teams
are long-term groups (usually existing over the course of a semester) with stable
membership whose primary responsibility is to provide members with support, encouragement, and
assistance in completing course requirements and assignments. Study teams also inform their members
about lectures and assignments when someone has missed a session. The larger the class and the more
complex the subject matter, the more valuable study teams can be.
Paul Nation has developed types of arrangement of communicative activities. He assumes that a
useful way of classifying arrangement of these activities is to look at the distribution of the information
needed to do the activity. In many activities learners have equal access to the same material or
information and cooperate to do the task. Thus, P. Nation lists them [2; 52]:
-
the
cooperating arrangement
where learners have equal access to the same material or
information and cooperate to do the task;
-
the
superior-interior arrangement
where
one member of the group has information that all the
others need;
-
the
combining arrangement where
each learner has a different piece of information that all the
others need;
-
the
individual arrangement
where each learner has access to the same information but must
perform or deal with a different part of it.
These four different types of communicative activities achieve different learning goals, they are
best suited to different kinds of tasks, require different kinds of seating arrangement, and draw on or
encourage different kinds of social relationships. In order for group work to be successful, each type of
group work must have its most suitable choice of other factors.
Let us now look at each type in turn to see how the principle of communicative work applies and
arranged.
The combining arrangement
is the ideal arrangement for communicative work because it ensures
interest and participation. It may be noticed that ways of making other arrangements more effective often
involve adding an element of combining. The essential feature of a combining arrangement is that each
learner has unique, essential information. This means that each learner has a piece of information that the
others do not have, and each piece of information is needed to complete the task. Here is an example
involving a group of three learners: Each learner has a map of an island. However, on one learner's map
only some of the towns are named and only some of the roads are indicated. On the second learner's map
some of the other towns are named, the railway system is given, and the airport is shown. On the third
learner's map the remaining roads and-towns are shown, the central mountain is named, and the forest is
indicated. Each learner's map is therefore incomplete, and each learner has information that the other two
do not have. By combining this information each learner can make a complete map. They do this by
keeping their map hidden from the others and by describing what is on their map for the others to draw on
theirs.
The best seating arrangement of the members of the group during this activity supports the
essential features of the arrangement. Each learner needs to have equal access to the others to get the
essential information while preserving the uniqueness of their own information. This means that when
working in pairs the learners should face each other, because that allows good communication while
hiding their written or pictorial information. When working in a group, it is best if the learners sit in a
circle, so that each learner is an equal distance from any other learner. Equal access to each other is the
most important element in the seating arrangement of combining-arrangement groups.
The social relationship amongst the members of a combining group needs to be one of equality.
For this reason, it is usually unwise for the teacher to become a member of a group unless the learners are
prepared to treat the teacher as an equal and the teacher is willing to take a non-dominant role. Some
teachers find this difficult to do. In addition, various status relationships among learners may upset the
activity. Research by Philips with the Warm Springs Indians found that the way in which the local
community's group activities were organized had a strong effect on learners' participation in classroom
activities. Just as social relationships can affect the group activity, participation in the group activity can
have effects on the social relationships of learners. Aronson et al. found that working in combining
arrangements increased the liking that members of the group had for each other, and resulted in a
relationship of equality.
Research on the combining arrangement as a means of achieving learning goals has focused on
acquiring language through negotiating comprehensible input and mastering content. Long and Porter call
125
combining-arrangement activities "two-way tasks" to distinguish them from superior-inferior activities
("one-way tasks‖). This research indicates a superiority for combining arrangement activities over
teacher-fronted activities and "one-way tasks" [5; 78].
The most suitable tasks for combining-arrangement group work include: Completion, e.g.,
completing a picture by exchanging information, completing a story by pooling ideas; Providing
directions, e.g., describing a picture for someone to draw, telling someone how to make something;
matching, classifying, distinguishing, e.g., deciding if your partner's drawing is the same as yours,
arranging pictures in the same order as your partner's unseen pictures; Ordering, e.g., putting the
sentences or pictures of a story in order.
Combining-arrangement activities do not usually present problems for the teacher. Group size is
not a restricting factor. Strip-story exercises involving the ordering of pictures or sentences can be done
with groups of 15 or more as long as learners can sit in a large circle or move about to have easy access to
each other. One difficulty that may occur is maintaining the uniqueness of each learner's information.
This can be done by getting learners to memorize their information at the beginning of the task, or, in pair
work, setting up a physical barrier between learners. This physical barrier may be a cardboard screen
about 30 centimeters high.
Should combining groups be made up of learners with mixed proficiency or with roughly similar
proficiency? In assessing
the spread of participation
in the activity, P. Nation found that learners in a
homogeneous, low-proficiency group had more equal spoken participation than learners in mixed groups.
Johnson, D.W. found that most
negotiation of meaning
occurred when learners were of different language
backgrounds and of different proficiency levels. Clearly, different goals will require different group
membership [1; 260].
The cooperating arrangement
is the most common kind of group work. Its essential feature is
that all learners have equal access to the same information and have equal access to each other's view of
it. This is because the purpose of a cooperating activity is for learners to share their understanding of the
solutions to the task or of the material involved. Here is an example [4; 69]:
The learners are shown a picture and have several questions to answer about it, such as: If you
had to write a one-word title for this picture, what would it be? What happened before the event in this
picture? What are the characters' feelings towards each other? The learners discuss their answers to the
questions.
The best seating arrangement for the members of the group is to sit in a horseshoe with the
material in the open end of the horseshoe, or in a circle if there is no material to look at. Similarly, in a
pair the learners should sit facing the same direction with the material in front of them. As much as
possible, all the learners in a group should be the same distance from the material and the same distance
from each other. If the information is a text or a picture, then it is best not to give each learner a copy,
because this would encourage individual rather than cooperative activity.
Cooperating requires some degree of equality between learners, particularly a rough equality of
skill. Research shows that group performance is often inferior to the best individual's performance if there
is an exceptional individual in the group. Thus, for cooperating activities it is best to put exceptional
learners in one group rather than to spread them across groups. The considerable amount of research on
cooperating activities with native speakers shows the good effects that such work has on improving social
relationships among learners, including learners from different ethnic backgrounds. The most suitable
tasks for cooperating-arrangement group work include: ranking, ordering, choosing, e. g., choosing the
best candidate for a job, ranking a list of items needed for survival or a list of actions open to you; finding
implications, causes, or uses, e. g., brainstorming the uses of a paper clip on a desert island, interpreting a
picture; solving problems, e. g., answering
letters, solving logical puzzles, simulations; producing
material, e. g., making a radio program, preparing for a debate or play.
The major problem with cooperating arrangements is encouraging each learner to play an active
part in the group. Because all learners have equal access to the same information, no individual is
essential to the activity as occurs in the combining arrangement. Various stratagems have been used to
deal with nonparticipation. One way is to introduce elements of the combining arrangement by giving
each learner in the group a different job to do. For example, one acts as the secretary to keep a record of
decisions. One has the job of encouraging each learner to offer an opinion. One controls the various steps
in the discussion procedure. Another way is to have a reward structure that gives the group responsibility
for each individual's learning by rewarding the winning group rather than any individual in the group. A
third way to deal with non-participation is to change group size or the people in the groups to provide the
optimum climate in each group for participation to occur.
126
The superior-inferior arrangement
in group work is a parallel to traditional class teaching. The
essential feature of the arrangement is that one or more learners have all the information that the others in
the group need. Here are two examples.
One learner has a complete text. The other learners have some important words from the text. By
asking yes/no questions using those words as clues, the learners try to reconstruct the text [3; 134].
One learner has a dictation text that she dictates to the others in the group. They write the
dictation.
The best seating arrangement of the members of the group is with the person in the superior
position facing the others. All the others should be an equal distance from the person with the
information. Notice that this arrangement has parallels with the combining arrangement. The combining
arrangement may be viewed as a set of superior-inferior arrangements with every learner in the group
having the chance to be in the superior position-that is, having information that others need and do not
have.
The social relationship amongst the members of a superior-inferior group is one of inequality.
The person with the information is in a
superior position. This person may gain status from being in this
position or may need to be a person with such status.
Research on peer teaching with native speakers shows that the superior-inferior arrangement can
result in a lot of useful learning, particularly in pair work.
The most suitable tasks for superior-inferior group work include: data gathering, e.g., interviews,
questioning; providing directions, e.g., telling how to get to a place on the map, providing instructions
about how to arrange parts to make a complete item; completion.
The individual arrangement
of the group-work means that each learner has the same information
but must perform individually with a part of that information. Exercise is a good example of this. All the
learners in a group can see a grid:
1
2
3
A
What animals are helped by
the tree?
What animals help the tree?
What animals hurt
the tree?
В
Name five parts of a tree.
Explain why the tree is like a
small world.
Explain
what
a
twig is.
С
What is your favorite part of
a tree? Why?
What is the biggest tree near us?
Near your home?
How do trees help?
Each section of the grid has a different task. The learners take turns to name a section of the grid,
e. g., B l, and the next learner in the group has to carry out the task. The exercise is based on an article
called "The World of a Tree‖. The learners would read it before doing the exercise.
Unlike the superior-inferior arrangement and combining arrangement, no learner has information
that the others do not have. Unlike the cooperating arrangement, each learner makes an individual
performance which is not necessarily helped by the others in the group. The major effects of the
individual arrangement are to increase the time each learner can spend on a task, and to ensure that each
learner participates.
The learners in the group need to have equal access to the material and be in sight of each other.
Sitting in a circle is usually the most convenient.
The most suitable tasks for the individual arrangement in group work include: solving problems,
e.g., role play activities where each individual must perform in a certain way; repetition, e.g., a chain
story where learners retell the story to each other and see the changes that occur in retelling; 3.
completion, e.g., each learner has to add a part to complete a story.
Group work like any other class activity, can quickly become a routine. Once students are used to
it and have regular working partners, it can be organized quickly and easily (by saying "Now get into
your groups‖). The first new times that teachers try to make group work are very important - they need to
give more careful instructions and know exactly how they will divide the class. Language teaching
practices were developed in organizing class into groups.
Thus, we can state that types of group work are: formal learning groups, informal learning groups
and study teams.
Types of group work arrangement are: the cooperating arrangement, the superior-interior
arrangement, the combining arrangement and the individual arrangement.
127
REFERENCES:
1. Johnson A.P. Teaching Reading and Writing. Toronto, Plymouth: Rowman and Little field Education,
2008. p. 260.
2. Paulston, C. B. Linguistic and communicative competence. In: Robin C. Scarcella, et al. (Eds.),
Developing communicative competence in a second language. New York: Newbury House Publishers-
1990
3. Penny Ur. A course in Language Teaching//Cambridge University Press. – 2007.
4. Richards Jack C. Communicative Language Today. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2006.
5. Savington, S. J. Communicative competence: Theory and Classroom Practice. Massachusetts, etc.
Addison – Wesley Publishing Company. Communicative Competence: Theory and Classroom Practice.
Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley-1983.
MODERN ENGLISH TEACHERS – INNOVATORS
Akbarov F.
MA in English
Founder of ETA Uzbekistan
International ESL/EFL Instructor, C2
CELTA, TESOL, TEFL, TEYL holder
To start with, the word innovation has been quite a buzzword across-the-board and in the context
of ELT in particular. Teaching is an old trade though it is constantly refined through myriads of
approaches, philosophies and techniques. Similarly, the task remains to be the same before the teachers of
present times which is to blend teaching with innovation and harness its benefits to enhance learning and
teaching experiences in the long run. To put that in perspective, modern English teachers are the ones
who are multifaceted in terms of skillset and are ready to embrace novelties and the challenges that come
along down the path.
In October 2020 a presidential decree, a 10-year agenda, was passed in Uzbekistan to bolster the
efforts of promoting the learning and teaching of foreign languages specifically English language which
gained a political attention of the elite. Ever since, the importance of English language in Uzbekistan has
risen in status. However, new doors of opportunities for the teachers of English in the country have also
offered goals, tasks, and responsibilities to handle if they are to retain their teaching positions.
Who are the modern English teachers in Uzbekistan now? The answer may be quite tricky for the
traditional impression and image of a teacher is no longer valid. As a matter of fact, teacher-centered and
deductive approaches are out of fashion.
What seems to be missing in the bigger picture of ELT in Uzbekistan? One of the salient qualities
of innovation is networking! Today‘s English teachers of Uzbekistan are in great need of professional
networking to further establish themselves as the true masters of their profession. Owing to global
pandemic and the resulting restrictions in movement and offline events pushed teachers out of their
regular routine and traditional comfort zone. Teachers were forced to get themselves acquainted with ICT
tools and integrate them into their classes. The idea of modern English teachers did not come into being
overnight or all of a sudden in the form of technological advancement or global pandemic. The modern
image of an English teacher is the prerequisite of changing times.
Besides, the question of modern English teachers being innovators has been quite critical. There
are a number of queries that need to be addressed in regard with innovation. Have English teachers really
aligned their teachings with those of market needs and demands? Or did they only improve their mastery
of use of technology to some extent? What has been brought about to their classes in terms of innovation?
Irrespective of the answers to the abovementioned questions, one has to ensure there is a compatibility
between what students are learning and the application of their knowledge in the real world.
The 21
st
century language teachers are innovators in a broader sense whose teachings are more
purpose-driven than ever before. Now, they consider their learners‘ objectives, wishes, and needs to
effectively deliver classes. One such effective teaching technique is certainly none other than
gamification which incorporates the elements of learning, fun, challenge, motivation and reward. English
teachers in Uzbekistan may not have utilized the effects of gamification to a large extent in their classes.
The notion of learning a language requires student engagement in an amusing manner. However, fun
cannot be the only target in the overall teaching and learning process. Confusingly though the term
gamification does not relate to playing games and having fun only. Instead, it implies to integrate
wholesome approach in English teaching while enhancing student involvement.
