Practice Activity APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE IN THE CLASSROOM CONTEXT

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FP001 – APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE IN THE CLASSROOM CONTEXT 
PRACTICE ACTIVITY 
General information 
The practical activity of this subject consists of carrying out individually the tasks detailed 
below. To do this, the learner must keep the statements of each of the tasks and respond 
to each of them. In addition, the activity must meet the formal requirements: 
• Length: 4-5 pages (excluding instructions, statements, bibliography and annexes, if any). 
• Font: Arial. 
• Size: 11 points 
• Spacing: 1.5. 
• Alignment: Justified. 
The activity should be carried out in this Word document following the rules of presentation 
and editing in terms of citations and bibliographic references (see Study Guide). 
Submission must be done following the procedures described in the subject’s evaluation 
document; under no circumstances should it be submitted through the professor’s email. 
On the other hand, remember that there are evaluation criteria which are considered 
extremely important for the learner to follow. For further information, please refer to the 
subject evaluation document. 
 
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PRACTICE ACTIVITY 
TASK 1 
Think of three grammatical structures that are almost the same in Spanish and English, and 
that you could encourage your students to use positive transfer with. 
Also, think of three grammatical structures that are different in Spanish and English, but 
which learners often transfer, and that you could make your students aware of, so as to 
hopefully avoid this negative transfer. 
TASK 2 
Look at the two texts in Appendix 2.1. and the tasks which accompany them in your study 
materials. 
What are they designed to teach? Which of the two is more likely to promote noticing? Why? 
TASK 3. 
Consider the main differences between the learning that takes place in a formal (classroom) 
context and a natural context. Use the grid below as a template for your answer. Please 
note that you will not be able to reproduce the grid in the VC - use point form for your 
answers instead. 
 
Formal, Classroom Contexts Natural Contexts 
Input 
 
Physical constraints 
 
Output 
 
Interaction 
 
 
TASK 4 
What do you think the effects of IRF exchanges on SLA are? Briefly consider each of the 
following areas in your answer: 
• Input. 
• Output. 
• Negotiation. 
• The effectiveness of the feedback stage in IRF. 
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Important: you have to write your personal details and the subject name on the cover 
(see the next page). The assignment that does not fulfil these conditions will not be 
corrected. You have to include the assignment index below the cover. 
 
 
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Student’s full name: Luiz Eduardo Chagas Barros 
Group: 2022.2 
Date: 24 January 2023 
 
TASK 1 
The teaching and learning process can have issues to be overcome, one of them, is the 
process of transfer, Richards (1974) defined transfer as “the use of elements from one 
language while speaking another” and it is very common see L2 leaners using the 
knowledge they know in L1 into L2. 
Since I am not from a country that speaks Spanish, I can not think in common grammatical 
structures between Spanish and English, but since Portuguese is my native language, I can 
use it as example of some similarities we have between the languages and that I can 
encourage my students to use it in a positive way of transfer: 1) Language Structure 
(Subject + Verb + Complement), 2) Continuous tenses (-ing) and 3) Suffix with -tion and -
ible. 
1) In the first grammatical structure we have a similar way to write or speak between the 
languages, even when in Portuguese we can sometimes omit the subject from the 
sentences, in English overall every sentence needs a subject, but when it comes to teach 
that structure, they are not so different. 
For example: Preciso da sua ajuda (I need your help), in this sentence we have an omitted 
subject the I, but when we turn it to English the omitted subject show up as a direct one. 
But if we follow the subject + verb + complement formula we have a very common structure 
between them. 
2) The continuous tenses are something very common in the Brazilian Portuguese, here we 
call it gerund and are verbs finishing in -ando, -endo and -indo. The continuous tenses are 
very simple for a Brazilian student understand when he/she is studying English since the -
ing in the verb indicate to us that the verb is in a gerund form. Different from the Portuguese 
of Portugal that is not very common for them the use of gerund. (e.g. Eu estou comendo 
agora / I am eating right now) 
3) Other similarity between Portuguese and English is the suffix with -tion and -ible since 
they are present in words that are very similar to Portuguese for example, the word 
“attention” finishing with “-tion” in Portuguese that word is “Atenção” finishing with -ão, that 
-ão will be very present in many English words finishing with the suffix “-tion” when you 
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translate for Portuguese. The same happens with the suffix -ible, English words finishing 
with it in Portuguese will finish with the suffix “-vel”, e.g., Incredible / Incrível. 
Those are some English grammatical structures that are very similar to the Portuguese that 
we can encourage our students to follow. 
Other three grammatical structure that are different but leaners often transfer in general I 
could say that the translation is the most and main problem for them and they are: 1) 
adjectives, 2) Cognates and 3) Translation. 
1) In the adjectives case is something very peculiar since many students when write or 
speak sentences in English they tend to make a mind translation from Portuguese to 
English, and because of that translation many grammar mistakes happen. In the case of 
the adjectives, in the Portuguese we use it after the subjective that need to be modified, 
e.g., Uma camisa vermelha, in this sentence vermelha is the adjective, students can make 
a literal translation and create the sentences like A shirt red, ignoring the rules to the use of 
adjective that should be: A red shirt. 
2) Cognates are a real problem in grammar structure for Brazilian students since they use 
English words thinking in the Brazilian meaning, like the word: Pretend, it is very similar to 
the Brazilian verb: Pretender, and many students use pretend with that meaning in mind, 
but they forget that the real meaning in English to pretender is the verb intend, so, the 
cognates are easy to the students transfer to English. 
3) This translation is totally different from the translation talked before, here, the students 
that do not know how to express some English idioms and translate the Brazilian ones to 
English without think that kind of idioms need an adaption to be understand. 
 
TASK 2 
Looking at the texts in Apprendix 2.1 we can see two different proposals to teach the 
students, the first text has as main proposal improve the students’ listening skills and the 
use of going to, to represent the future, the exercises make use of all four skills (listening, 
speaking, reading and writing). 
The second text also intends to work with the going to as way to refer from future plans, but 
the way the exercises are taken is a little awkward since it asks for the students to write 
sentences according to the text characters and there is present a repetition of the same 
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words and the students should write the sentences according with the characters actions in 
the text. 
When it comes about which of them can promote the noticing in the students, I think the 
text 1 can do it better, since the text open space for the students test their abilities and 
capacity of comprehension, giving more tools to challenge them and make them reflect 
about the information that are being give. 
And for the process of noticing, Schmidt and Frota (1986) referred two kinds of noticing: 
conscious awareness of silent features in the input and noticing the gap, the noticing has 
other aspectsin its composition, but I think it is easier to incorporate it in the classroom, 
when the tasks open space and promote the thinking of the students and because of that 
the text 1 is the one which can promote better that notion of noticing. 
 
TASK 3 
There are many differences about the learning process that takes place in a formal context 
to a natural context one, using the grid above as an example I will point the difference 
between these two contexts. 
In the input context the differences between formal and natural are very clear when it comes 
about feedback, in both contexts the leaner needs to learn the language structure in all of 
its form and that learning needs feedback from the teacher. In the formal context the 
feedbacks can cause some ambiguity to the students because of the way teachers give that 
feedback to their students by making it unclear, without a clear understating the second 
language learning process will be hard for students to move on. In the natural context, the 
learners will have different ways to understand the feedbacks about what they are learning, 
because it is in a natural context, they tend to recognize faster the language structure and 
how to use it in a real situation. 
About the physical constraints, the leaners can have some limitations in the formal context 
since it depends a physical space and that space will not always have what is needed for 
students learn the language, in that case students need materials and people to interact 
inside that exclusive place to practice and learn that language. The Natural context 
otherwise is the opposite, that is no physical constraints because the learners are in 
continuous learning process, everywhere they go, they are in touch with the language. 
The output differences came when the learners start to produce, Swain (1995) 
hypothesized that output promotes “noticing”, in the formal context that output and noticing 
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will depend the way teachers give to their students, feedbacks about their mistakes and 
language misunderstanding. In the natural context the outputs are spontaneous and the 
noticing is very present since the learner has the capacity to understand the structures of 
the language and correct it when feedback is given to him/her. 
The interaction context is the capacity of the leaner interact with others; in the formal 
context the learner will be limited to interact with people that are present in the same place 
as him/her, the inputs and outputs learned will be used in that space and sometimes used 
in other contexts but will not be frequent. In the natural context the interaction is frequent, it 
happens always and the learner has many opportunities to test his/her skills. 
 
TASK 4 
The IRF or Initiation, Response and Feedback is considered a pattern of discussion that 
happens between the teacher and leaner. To that happen, the teacher initiate, the learner 
responds than, the teacher gives feedback. 
This kind of approach to the exchange of information in the classroom has some problems 
since it does not give to the learner a true chance to communicate but just to give to the 
teacher what he/she wants to hear. 
Although this approach has it problems and had some critics about it, we should not see 
the IRF as a problem for the SLA, since if the teacher gives to the students the right inputs, 
he/she can use the IRF approach to start a real talking situation making the students test 
their output, using the negotiation as valid way to avoid a missing word they do not know or 
remember in that moment. 
To make it clear, I will give an example about what I am trying to say and show that there 
is room for authentic input in a IRF dialogue: 
- Do you like animals? 
- Yes! 
- Do you have any pets at your home? 
- Yes, I have two cats and one dog. 
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Looking at the dialogue exemplified, the teachers can use the IRF approach to extract 
information from the students at the same time they can give feedbacks about their student’s 
outputs when it is necessary. 
Depending on the way the teacher sees and think how to use the IRF it can affect in a 
positive way the SLA. 
 
Bibliography 
[1] Richards, J. C. (1974). Error Analysis. Perspectives on Second Language 
Acquisition. Harlow, Essex: Longman. 
 
[2] Schmidt, R. W., & Frota, S. N. (1986). Developing Basic Conversational Ability in a 
Case Study of an Adult Leaner of Portuguese, in R. Day (Ed.) Talking to Learner: 
Conversation in Second Language Acquisition (pp. 237-319). Rowley, Mass: 
Newbury House. 
 
[3] Swain, M. (1995). Three functions of output in second language learning, in G. 
Cook and B. Seidlhofer (Eds.). Principle and Practice in Applied Linguistics. 
Oxford: Oxford University Press.