Communicative exercises

Communicative exercises start with drills in reproducing a group of sentences from the students’ memory. This is very close to self-dictation in procedure. As soon as students are able to write simple thought and ideas in words, the teacher might use the following kinds of exercises: exposition, description, storytelling, composition and writing a letter.

Exposition

Exposition is done as a written reproduction of a story either having been heard or read before. With backward classes, most of the words habitually misspelled are written on the board. The needed structures are chosen, the text divided into logical parts, the main content is revealed beforehand in class, etc. Then it is given as home assignment.

Description: Type I

Students are expected to write the description of a picture, object or situation. The tasks usually given might be as follows:

· Write not less than 3 sentences about…

· Write what you usually do in the morning.

· Write what you can see in the picture.

Wall-charts can be used for picture composition. Their usefulness is further increased if certain parts of them can be made to change or move, e.g., things can be masked with Blutackor certain objects can be added and moved around. This is especially good for practising prepositions. If you cut slots in the wall-chart, you can even practise ‘ behind’. Things can also be stuck over other things, so a window can be broken, then mended, etc. This would provide practice in the passive or causative ‘ have’.

Masking is very easy with an Overhead Projector. The teacher simply needs to place a piece of paper over whatever he needs to obscure. Overlays can be used, where one transparency is placed over another, and so an increasingly complex picture can be built up. Cut outs can be used and these can be made to move by being slid across the transparency.

Description: Type II

Students are expected to write a descriptive paragraph about a text or a number of texts on a certain subject. This prepares for storytelling and compositions with such assignments as:

· Describe the place where the action takes place.

· Write what you have learnt about…

· Write what new information you have found in this/these text(s).

Storytelling

Children’s creative work at written word communication, especially at the elementary level, makes no provision for writing epics, novels, tragedies and dramas, poems and other complicated kinds of written word creativity. But it may be easily realised in writing stories (fairytales), compositions and letters. This is the situation in which written creativity finds its full activation and functioning. It is done through 2 functions of written speech: generalisation and interaction. Both functions find their realisation in students’ creation of their own texts (fairytales, stories) based on the specially evoked work of imagination. This is the situation to motivate teaching writing as the text building-up activity.

Composition

Composition is just the other side of storytelling. It is usually done on a suggested topic for oral discussion like ‘ My Family’ or ‘The Sport I Like Best’. Students should be taught to write a plan first and then to write a story following the plan.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-13