This document discusses classroom activities for teaching communicative language as described by Jack Richards. It outlines activities that focus on fluency or accuracy, including role plays, dialog reenactments, and grammar exercises. It distinguishes between mechanical, meaningful, and communicative practice and provides information gap and jigsaw activities as examples of communicative practice. Pair and group work are described as increasing student talking time and reducing anxiety, but they can be difficult for teachers to monitor and may not ensure individual student understanding. The relationship between classroom activities and real-world language use is emphasized.

1. Classroom Activities in
communicative language
teaching by Jack Richards
By ISMAILA MOUNKORO

2. Classroom Activities in communicative language
teaching Jack Richards
Born in New Zealand, Dr. Richards
obtained a Master of Arts degree
with first class honours in English
from Victoria University in
Wellington, New Zealand, in 1966.
He obtained his Ph.D. in Applied
Linguistics from Laval University (a
French-Language University) in
Quebec City, Canada in 1972.

3. The fluency and accuracy activities with examples
Activities focusing on fluency
• To help students practice language in
listening, speaking, reading,
and/orwriting activities to so develop
fluency in using the language in
spontaneous communication.
• The texts are usually composed of
separate items: the target items are
usually practiced out of context or
situation;.
Activities focusing on accuracy
• To help students achieve Maccurate
perception and production of a target
itemNwhich can be a sound, a word,
or a sentence Structure.
• The texts are usually composed of
separate items: the target items are
usually practiced out of context or
situation.

4. Examples
Fluency Tasks
A group of students of mixed language ability carry
out a role play in which they have to adopt specified
roles and personalities provided for them on cue
cards. These roles involve the drivers, witnesses, and
the police at a collision between two cars. The
language is entirely improvised by the students,
though they are heavily constrained by the specified
situation and characters. The teacher and a student
act out a dialog in which a customer returns a faulty
object she has purchased to a department store. The
clerk asks what the problem is and promises to get a
refund for the customer or to replace the item. In
groups, students now try to recreate the dialog using
language items of their choice. They are asked to
recreate what happened preserving the meaning but
not necessarily the exact language. They later act out
their dialogs in front of the class.
Accuracy Tasks
• Students are practicing dialogs. The dialogs contain
examples of falling intonation in Wh-questions. The
class is organized in groups of three, two students
practicing the dialog, and the third playing the role of
monitor. The monitor checks that the others are
using the correct intonation pattern and corrects
them where necessary. The students rotate their
roles between those reading the dialog and those
monitoring. The teacher moves around listening to
the groups and correcting their language where
necessary. Students in groups of three or four
complete an exercise on a grammatical item, such as
choosing between the past tense and the present
perfect, an item which the teacher has previously
presented and practiced as a whole class activity.
Together students decide which grammatical form is
correct and they complete the exercise. Groups take
turns reading out their answers.

5. Distinction between mechanical,
meaningful and communicative practice.
•

6. Mechanical practice
• Refers to a controlled practice
activity which students can
successfully carry out without
necessarily understanding the
language they are using.
• Examples of this kind of activity
would be repetition drills and
substitution drills designed to
practice use of particular
grammatical or other items

7. Meaningful practice
• Meaningful practice refers to an activity
where language control is still provided
but where students are required to make
meaningful choices when carrying out
practice. For example, in order to practice
the use of prepositions to describe
locations of places, students might be
given a street map with various buildings
identified in different locations. They are
also given a list of prepositions such as
across from, on the corner of, near, on,
next to. They then have to answer
questions such as “Where is the book
shop? Where is the café?” etc. The
practiceis now meaningful because they
have to respond according to the location
ofplaces on the map

8. Communicative practice
• Communicative practice refers to
activities where practice in using
language within a real communicative
context is the focus, where real
information is exchanged, and where
the language used is not totally
predictable.
• For example, students might have to
draw a map of their neighborhood
and answer questions about the
location of different places, such as
the nearest bus stop, the nearest café,
etc.
•

9. Information-Gap Activities
• An important aspect of communication in CLT is the notion of
information gap.
• This refers to the fact that in real communication, people normally
communicate in order to get information they do not possess. This is
known as an information gap. More authentic communication is likely
to occur in the classroom if students go beyond practice of language
forms for their own sake and use their linguistic and communicative
resources in order to obtain information.
• In so doing, they will draw available vocabulary, grammar, and
communication strategies to complete a task

10. Information
Gap Activities
•
• This refers to the fact that in real
communication, people normally
communicate in order to get information
they do not possess. This is known as an
information gap. More authentic
communication is likely to occur in the
classroom if students go beyond practice
of language forms for their own sake and
use their linguistic and communicative
resources in order to obtain information.
• In so doing, they will draw available
vocabulary, grammar, and communication
strategies to complete a task
Jigsaw activities
• These are also based on the
information-gap principle. Typically,
the class is divided into groups and
each group has part of the
information needed to complete an
activity. The class must fit the pieces
together to complete the whole.
• In so doing, they must use their
language resources to communicate
meaningfully and so take part in
meaningful communication practice

11. Advantages of pair and group work in the language classroom
• 1. The quantity of learner speech can increase.
In teacher-fronted classrooms, the teacher typically speaks 80% of the time; in groupwork more students talk for more of the time.
2. The variety of speech acts can increase.
In teacher-fronted classrooms, students are cast in a responsive role, but in groupwork they can perform a wide range of roles, including those involved in the
negotiation of meaning.
3. There can be more individualization of instruction.
In teacher fronted-lessons teachers shape their instruction to the needs of the average student but in groupwork the needs of individual students can be attended to.
4. Anxiety can be reduced.
Students feel less nervous speaking in an L2 in front of their peers than in front of the whole class.
5. Motivation can increase.
Students will be less competitive when working in groups and are more likely to encourage each other.
6. Enjoyment can increase.
Students are ‘social animals’ and thus enjoy interacting with others in groups; in teacher-fronted classrooms student-student interaction is often proscribed.
7. Independence can increase.
Group activities help students to become independent learners.
8. Social integration can increase.
Group activities enable students to get to know each other.
9. Students can learn how to work together with others.
In typical teacher-fronted classrooms students are discouraged from helping each other; group work helps students to learn collaborative skills.
10. Learning can increase.
Learning is enhanced by groupwork because students are willing to take risks and can scaffold each other’s efforts.”

12. limitations of pair and group work in the language classroom
• 1. First, when comparing pair and group work, pair work offers the great advantage that each partner gets to speak more and is obliged to take
part. With group work the ‘lazy member’ phenomenon can occur, as one or more members. let the dominant ones take the strain.
• 2. Pairs and groups may go off-task or resort to using L1 when doing their activities. There are significant behaviour management issues involved
with pair/group work.
• 3. Not all students like pair and group work. Some prefer to work directly with their expert teacher.
• 4. The teacher cannot be certain that a task has been satisfactorily achieved since it’s impossible to monitor every individual. Pais/groups may
report they have done the task and understood, but you can’t be sure this is the case.
• 5. The quality of the language pupils hear will be variable, sometimes inaccurate and almost certainly impoverished compared with teacher
input. If acquisition largely depends on receiving comprehensible input at the right level, then this cannot be guaranteed.
• 6. It is less likely that pupils will receive negative feedback (correction). Although you can set up a task with the instruction to give feedback to
each other, there is no guarantee this will occur. Many pupils are reluctant to correct their peers and, like you, do not want to discourage fluent
communication.
• 7. In relation to Point 6 above it is possible that ‘fossilisation’ of errors will occur, meaning students continue to make the same errors.

13. The relationship between classroom activities and real life.
Classroom activities should parallel the “real
world” as closely as possible. Since language is a
tool of communication, methods and
materials should concentrate on the message
and not the medium. The purposes of reading
should be the same in class as they are in real
life.
• Arguments in favor of the use of authentic
materials include:
• They provide cultural information about the
target language.
• hey provide exposure to real language.
• They relate more closely to learners’ needs.
• They support a more creative approach to
teaching.
•