The document discusses different types of speaking and writing activities that can give learners varying amounts of control and choice over the language used. Controlled activities, like fill-in-the-blank sentences, restrict language use and focus on accuracy. Freer activities, like writing an email, allow some prediction of language used and guide practice. Free activities, like roleplays, don't restrict language and focus on communication. The document also discusses reading and listening activity types and how they develop different skills through multiple choice questions, ordering pictures, or jigsaw tasks.

1. from The TKT Course Modules 1, 2 and 3 Online by Mary Spratt, Alan Pulverness and Melanie Williams
© Cambridge University Press 2011
Unit 17
17.2 Key concepts
Here are three writing activities. What differences are there between them in how much
choice they give learners?
Activity 1 Activity 2 Activity 3
Complete these sentences
about yourself with can or
canʼt.
1 I ………. swim.
2 I ………. speak
Mandarin.
3 I ………. play the guitar.
4 I ………. use a
computer.
5 I ………. run very fast.
Write an email to a
language school asking
them about their courses.
Find out:
- when the courses are
- what the courses are
about
- how much they cost
- how long the courses are.
Write an email to a friend
asking them to come on
holiday with you this
summer.
We can see that these activities give learners an opportunity to use language, but in
different ways.
Activity 1 Activity 2 Activity 3
• is a
controlled/restricted
practice activity (i.e. the
learners can only use
certain items of
language)
• gives students practice
in using language
• is a less controlled /
freer practice activity
(an activity in which
learners have some
choice over what
language they use)
• gives students practice
in using language
• is a free activity
• gives students practice
in communicating
• is a task

2. from The TKT Course Modules 1, 2 and 3 Online by Mary Spratt, Alan Pulverness and Melanie Williams
© Cambridge University Press 2011
accurately
• is an exercise, i.e. it
focuses on the form of
language
accurately and in
communicating
• is a task (an activity
with a real-world
outcome)
Speaking and writing activities can be categorised according to how much they control
studentsʼ use of language.
Each category of activity has a different focus and purpose and uses different activity
types.
Controlled activities give students repeated practice in accuracy and the form of
language, and allow them to make few mistakes. They are mostly used to guide
students in using the form of target language. Some examples of controlled activities
are copying words or sentences, jazz chants, and drills (guided repetition). In drills
students can either repeat some model language as a class (choral drills) or as
individuals (individual drills), replace a key word in given sentences (substitution
drills) or use new words to create sentences with a different structure (transformation
drills).
Free activities, by contrast, allow students to use whatever language they wish in order
to complete a task. In free activities, the teacher may not be able to predict what
language the students will use, and so canʼt use these activities to give practice in
specific language. These activities focus on fluency, giving students practice in
recalling and joining together the language they know and giving them opportunities to
try to interact and communicate. Discussions, problem-solving activities, sharing or
comparing ideas, information or experiences; rank ordering / prioritising (putting a list
of things in order of importance), writing emails, stories, letters, invitations or
compositions are all examples of free activities.

3. from The TKT Course Modules 1, 2 and 3 Online by Mary Spratt, Alan Pulverness and Melanie Williams
© Cambridge University Press 2011
Between controlled and free activities are freer activities in which the teacher can
predict to some extent what language the student will need to use. For example, you
can see that in activity 2 above the students will need to use question forms, so the
activity provides practice of question forms. But the students will also use other
language which is not so predictable to complete the email. These activities provide
repeated practice of target language, guiding students to use its form correctly and
integrate new language with language students already know. Examples of freer
activities are role-plays, information-gap activities, sentence completion, gap-fills,
surveys.
We can see that controlled activities give students lots of guidance and support in using
language accurately, freer activities give a little less guidance and support, and free
activities do not give students guidance and support in the language they use.
It is not always possible to categorise activities as controlled, freer or free as it depends
on how the teacher uses them. Letʼs take role-play, for example. A teacher could put
students in pairs and ask them to reproduce a dialogue they have just heard on a
recording. This would be a controlled activity. At the end of a lesson on asking for and
giving personal information, students could do a role-play in which they meet a new
person at a party and have to find out about them. As the students would be very likely
to use the language they had just learnt, this would be a freer activity. Imagine now a
reading text which discusses the advantages and disadvantages of social networking
websites. After the students have done language and comprehension work on the text,
the teacher asks one group of students to list ideas in favour of social networking sites
and the other group to list all the arguments against. The teacher then pairs students
from the different groups and asks them to argue in their roles about the advantages
and disadvantages. This would be an example of a free role-play, as we donʼt know
what language the students would use.
There are also many activities and tasks that are commonly used to develop reading
and listening skills. These canʼt be divided into controlled, freer and free as they
practise receptive, not productive, skills. Here are six activities. What reading or
listening subskill do they focus on? What is the name of the type of activity?

4. from The TKT Course Modules 1, 2 and 3 Online by Mary Spratt, Alan Pulverness and Melanie Williams
© Cambridge University Press 2011
Here are the answers to the questions above:
Activity Subskill Type of activity
1 Reading for gist Choosing from a list / multiple-choice (an activity in
which you choose the best answer from three or more
possible answers)
2 Listening for
specific
information
A Multiple-choice questions
B True/false questions (an activity in which you decide
whether statements are correct or incorrect)
3 Reading for Jumbled pictures (jumbled = in the wrong order)

5. from The TKT Course Modules 1, 2 and 3 Online by Mary Spratt, Alan Pulverness and Melanie Williams
© Cambridge University Press 2011
detail, cohesion
4 Listening for
specific
information
Form filling
5 Reading for
specific
information or
detail
Jigsaw reading (where each student is given only part
of a text and needs to tell other students about his/her
part of the text, so that in the end each student has all
the information from the text)
6 Listening for
specific
information or
detail
Table completion
We can see that these activities can differ in several ways: the skill or subskill they
focus on; their design and what interaction patterns they use. The kinds of skills they
focus on and the interaction patterns they use are not fixed. So, for example, multiple-
choice questions could be used for reading, listening or grammar activities and can be
done individually, in pairs or in groups or mingling. Similarly, form filling could be used
for reading, listening or grammar practice, and done individually, in pairs or in groups.
Activities 3 and 5 provide examples of another way of categorising activities. Both of
these activities involve an information gap, i.e. the students need to talk to one another
to exchange information they donʼt know in order to complete the activity. This means
they are talking in order to communicate, not just to practise language or show they
have got the answers right. Free role-plays and surveys are other examples of
information-gap activities. There is no information gap in exercises or drills.