How to learn from Communicative activities

The excitement generated by the arrival of the Communicative Approach all those years ago included attention to activities in which students had a communicative purpose, focused on content rather than language form, and encouraged students to use all and any language at their disposal.

But how useful are such activities in reality? Do they genuinely help students to ‘get’ new language items or even practise previously encountered grammar and lexis?

In this talk we will revisit the concept of communicative activities and try to see how to re-fashion them so that they are communicative learning activities.

Please register at info@melta.de

Jeremy Harmer is a teacher, trainer and writer who has worked in the UK and Mexico and as an online MA tutor. He haas written many books including The practice of English Language Teaching, How to Teach English and Essential Teacher Knowledge (published by Pearson), graded readers for Cambridge University Press, and course books (Coast to Coast – Pearson, Just Right – Marshall Cavendish, and Jetstream -Helbling). His most recent book is Story Based Language teaching, with Herbert Puchta, for Helbling. Away from ELT Jeremy is a practising music, performer and singer-songwriter.