Our New Year’s Resolutions:
Junior: I want to use only English in the seminar.
Testuko: I want to travel a lot. Anywhere I can go is ok. I also need to talk with 100 people.
Shin-chan: I want to speak proper English, and use only English in this seminar.
Sakuranbo: I want to further improve my speaking in English.
Tsushi: I want to get up at 6:30 every day, because I have a tendency to sleep late.
James: I want to finish my dissertation by May.
How do we make good problem solving speaking activities?
- Teachers make sure there is a clear outcome
- Includes challenges
- Uses useful procedures
Outcomes
What can we do about pollution? is not well designed because the outcome is not clear. To make the outcome clear, we can revise the question with suggest, choose, and rank. This is one set. Other sets of possible outcomes are below:
Set 2: Decide, locate, arrange (Ex. Suggest the best seating arrangement for the Oikon. The list of participants are ………..)
Restrictions and requirements
This is a challenge that makes it more difficult to achieve the outcome. (Ex. Make sure that the grades are mixed. People from Aomori should not sit together.)
Procedures
A series of steps that increase the amount of speaking.
- Pyramid procedure
- Sequence of outcomes