The original activity provided can be said communicative enough as it gives a context and situation. It requires students to speak actively. It primarily will develop students’ socio-cultural competence as they relate the topic to their real life environment. It will also develop their linguistics competence as to use vocabulary, especially adjectives, to describe a place and strategic competence as misunderstanding may occur in the discussion session with their partner. I think this activity has all the criteria of CLT and TBLT needed.

The adaptation that I will make to suit my future teaching context is probably at the context only. As described, the students live in a rural area, where it is not a place to people to move in. Maybe I will change the topic from looking for accommodation to looking for university to continue study. It is probably relate more to the students’ context, as people from district areas are usually moving to city or other area to continue their study. I will give the description of the three people to have different interest of study, such as Islamic studies, medical sciences, and engineering. The rest of the activity will be the same, that students will discuss with their partner to give a recommendation of the best university to the three people.

 

In it’s existing format it is communicative, not in the ‘fake’ language provided in the textbook but through the conversations students will have and the agreements they make in determining appropriate neighbourhoods for the characters in question.  This activity can help students to familiarize themselves with language relevant to neighbourhoods and communities but also to the way you express ideas and comment purposefully on the ideas of others. The provision of target sentences (modelled response at the bottom of the page) does not align very well with CLT principles but the way it allows students to meaningfully discuss their own neighbourhoods and make recommendations based on discussions aligns nicely with CLT theory.

For very young children this activity would need to be changed significantly.  Young children do not understand the motivations for moving to a new area and as such the activity could be revised to be about recommending the school itself to prospective students.  Children can examine existing real life materials promoting the school to new students (authentic materials currently targeting prospective parents) and come up with their own way to promote the school.  Using the themes/content on existing materials, students can work collaboratively to develop a new marketing tool for the school targeted at kids themselves. After reviewing existing materials, students can collaboratively create a list of things students might want in a new school setting and can use their own experiences to decide how their school meets these needs. Students can present their findings in a wide variety of ways (a website, a poster, an advertisement, a speech to be delivered on an open day etc).  Focusing on the school itself is a great way to cover similar content in a way that is accessible to all students.  It is a shared, known place, unlike the different streets and suburbs young children may live in themselves.  

2. Discourse and strategic competence are developed in the context. As the language focus is giving advice and making suggestions, learners will communicate, negotiate, and discuss with partners in pair work. The motivation of one learner who suggests shows strategic competence and the one of another who consults shows discourse competence. Features of CLT such as language as a tool of communication to get the meaning across and feature of TBLT including learner-centered and focus on form are involved in the activity.

3. Revision: Free talk about accommodations, different house pictures and house property advertisements will be delivered before the activity. The original activity will get started, after which, voluntary learners in pair work will choose a few ideal neighborhoods in Brisbane to share with the class. 

3. The topic will not be 'recommend a suitable neighborhood' but will be adjusted to 'some place worth going in your city' .  Therefore, it will be a more suitable topic for these high school students.

In China, when teaching a second language, teachers usually only emphasis on grammar teaching and neglect the importance of using a language, therefore Chinese students may have a high scores in their English test, but have a poor language application ability. That’s why we call English we learned as “dumb English”. In order to improve this phenomenon, I would like to choose international senior high school grade three students  in China aged 17 to 18 years old as my target students. In general,  grade three senior high school students can reach level B because Chinese students usually learn English from primary school and it would be around ten years of English learning ,which means they are supposed to arrive at intermediate-English level. 

2. The original task is not very communicative because students are required to discuss the given material in part A, actually learners are not fully engaged in the activity and this kind of method cannot develop their interest in English learning.  However, the second part of original task are committed in turn-taking pattern which is efficient because both students have the opportunity to express their own idea.  In my opinion, discourse competence is developed because students are required to give reasons for their recommendations which means they need to speak a logical sentence to explain reasons. Also, the partner have to understand the each other’s idea to create cohesion. 

3.Revision of the task

Pre-task：I would like to show them pictures of different living accommodations such as apartment and houses and I will also show them the interior of different accommodations.  

During task: I would like to ask students to role play the tenement and landlord in order to engage themselves into this activity. Students are required to mock the situation that the tenant inspect a house of landlord ,and in this procedure students are required to use proper grammar and language to express their own idea.

Post task:Students who role play tenants are required to post advertisement through internet to find a roommate while the 'landlord' are required to post advertisement to find another tenants.