Assumptions and Applications of Communicative Activities for Collaborative Learning in ESL Class

Abstract

The quality of ESL class can be improved with collaborative learning with communicative activities. Various real world situations and discourse communities encourage language learners to observe the effective users of the language and imitate them according to their needs. A teacher needs to have a clear conception of the communicative tasks design and then to be able to design appropriate tasks for collaborative learning.  The aim of the paper is to provide college teachers with a framework for analyzing and designing communicative tasks, presenting teachers with the approaches of designing communicative tasks to solve the learners’ two main problems - learners have lower rates of verbal participation and they fail to express themselves with basic fluency and accuracy. The paper first focuses on the principles that are to be followed in designing communicative tasks, and then various components of the tasks are detailed. The problems on the part of learners while participating in communicative tasks are discussed in the next phase of the paper and then approaches to solve the problems in participating in the activities are illustrated. This helps teachers select, adapt or create their own design of effective communicative tasks and make their teaching more successful and more effective.