“My traditions” Monologue
The purpose of this task is to encourage students to develop their expression ability through listening, writing and speaking. In order to do this, the activity will be performed as a Task Based activity in a second year high school class. The topic chosen comes from unit 6, traditions, traditions, from the respective textbook “Looking Ahead” given by the government. The objective is that the students will learn how to plan and perform a monologue which includes information about their own experiences living traditional festivities.
The class starts with a short introduction about the topic of traditions. The teacher makes emphasis in the fact that, depending on cultures, traditions can vary a lot. Then, he/she explains which the task of the day is: Write and perform a monologue. In purpose to do this, students watch and make notes of a short video which is an extract from a TV show in where people talk about Thanksgiving in the US. Based on the notes that they made, each student has approximately 40 minutes for writing a short monologue about what they know or what they enjoy of a certain festivity in Chile, explaining what are the pros and cons of it and sharing their work in front of the class To do this, students can user their textbook in order to collect useful vocabulary. After the presentations, students as a whole class, decide which is the most important celebration in the country and make a comparison with it and the one in the video.
The only materials needed for this activity are “Joining Miri to Discuss Thanksgiving and US Holiday Traditions!” video, Second year high school’s textbook “Looking Ahead”, a pencil and a copybook.
What we learnt trough the use of this activity is that students must have a clear objective and, in order to reach it, they follow certain previous patters. It is not a group of different activities at all. It is a sequence of procedures until they get what they are supposed to!
Task Based Approach