View Content #19095

by Loreli Mann, Tahira Anwar and Patricia Roldán Marcos

This activity serves as an example of the principles discussed in Dr. Sykes's InterCom Topic of the Week article.

Objectives:

• Students will be able to show comprehension of different elements and pragmatic strategies to ask for favors by acting out a role-play.
• Students will be able to recognize successful and unsuccessful interactions and provide reasons.

Resources: Asking and responding to favors handout. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsY2luHPJ0w

Procedure and notes:

Part 1 – Observation:

1. Pre-viewing: Ask students to answer questions 1-3 in pairs. Note: This stage will get them thinking about the way they carry out the speech act in their L1. Get feedback from students. The teacher can discuss these concepts in the input stage below, maybe without using the specialized terminology.

2. While-viewing: Introduce the video to the class. Pre-teach "give/have a lift" if necessary. Ask students to read questions 4 and 5 in preparation for the video. Play the video.

3. Get students to discuss their ideas/notes in groups of three. Then whole class feedback to ensure all students understood the gist of the videos.

4. Ask students to watch the video again and take notes of the language being used to ask for favors (question 6)

5. Get students to check their answers and then elicit answers from class. Write the chunks on the board and start the input stage.

Part 2 – Analysis:

6. Post-viewing: INPUT: The teacher discusses the different issues that have come up from watching the video. These may include social distance, rank of imposition, the use of hints or indirect strategies, speaker and hearer-oriented, the 3 stages, and also the analysis of the linguistic structures.

7. In pairs, ask students to find alternative structures for the structures found in the dialogue. Elicit answers and add your own on the board as necessary.

8. In pairs, ask them to rank them from more to less formal and then examine the grammatical ins and outs. E.g. "would you mind...?" followed by -ing verb; can/could followed by bare infinitive, etc. Bring up the potential confusion with lend/borrow and link it with the hearer/speaker-oriented element, i.e. "Can I borrow...?" vs "Can you lend me...?"

Part 3 – Extension:

9. Ask students to work individually and think about details for two of the situations provided in the handout. Then tell them that they'll do two role-plays with two different classmates and different situations. Ensure they understand that they have to make one successful but the other a failure.

10. Ask some students to volunteer and act out a role-play in front of the class. Ask the rest of the class if it was a successful or a failure one and why.

Assessment: Ask students to fill in the self-assessment grid.