EDU5FFE Group Work Project On Language Functions And Forms In Education

Context:

The target learner group are Saudi navy who work on ships. Their English level is intermediate. The training sessions will be in Royal Saudi Naval Forces school (RSNF). The classrooms fit approximately twenty trainers each. The sessions will take place five times a week fifty minutes each. The classrooms are provided with modern technologies for teaching such as smartboard, projectors, and computers. The course lasts for three months for each curriculum. In terms of the training curriculum, the learners up to this lesson have already learned the basic procedures of emergency situations such as injures, ship oil leaking, and grounding. They, also, studied the daily tasks on board the ship and gradually reached to this topic. In order to teach the grammar point, the learners started initially with basic tenses and followed by models. At this point, they will learn the ''unreal conditional'' because this grammar point is aimed to enable them to express their imaginations. By the end of the course the trainers will be ready to have any training program abroad within English language. The two activities below will have the same context adopting two different curriculum approaches which are the situational-approach and task-based language learning approach (TBLL).

Activity 1

Situation: Emergency procedures on the warships.

Objective: By the end of the lesson the learners will be able to deal and discuss different types of imaginary emergency situations on board the ship by using second conditional.

Activity duration: 10-15 minutes.

Materials: a copy of the emergency procedures guide and six cards for each group.

Procedure: 

The activity is a real-life training session. The grammar point had been explained previously to the students and it will be reflected implicitly in this activity. The class will be divided into groups of four. Each group will choose a name for their ship and nominate a student to be the captain. The captain will be given the emergency procedures guide. The captain's mission is to make sure that the crew are prepared to deal with all types of emergencies in the real-life drill by accurately responding to the given situations. Each group will be given six cards. Each card has different emergency situation. The cards should be face down and the captain will ask a member of his group to pick a card, read it and respond to that situation. After that, the captain will ask the other members if they agree or disagree then evaluate their answer. Repeat the same process with the rest cards. 

The situations written on the cards: -

1- What would you do if there was a fire in the engine room?

2- What would you do if there was a flooding in the engine room?

3- What would you do if there was an oil leak? 

4- What would you do if a person had fallen overboard? 

5- What would you do if you detected an enemy warship on the horizon?

6- What would you do if the ship was grounded?

The presented activity is based on the situational approach. Although the activity focuses on situation, the grammar point is inductively used in the activity. In the pre-task they learned the usage of the grammar point along with situations they will deal with in their real-life drill. They will use the grammar point in a communicative manner. For example, the learners use the dialogue way of communications to achieve the proposed topic as well as the grammar point. Christions and Murray (2014) asserts that the situational approach develops skills in a way of communicative purposes. Apparently, the used activity differs from the structural approach. In the situational approach, the learners should apply the grammar point in a communicative way, and it is not the mainly focus, while in the structural approach the focus is on the grammar point and the learners should know the formula and use it in direct style. Further, in the structural approach, the teacher is centered, whereas the learners are centered in the situational approach. The situational approach also differs from the notional function in terms of grammar point usage. For example, the notional-function approach is focused on the function of the uses, while the situational approach is linked to the situation on how the learners utilize the grammar point (Halliday, 1973). This approach is highly suited the learners' needs since their course is a short-term and aimed to develop technical language and certain skills for certain purposes (Christions & Murray, 2014)