Chapter 2 Classroom activities This chapter looks at some things you need to consider when you first start planning and runningactivities. We also look at some basic classroom management issues, such as how to arrange studentsin working pairs or groups. 1 Planning an activity The basic building block of a lesson is the activity or task. We’ll define this fairly broadlyas ‘something that learners do that involves them using or working with language to achieve somespecific outcome’. The outcome may reflect a ‘real-world’ outcome (eg Learners role-play buyingtrain tickets at the station) or it may be a purely ‘for-the-purposes-of-learning’ outcome (egLearners fill in the gaps in twelve sentences with present perfect verbs). By this definition, allof the following are activities or tasks: ？ Learners do a grammar exercise individually, then compare answers with each other in order tobetter understand how a particular item of language is formed. ？ Learners listen to a recorded conversation in order to answer some questions (in order tobecome better listeners). ？ Learners write a formal letter requesting information about a product. ？ Learners discuss and write some questions in order to make a questionnaire about people’seating habits. ？ Learners read a newspaper article to prepare for a discussion. ？ Learners play a vocabulary game in order to help learn words connected with cars andtransport. ？ Learners repeat a number of sentences you say in order to improve theirpronunciation of them. ？ Learners role-play a shop scene where a customer has a complaint. Some things that happen in the classroom are not tasks. For example, picture a room where theteacher has started spontaneously discussing in a lengthy or convoluted manner the formation ofpassive sentences. What are students doing that has an outcome? Arguably, there is an implied task,namely that students should ‘listen and understand’, but, by not being explicit, there is a reald