Communicative activity: NAE Flap /ɾ/: Nasalized

COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITY

It's not a secret that face-to-face activities are a treasure to learn and to improve the communicative ability of English and this is why teachers ask themselves, what communicative activity can I do in class to reinforce the topic seen previously? But what happens when students are at home? The COVID-19 has taken the world by surprise and now many students are limiting themselves to practicing English because some of them don't have someone to practice it. So, what can teachers do to promote the students' communication and take advantage of technology in the classroom?

Zoom is an app that provides us with many tools to improve long-distance communication. If you didn't know, this incredible app has an option that helps to divide your students into small groups, just as you did in face-to-face classes, this tool is called "Breakout Rooms". Only hosts have available to view it, so, you just need to click on it, it will ask you how many rooms you want to assign and how many participants per room do you want. Zoom can assign the groups automatically if you want. Then, you need to click on "OPEN ROOMS" and each student will receive on their screen the notification to enter. Once there, the teacher is allowed to enter each room and supervise if the students are doing the assignment correctly. When the teacher decides to return to the normal meeting, the teacher has to click on "CLOSE THE ROOM" and that's it.

Now that you know about this important tool, let's move on to the next part of the presentation, the activity. This activity is a roleplay, the best friend of the teachers to break up the phonological problems. Maybe you're thinking, "how we're gonna do a roleplay by Zoom?" Well, it's necessary to try to make out students confident about their English, and for that reason, they cannot lose the habit of communication in the classroom.

The objective with this communicative activity is to practice economize time in English and sound more natural through the factor called, Nasalized Flap T, which is a phenomenon that is a little bit difficult for Spanish students.

The teacher will divide the class into groups of 4 people in Zoom. Each group must do a little roleplay including the list of words that the teacher will give to the students that contain the Nasalized Flap T, eg: Winter (winner)- Wanted (wanted)- Internet (innerted)- Dentist (dennist) - Twenty (twenny) - Painting (painning). Once they have it ready, the teacher will return them to the normal meeting. Finally, students must turn on the camera to present their roleplay. 

Did you think that it couldn't be done at home? Students will enjoy the activity because, with that, they're going to get out of the daily routine that they have with the virtual classes and they will be able to put into practice this phenomenon that is so difficult for them to overcome.