The purpose of this activity is to create authentic conversation about traveling. Students visit the website (http://aitech.ac.jp/~offner/travelesson/TPindex.html) and select a place they would like to go. They can pick from three places: Disneyland, St. Louis, and Hawaii. Once they select a destination then they are directed to a worksheet with a list of questions/activities to complete and a website to use to obtain their information. In order to answer the questions, the students read the real information on the website to find out details about the place they would like to go. For example, the Disneyland trip asks the students to use the Disneyland website to plan out their visit (http://aitech.ac.jp/~offner/travelesson/Disneyws.html). They have to discover what time the park opens, what parts of the park they want to visit, what attractions they want to see and what food they want to eat. After, making these decisions based on the information on the website they collaborate with a partner to negotiate what attractions, and shops they will see together along with what food they will have. This task requires the students to combine their list to make a mutual new list that they will do together. This activity is authentic in that the students are reading and writing authentic information to plan out a possible trip. They are communicating with another student about the information and making decisions together about their trip. Then they can share their plan with the class. This activity would prepare students to make the best use of their time at Disneyland and make sure they see the things they want. Overall, this activity gives students practice reading and speaking about an authentic place to visit.
2. Personal Preference Survey
The purpose of this activity is for students to discover the personal likes of their peers. Use Survey Monkey to create a personal preference survey and send it out to their classmates (https://www.surveymonkey.com/). The process involves students composing questions, making the survey on the computer, and sending it out to their classmates. Once the language learners receive surveys back then they can use that information to make a graph to show their classmates likes. Finally, they can report on the findings to the class. This personal preference survey allows students to practice asking their classmates about the things they like. Students are writing questions in English for the real purpose of discovering more information about their classmates. Then they analysis the results and compile them in the form of a graph to show the overall preferences of the class. This task can be adapted to fit different English proficiency levels by requiring a certain the number of questions and specifying the complexity of the questions. The language learners are not pressured to respond immediately to the information they receive but have adequate time to comprehend the answers of their peers and communicate these findings with the class. It is authentic CALL task because students are learning how to use the website Survey Monkey to find out information about their peers and then interpreting the results to draw conclusions.
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