What gets practiced through "practice activities"? Many questions and a few answers

LÓPEZ BARRIOS, MARIO LUIS

Santiago del Estero

Congreso; XXXIX Congreso Anual de la Federación Argentina de Asociaciones de Profesores de Inglés (FAAPI).; 2014

APISE

Practice is one of the fundamental activities that take place in elementary EFL classes. What is actually done, though, often conflicts with definitions of ?practice? found in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) as well as with teachers? beliefs and practices. Defined as the production of (oral) output under controlled and guided conditions with a view to the fluent and accurate use of rule-based grammar items, the kinds of activities that fulfil these criteria are, nevertheless, scarce in learning materials and often even less frequent in actual teaching practices. In the presentation I will address the following questions: What kinds of activities related to the construction of rule-based knowledge typically appear in beginning EFL materials? And what effects do they cause as learning activities? Additionally, I will propose a reconfigured view of activities that promote explicit and explicit rule-based knowledge.