TwO CoMMOn AcTIvITieS THAt Are EsSENtiALLy StuPID
You see, the communicative approach essentially thinks its shit doesn't stink because it fancies itself able to replicate "meaningful communication" in the classroom. By this we mean a situation in which the students are forced to use English to communicate and receive information necessary for the completion of some task.
Trouble is a lot of these activities are just about fucking retarded. Allow me to take the time to piss all over two of them:
"FIND SOMEONE WHO" EXERCISES
In this textbook favorite, students all receive a card with sentences like the following on them:
FIND SOMEONE WHO:
Then, the students have to get up, transform these cryptic sentences into questions, and ask the same question to all the students in the class until they get "yes" answers.
Okay, here's one reason why this is stupid: it's boring as fuck. First of all, when have you, as a native English speaker, ever been handed a card with some arcane personal information on it and had to walk around a room trying to find people who've done the silly things on your card? Maybe at some ridiculous party hosted by a parent-teacher group, or some stupid morale-building seminar in a failing corporation, but you'd hate it regardless.
And if you were in this situation, wouldn't it make a lot more communicative sense to simply announce to the group of people, "Has anyone in here ever been to China? Raise your hand" than to go around REPEATING THE SAME DAMN QUESTION TO EVERYBODY IN THE ROOM?
That'd sure as hell be what I'd do.
And then there's the issue of the fact that it almost always confuses the students about how they're supposed to transform "Find someone who likes cats" into the question "Do you like cats"? Of course I suppose grammar manipulation is good practice, but books often want students at lower levels to do this, and unless you happen to have covered relative clauses and the focused-on verb tenses in close proximity, you're just asking for trouble.
How to fix it? Well, now, just let the person talk to one student and ask 'em the damn questions once. That's something we do in real life when we're trying to get to know somebody, isn't it? Ask 'em dumb questions. Like when you're drunk and trying to pick up a chick in the bar. Say, that's a good idea right there. Roleplay the classroom is a drunken party and tell all the male students to go hit on the female students with "find someone who" questions.
INFORMATION GAP MAP ACTIVITIES
Using the English language to discover needed information is again the focus of this type of activity, which, for example, might have two students given two maps of the same village, but with different buildings labeled. The students have to tell each other which buildings are where, or perhaps how to get to them. Without looking at each others' maps.
WOULDN'T IT MAKE MORE SENSE TO SHOW EACH OTHER THE MAPS??!!
Okay, maybe in real life you might end up somewhere with a map, looking for someplace that isn't labeled on the map. But in all likelihood the person you ask will probably just point at your map to show you, right?
So I recommend instead of having students hack out useless sentences like, "The public library is between the McDonalds and the flower shop" just teach them how to say "Oh, it's here," and point to the fucking map.
It's all about communication baby. But isn't just telling the students something like, "Okay, ask your partner 10 questions about his or her weekend," a lot more sensible, practical, realistic and straightforward than photocopying a bunch of goofy crap?