[susan53]

In a PM Prax asked me to talk about semi-controlled activities too.

Prax is right - between the CP and FP activities which I described, there's too great a jump in difficulty. There's needs to be another, semi-controlled, activity in the middle. Semi-controlled practice (SCP) is a sort of half-way house. The TL comes up in continuation, as before, and but there's other language involved which is more or less but not exactly predictable - some variety is possible. For example , the following "Find Someone who ..." activity would fit into the sequence above after the pairwork question/answer activity.

The students have a sheet of paper which says ..

Find someone who knows ...

- the length of the longest bridge in the world
- the number of pylons which (name a local bridge) has
- the number of bridges in Venice
etc
etc

The Ss stand up and circulate, asking the questions to everyone until they find a person that can give them the information. (Once they find the answer they write it down and stop asking that question but go on with the others) If you don't think that anyone will know, you can give each student a slip of paper with one or two bits of information on it - eg Venice has 409 bridges - so that all the answers will eventually emerge.

Notice that SCP and FP activities depend on Ss being able to use the "other language" that surrounds the TL - as I said before this is a sequence intended for intermediate learners. It's always worth checking that they can use this language before starting the activity - here you might give out the sheet and ask what questions they're going to ask. At this level they may come out with alternatives : What's the length of ...? Do you know the length of ... ? Can you tell me the length of ... ? How long is ...? It's this potential variety that makes this activity only semi-controlled.