Interaction in class

The learning context I would like to teach is Secondary Education (ESO) and Bachillerato. The methodology I would like to use in my lessons to teach the different language skills required in a more interactive and engaging way is the following one:

I would use activities/contents that can engage the interest of my students. For example, in order to teach grammar or vocabulary, I would use activities where they can use the issues taught but, in real life task or situations. For example, if I teach reported speech, some activities that I will use are: in pairs, they would write questions they would like to ask to a celebrity, and one of them would pretend is the celebrity and other the interviewer. Later, the interviewer will report the answers of the celebrity. Another activity that they would enjoy is writing in groups a letter to a friend asking for advice and they will exchange their letters with other classmates and report the problem in indirect speech.

Regarding the other language skills, I would focus on using a methodology that gives them the opportunity to interact with each other, to encourage them to speak and share their thoughts about the content taught. For instance, I will not use the traditional activities for teaching reading comprehension and just give them a boring text and some questions to answer. What I would use is the same strategy as in the example I have given above about grammar in which I try to incorporate all the skills necessary to learn a language: they would read dialogues from movies or they would read tweets from social media and later they would create one by their own.

Moreover, I would like to interact with them, and use interaction in my classroom using debates about issues they like, performing role-plays ( for example: scenes from movies they like, and even they can record themselves), using social media and new technologies in general would be another great idea that I would use in my classes because, in this way, they would be motivated as they are working with platforms that they are familiar with. Other resources we can use for creating interaction in class are: watching films, using songs or games.

We should not forget that we have to give them communicative tasks which should contain a real purpose and if it is closed to a situation that they can find in real life, it will be better. We will ask them about their interests or what they expect from our classes. We will promote cooperation by making them work in groups and in this way they will interact with each other, they will share ideas and negotiate meaning. In the end, what we should do to create interaction in the classroom is giving them the main voice, they should be the ones speaking most of the time as they are the essence of the process teaching-learning and we will act as guides.

All the strategies commented here that we can use in a classroom have the advantages of promoting the autonomy of the learner, to develop their social skills as they interact with their classmates and critical thinking. However, we can see that we can find some disadvantages such as if they work in groups maybe one person will not work or interact with the rest of the group or maybe if we let them work with social media, they can get distracted from the real task.