Project Proposal - 3-10-10

Aja Gorham
Jay Grahovac
Jesse Ackles

CALL Project Proposal: Making Simple Requests

Set up:



· You are going to dinner with your boss or the father of your significant other. How would you pass them the butter?

· You are going for coffee with a friend you have not seen in a while. How would you ask the barista for your drink?

· Making a request in English can have gradations of politeness that speakers use depending on who they are talking to. Your job is to go out and collect data! Find out how native speakers use different polite markers to make a request. Apart of making request is also receiving an answer. While you record the answers also record the responses. If you can not catch the entire exchange take note of whether the speaker was answered with another question, an action, or a yes or no.


CALL Activity: Using Twitter.com, record native speakers making requests in public spaces, such as:



· Starbucks - "Can I have a grande mocha no whip?"

· The cafeteria - "May I have a diet coke?"

· The movie theater - "Two tickets for Avatar, please."



Text a request you hear to twitter via a pre-established account or record the request you hear and post no less than 6 tweets; one request per tweet. The tweets will be displayed in front of the class and discussed as a group. The discussion will revolve around common usage and ask students to make guesses as to the context of the situation and answers. Once students have the opportunity to review posted request students will be placed in groups based on context. Students will be guesses assigned a situation and asked to categorize the request posted. Situations may include:



· Dinner with the in-laws

· Asking for directions from a stranger

· Asking a good friend for a loan

· Etc.


Once students categorize the requests, based on situation, students will be asked to post the collected and organized data on the class blog. Each group will respond to the instructor's assignment posting with their category and a series of requests. Student will also be asked in this posting for possible answers to request. Some students will have this data from observations and be able to share their finding with the groups whereas other may have to generate content based on experience. In both cases engaging students in a complete dialogue will serve as a mirror to authentic and frequently occurring behavior.The blog will function as an online catalog of phrases and follow-ups for student's reference .


CALL Activity: Podcast. In the theme of Mission: Impossible



· A daily podcast modeled after the famous TV show, Mission: Impossible will be used to inform the students of their “mission” for that day.

· "Your mission, should you chose to accept it, is to go lurk around some strangers and tweet what they say but don't look like a terrorist. This message will self-destruct in 10 seconds."



Call Activity: Blog

· The class blog will be used to tie the two above activities together and report on the success of the students’ progress.