Planning lessons: chat is an outcome too.
When we talk about planning lessons that have an outcome, teachers often misinterpret this as meaning all lessons should have a clear practical benefit. They may feel that following an action-oriented approach (as follow the CEFR calls it), means we should only design or select tasks where students role-play practical activities, resolve problems, or reach definitive conclusions. This was an ongoing debate we had when writing tasks to encourage mediation in Outcomes Third edition. As we discuss in our course on Mediation in language teaching, while complex tasks are likely to result in...