Name: Lin Li

Date: March 20th, 2015

Title: Coat of Arms
Context: A blank Coat of Arms and questions about personal
information
Description of Artifact:
This artifact is from Cross-Cultural Communication class, in
which the teacher asked students to draw answers in certain spaces on
a Coat of Arms to present their personality and values. Before the
activity, the teacher introduced the Coat of Arms, a unique design has
long been a symbol of a familys identity and values and was originally
used to cover, protect, and identify the wearer by medieval knights
(Merriam-Webster Online, 2015). In this 30-minute activity, students
will first read and think questions about their personal characteristics,
which are assigned into different places of the Coat of Arms. Then
students will draw correspondingly to answer those questions. In
another 15 minutes, students will work in pairs to interview each
others Coat of Arms and take notes. In the end, each student will
introduce his/her partners personality and values (Coat of Arms) in
class.
New Ideas, information, or awareness from this artifact:
I found this is an interesting activity that could be used for
conversation class. This approach follows the principles of CLT, which
places high value on students meaningful interactions and holds a
belief that students should cherish each others culture and could learn
from each other through cooperation (Richards, 2006). In this activity,
students were interviewing each other with the target language and
later reporting their interviews. In the interview link, students were
able to practice their skills in understanding and being understood. In
addition, students learned from and corrected each other through this
interview process. In the end, the presentation/report was a productive

practice for students and a way to see students performance for

teachers. As a result, students had more time for productive practice,
personal information sharing, and first person and third person
practice.
Reflection on how this will impact your approach to teaching
and learning:
The activity idea can be widely used for different themes with
little adjustment, like things about yourself, holiday traditions. The
main idea is to let students have reflections on themselves, share
those to their partners, and report in third person perspective. By
relating things to them, students are expected to get motivated for
meaningful communication or speaking. This activity could be used for
students, whose level range from beginning to advanced, from young
to adult. I would prefer to use it with a smaller size class (say 6~12
students) considering the time for report/production.

Reference:
Coat of Arms [Def. 2.]. (n.d.). Merriam-Webster Online. In MerriamWebster. Retrieved March 20th, 2015, from http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/coat%20of%20arms
Richards, Jack. C (2006). Communicative Language Teaching Today.
New York: Cambridge University Press. 2006.