Types of context. Context means the situation or body of information, which causes language to be used. There are a number of different context types, but for our purposes we will concentrate on three, the students world, the outside world and formulated information.
The students world can be a major source of contexts for language presentation. There are two kinds of students world. Clearly we can use the physical surroundings that the students are in - the classroom, school or institution. But classrooms and their physical properties tables, chairs, windows, etc. are limited. The students lives are not constrained in the same way, however, and we can use facts about them, their families, friends and experiences.
The outside world provides us with rich contexts for presentation For example, there is an almost infinite number of stories we can use to present different lenses. We can also create situations where people speak because they are in those situations, or where the writer describes some special information. This is especially useful for the practice of functional language, for example.
We can ask students to look at examples of language which show the new language in operation, though this last category can sometimes have no context. These three sub-categories, story, situation or language, can be simulated or real. Most teachers are familiar with made-up stones which arc often useful for classwork real stories work well too, of course. In the same way we can create the simulation of an invitation dialogue, for example. But here again we could also show students a real invitation dialogue.
In general we can say that real contexts are better simply because they are real, but they may have complexities of language and comprehensibility which can be avoided by simulated contexts - life-like but clearly mode-up to some extent. Formulated information refers to all that information which is presented in the form of timetables, notes, charts etc. Once again we can use real charts and timetables, growth statistics, etc. or we can design our own which will be just right for our students. 1.1.3