What do they want?

Here’s a typical post:
I feel like I am using too many worksheets in my Spanish 2 class, but I am
unsure how to get around using them. The students I have are very immature
and cannot handle playing games without it getting out of control with
talking, playing etc. (and yes, I have always had control of my classrooms
and have never encountered this before). Does anyone have an ideas or
suggestions for not using so many worksheets but using other activities that
teach the material (this time the preterito) and engage and motivate them?

Worthy goals: fewer worksheets, engaging activities, avoidance of disruption and chaos, learning an important grammatical feature…

The question is, is this person asking for a skill-getting activity where the learner learns how to form the preterite, perhaps to use it? Or is he asking for an activity where the preterite is part of the input and, at some point, the output?

One person started his own listserv b/c he got tired of being told about input and tprs and other whole language approaches when what he wanted was some gimmick to get kids to understand the dative or some such. I need to look in the archives at his old posts to see if he specified that or just asked for help in teaching something.

It would help if they would ask, for instance:

Grammar-oriented teacher needs specific means to teach the present progressive.
tprs teacher needs help with presenting the genitive case
In-put based teacher is asking for help with dative case issues.

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