Assignment 3
Stephen Logan (1/4)
Language skills and Related Tasks Level: Pre-Intermediate Receptive skill: Reading
Justification of material choice The text that I have chosen for receptive skills lesson is a blog entry made on the EIL website. The text was written by an EIL student describing his personal experience of the day he left Ireland to go Ecuador to learn Spanish. It is a lively and humorous account that I believe my pre-intermediate group will find both interesting and accessible. All of the students will be able to relate to the text as they will have also experienced the excitement, challenges and learning that takes place when going to a new country. Some students will clearly remember their own personal experiences of coming to Ireland and some will have to recall and consider specific personal memories that they had forgotten until now. It is stated in Jim Srivener’s ‘Teaching learning’ that a degree of personal investment and selfdiscovery can lead students to learn about themselves, others and about the world as much as about the language. As language is intertwined with our lives and our understanding of the world, combining both will result in a more intergraded learning experience. I also believe talking and listening to one another on a personal level will help create good relationships between students and add to a secure and save environment for learning. This text proves to be accessible by the students while also challenging them to decipher meaning. The majority of the text is written in past simple for talking about past actions that have been completed. There is considerable use of irregular verbs which will be useful for students to decipher in the context or to refresh their knowledge of them. This aspect of the text will allow the students to see use of the past simple and will show them the type of language that they can use when relaying their own personal experiences. It will be necessary to pre-teach three or four vocabulary points from the text, while the meaning of other new vocabulary should be clear when seen in their context.
Receptive skill task design For the receptive skill practice I have designed a top-down reading task, (a) gist reading for general information (b) specific reading for specific information.
(a) Gist Reading: Before introducing the text and the task I will do a lead-in. I will tell students that before I went to Spain I did a lot of research on the internet and that I found some very interesting and useful blogs where I could read about the experiences that other people had in Spain. I will ask the students what a blog is and elicit the meaning from them. This will engage students in the topic and also let them know little more about their teacher. Then I will tell students to work in pairs and discuss what they knew about Ireland before they came and how they found information. In feedback I will ask the student what their partners knew about Ireland before they came Afterwards I will pre-teach the group the meaning, form and pronunciation of potentially blocking vocabulary: shattered, pushy, time to spare, like a headless chicken. Then I will show them the hand-out and I will say the title “I’m here! My first day in Quito”. I will then tell students that the text is from Bibliography: Jim Srivener, ‘Teaching learning’, Macmillian Publishers Liminted (2005)
Assignment 3
Stephen Logan (2/3)
a blog, eliciting the meaning of what a blog is from the group, and that it is a personal story about the first day in a new country. Then I will tell students that I want them to read the text quickly and decide if the writer had a negative or positive experience. I will tell them they have two minute to read the text quickly. I will do concept checking questions: do you read quickly? How many minutes do you have? Why are you reading? I will let the group know when they have thirty second left. This task is suitable for the text because there are both positive and negative aspects to the writer’s experience, but the overall experience is positive. Students will have to capture the experience as whole without focusing too much on specific information. Once finished reading the students will work in pairs and compare answers. They will have one minute to do this. In open class feedback we will get the overall opinion of the class and discuss the proof in the text for their opinions. If there is not a consensus I will tie together the proof in the text to clarify the positive overtone of the text.
(b) Specific reading: For the specific task I will ask the students to read the text in detail and answer eight questions in relation to the text. Before the students begin the task I will show them the hand-out with the questions. We will do the first question together and I will tell them that it is not necessary to write the answer; rather they can underline the relevant part of the text and put the corresponding number beside it. I will tell the student to read all of the questions before they begin looking for the answers. They will have one minute to do this. Then I will instruct them to start. They will have 6 minutes to answer the 8 questions. I will inform the student when they have 2 minutes left. I will monitor the students while they working and be available for any questions they may have. In ‘Learning Teaching’ Scrivener states that extensive reading has a powerful impact on language learning. He continues to say that the more someone reads, the more they pick up vocabulary and grammar from texts. This increases linguistic confidence which improves their language skills in other areas, too. The text that I am using for specific reading is suitable for this task as the students need to read the text thoroughly to determine the answers. There are elements of language that they may not use themselves but will understand in the context. Apart from practicing reading for specific information the students will also be interpreting language in its context and as the context is something that they can relate to, consciously and unconsciously the students will pick up grammar and new vocabulary for their own personal use. When the students are finished I will instruct them to work in pairs and compare answers. They will have one minute to do this. In open class feedback I will elicit the answers from the students and the reasons for their answers.
Productive skill task design The productive skill task that I have chosen is writing. I will do a lead-in, relaying an anecdote of the day I went to Spain; in Dublin airport, arriving in Malaga, taking a taxi, getting a bus to Granada and arriving at the school. I will tell students that I want them to write a blog about the first day when they came to Ireland. Before they start with the Bibliography: Jim Srivener, ‘Teaching learning’, Macmillian Publishers Liminted (2005)
Assignment 3
Stephen Logan (3/3)
productive skill task I will instruct them to talk in pairs and discuss what they can remember about their first day when they came to Ireland/Dublin – getting ready the night before, in the airport, people they met, arriving at their accommodation etc. They will have two minutes to do this. I will then tell the students that they are to write a blog that will be read on the internet by people who are planning to come to Dublin and that they are reading their blog to see what they can expect and to see if there is any useful information for them. I will tell students to write 4 paragraphs and that each paragraph can be about two or three sentences long. Then on the whiteboard I give them the layout for a blog: 1. 2. 3. 4.
The night before the flight/preparation/how did you feel At the airport in your country/arriving in Dublin airport Did someone meet you/did you get a taxi or bus Arriving at your accommodation/host family/ who did you meet
Then I will tell them to start. They will have 8 minutes to do this. Jeremy Harmer in ‘The Practice of English Language Teaching’ states “One of the chief advantages of production activities is that they provide evidence for the students and their teacher to assess how well things are going". Setting the students the task of writing a blog will clearly show me as their teacher and the students as learners their understanding of the class’s content and the progress they have been making. When they are finished I will collect the blogs from the students on the left hand side of the class and then the right hand side of the class in separate piles. I will distribute the blogs to the opposite sides of the class so the students don’t know whose blog they have. I will tell the students to read the blog and determine who wrote it. They will have two minutes to do this. In feedback I will ask the students who they thought wrote the blog that they read and how they had come to their conclusion. I will also ask them if they think it would be helpful / interesting for a person who is thinking of coming to Dublin. Bibliography: Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching, Longman, 2001
