Assignment 3 – SKILLS
“Many children are growing up in an increasingly print-dominated world where , although they may learn to click on a computer mouse before they learn to turn the page of a book, reading is vital skill” (From “500 Activities for Primary Classroom” )
Selected Authentic Material
A short article on Make your plate healthier, taken from “Saudi Gazette’s New Children’s Magazine” – April 30, 2008.
Justification for the Choice
Since my TP group comprised Arabic speaking adult elementary students, I thought it necessary to select a piece of material that should not only be informative and entertaining, but also be in consonance with the interests and abilities of the students. While doing this I followed the model that was demonstrated in the input session by Mr. Jonathan:
Information Enjoyment Recipe
Visa form
Newspapers
Brochure Ads.
Sponsor’s un- Blurb
dertaking Magazines
Drama
Poetry
Sports News
Personal letters
Though the article is from a children’s magazine, it is neither too easy nor too difficult for elementary level. For adults, there is a challenge in it. As for the theme of this article, it deals with healthy food, and health is the concern of everybody in this era of information explosion. Moreover, the students, while reading it, can enjoy themselves of words representing delicious tastes and beautiful colours of fruit and vegetables.
Reading Task (Receptive)
“Real-life purposes are not the only way of measuring the usefulness of classroom reading work. Often we might want to train students in specific reading techniques or strategies, things that will help their future reading, even if the immediate classroom work doesn’t itself reflect a real-life purpose.” (Page-186, Learning Teaching – by Jim Scrivener)
Skimming and Scanning are the skills that need to be developed from the beginning at adult elementary level. Therefore, “many activities” says Jim Scrivener, “designed to increase reading speeds are variations on the two ideas – Skimming and Scanning” (Page-85, Learning Teaching – by Jim Scrivener). Even in the input sessions, it was emphasized to not to miss two things – gist or general reading (skimming) and detailed reading (scanning). Keeping this in view, the task that I have designed for reading activities covers these two cardinal aspects.
“Reading”, says Jeremy Harmer, “is an exercise dominated by the eyes and the brain. The eyes receive messages and the brain then has to work out the significance of these messages.” (The Practice of English Language Teaching, Page-153). So the first activity in the task is to make students go through the passage quickly and circle the statement that is true about the whole passage. This is in fact a practice for gist reading so that the students skim the text and make sure what it is about. There are four small paragraphs (without any headings) in the selected authentic material. Each paragraph has some key words which give the student a clue what it is about – healthy and unhealthy types of food. So, the students will have to read it from top to bottom to get the gist of the article that is there in one of the statement given for choice.
The second activity focuses on reading for specific information and details so that the learners scan the text carefully to find the answers. While doing this he performs top-down reading that affords him ample interaction with the text with a specified time. “If this regularly done, the teacher will find the amount of limited time necessary becoming less and less.” (Page-153, The Practice of English Language Teaching). The article selected tends to give a good comprehension of what they should put on the plate at the time of eating besides attaining the scanning skill.
Writing Task (Productive skill)
“Reading provides a scaffold for learning to write and it is frequently appropriate to teach reading and writing in an integrated way, both in the initial stages and when children have more developed skill”. (Page-49, Section
2, Reading and Writing, Book’s Name “500 Activities for the Primary Classroom)
On the basis of input sessions and guidance given for follow-up activity, a simple writing task has been designed for the elementary students. At this level, the students are not prepared for any sophisticated writing activity. So, they have been asked to write a small paragraph on “Healthy Food”. However, a few prompts have been given to guide the students.
As after reading the passage, the learners will have got a lot of information about healthy and unhealthy food, they will definitely love to put it in a writing form. Pair and group work will also make this task quite interesting. Error correction will also be a part of each activity to make it authentic as well.
In short, by the end of these tasks, if well executed, the learners will have practiced both reading and writing well involving skimming and scanning, and some freer practice in writing skill as well.
Since this assignment requires a focus on the authentic material and the tasks, procedural details have been skipped.
Books consulted:
1. Michael Swan and Bernard Smith (1998) Learner English, CUP
2. Colin Campbell/Hanna Kryszewska, (1992) Learner-based Teaching, OUP
3. Jim Scrivener, (2006), Teaching Learning, Macmillan
4. Jeremy Harmer, (1998), The Practice of English Language Teaching, OUP
5. 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom (Section 2: Reading and Writing.
Websites:
http://esl.about.com/od/englishreadingskills/a/readingskills.htm
http://eslus.com/LESSONS/READING/READ.HTM
http://www.actstudent.org/writing/prepare/build.html
