Celta Assignment

 

 

Amersham & Wycombe College

Skills Related Tasks [Assignment 3] Submission date: 24/05/2013 Omar Hussain

 

 

Skills Related Task This is a news article titled, “Stop juggling, start ingle -tasking” from the Evening Standard newspaper. I have

chosen to use this material to teach the upper-intermediate class. I think the ss will find the topic quite interesting as most of them are au-pairs and have to multitask at some time during their work. They may also be able to closely relate to it and also benefit from it. I have chosen it for the upper-intermediate set of students as I believe it would be a nice little challenge or them. There are no blocking words in this article although there are quite a few words which they can guess from the context. So overall I do not see this piece as too hard for them.

1)  Lead in / prediction task: As the aim of the lead in is to stimulate an interest in the topic, I would begin by displaying the main picture from the newspaper and getting the class to work in pairs, I would ask them to predict what the topic of the newspaper article would be. However because the picture could mean numerous things, I would give them the real title of the article (“Stop juggling, start single -tasking”) and two more titles (1- “First Chinese man to join circus” and 2 - “The rise of unemployment”). This is a very student centred activity acti vity which creates

interest in the content of the text and “activates schemata” [Harmer, p. 271]. I would not drag this on for too long, but just enough to raise interest in what the text may be. Once they have discussed this in their pairs, a class feedback would be done and everyone will state their predictions which I will write down on the WB. Once this stage has been completed, “the chances are that they will read *the text+ with considerably more interest.” *Harmer, p. 288+.  

2)  Skimming (Reading for gist): Prior to giving the ss the text, I would need to make sure there are no blocking words, i.e., words that would prevent the ss from gaining an overall understanding of the text. I believe there are no blocking words in the text, there are a few words which I will ask them the meanings of by having them guessing the meaning from the context, however this will be done in a later stage. However at this stage I do not see any words that will hinder the ss from gaining an overall understanding of the text. I would now ask the ss to skim read the article, giving them a few f ew mins to do so, and at the end I would ask them to discuss in pairs whether their predictions were correct or not before doing a whole class discussion. The purpose of giving them this short time span is to ensure they only gist read the article and do not read it intensively. This task is used to develop the students’ sub-skills of reading for gist, or skimming [Scrivener, p. 185] Also, “In order to make students bett er readers we need first of all to raise their awareness that it’s not always essential to understand every word, and that practising some different

reading techniques in English may be very useful to them.” (Scrivener, p. 153, [1994]).

3)  Scanning The next step in a receptive skills lesson is to give the ss practice in reading for specific information. The purpose of this sub skill is for the ss to get a little bit more information about certain specifics in the text, or as Jim Scrivener puts it, the aim is “finding out items of specific information.” *Learning English, p. 424+ . See appendix 1 for scanning task. The scanning stage “allows students to get a feel for what they ar are e reading before they have to attack the

text in detail, which is, more difficult to do.” *Harmer, p.270+ And “although scanning is involved with details of the text, the way that a reader finds those details involves processing the whole text, moving her eyes quickly over the whole page, searching for key words or clues from the textual layout and the content

 

  that will enable her to focus in on smaller sections of text that she is likely to get answers from.” *Learning

English, Jim Scrivener, p. 185] 

4)  Intensive Reading (for Detailed Comprehension) In order to develop the sub skills of reading for detailed comprehension [Harmer, p 270], I would set a series of true/false questions. These being as follows: (see appendix 2). I would get the ss working on their own for this task underlining where they got their answers from. Once I believe they have completed the task, I would get them to pair check their answers and discuss where they found their answers. During this stage I would monitor their discussions. I would now get the whole class feedback, nominating a ss and also asking them to expand on their reasoning, as well as asking further questions or even getting their personal views. I will not just get a true/false answer from them but I will want them to prove to me that they’ve understood it. This would be done by asking follow up questions.

This is as Harmer states 'we should always ask where in the text they found the answer, this provokes a detailed study of the text...' [Harmer, p. 286] and the purpose of this comes back to the stage aim, mainly “reading texts closely and carefully with the intention of gaining an understanding of as much detail as possible.” *Learning English, Jim Scrivener, p. 188+ 

5)  Guessing Meaning From Context By now the ss will have a general meaning of the text and would have grasped much from the text. At this stage I would give them a few words for them to guess the meanings of. The words being: a)  Interleaving b)  Interfere c)  Rogue d)  Clients e)  Demarcate I believe these words may be unknown to the ss, hence why I chose them. For this stage I would encourage the ss to guess the words and I believe the context will help them a lot in doing so. Rather R ather than giving the ss the meaning to these words I would give them the sentence where it is taken from and then elicit from them the meaning of these words. See appendix 3.

Follow On Writing Tasks: Lead in Discussion: Now I would first talk about an experience where I tried to multitask but failed. This would be something along the lines of cooking dinner and simultaneously keeping an eye on the kids as well as doing the laundry. I would give my own personal experience of how I am not good at multitasking, and end by asking the question, “are men good at multitasking?” multi tasking?” and let the ss discuss in pairs before I get some feedback

from them.

Further discussion: Then I would then write the question “Are women better than men at multitasking?” on the WB and ask

the ss to work in pairs and discuss the question. This would be done because working on their own, sometimes the ss “can’t come up with ideas.” *Harmer, p. 329] If I see the ss failing in producing creative

 

  ideas I would give them ideas, as “sometimes we will feed in ideas to a student or students as they do the task.” *p. 329+  This discussion would raise the ss’ interest for the following writing task.  

Pre-Writing I would then inform them that would need to write a letter to a male au pair who is asking for advice on how to multitask in his job. This would be a formal letter and would be written at home however the classroom time would be used to prepare them for this task. This is, as Harmer states, “we must make sure, however that we give them enough information to do what we have asked.” *Harmer, p. 329+   This letter would be a formal letter; and to prepare the ss for this task I would need to discuss the layout of a letter, paragraphs, and the difference between a formal and an informal i nformal letter (“How to teach Writing” by Jeremy Harmer, p. 37) I would them remind them to look at the vocabulary in the text to help them draft their letter as “we will want to make sure that they have enough of the right kind of language to do the task.” *Harmer, p. 329+ 

With this done I strongly believe the ss would be able to complete the letter at home and bring in the finished copy the next lesson. Word Count: 1136

 

 

Lesson Plan:

STAGE NAME / TIME Lead in (5-7 mins)

STAGE AIM To stimulate interest in the topic

Skimming

To give ss practice in reading for gist

(10 mins) Pair check & Feedback (5-7 mins)

To build ss’ confidence 

Scanning (10 mins)

To give ss practice in reading for specific information

Pair check & Feedback (5-7 mins)

To build ss’ confidence 

Intensive Reading (10 mins)

To give ss practice in reading for more detailed comprehension

Pair check & Feedback (5-7 mins)

To build ss’ confidence. 

Guessing Meaning From Context (10 mins)

To give ss practice in guessing the meaning of unknown vocabulary from the context of a text

Pair check & Feedback (5-7 mins)

To build ss’ confidence. 

(Follow on Writing Tasks) Lead in & Discussion (10 mins)

To create interest in writing task

(Follow on Writing Tasks) Further Discussion (10 mins)

To give ss ideas and help them in the writing task

(Follow on Writing Tasks) Pre-Writing (15 mins)

To get ss to practice language and also the use of writing a letter.

 

 

Bibliography: Websites: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/client?s=t www.oxforddictionaries.com   www.oxforddictionaries.com www.dictionary.cambridge.org www.dictionary.cambridge.org   www.macmillandictionary.com   www.macmillandictionary.com

Books: How to Teach Writing, by Jeremy Harmer, 2004 Learning Teaching, by Jim Scriver, 2005 The practice of English Language, Jeremy Harmer, 2007

 

 

Appendices:

Appendix 1: Scanning Task: Scan the text and find who the following people and tell me who they are:

a)  Professor Nick Charter b)  Dr Michael Sinclair c)  Zadie smith and Jonathan Franzen d)  Eyal Ophir

Appendix 2: Intensive Reading Task: Read the text again and answer the following questions with either True or False:

1)  It is easy for the human mind to multitask when doing your regular activities. 2)  According to Professor Nick Charter most of the times we are not multitasking but rather moving from one task to another.

 

3) Eyal Ophir believes multitasking is good for focusing. 4)  It easy for the author of the newspaper to multitask, e.g, to write an email while on the phone. 5)  According to Dr. Michael Sinclair, multitasking increases stress levels and harmful to our productivity.

6)  Writers such as Zadie Smith and Jonathon Franzen find it difficult to single-task. 7)  Multi-screening is to look at multiple streams of media at one time. 8)  To practice focusing on one activity at a time is a good way to stay focused. (Answers: 1 = F, 2 = T, 3 = F, 4 = F, 5 = T, 6 = T, 7 = T, 8 = T)

 

 

Appendix 3: Guessing Meaning from Context Task: Match the words from the left to the meanings on the right.

Interleaving

Interfere

Rogue

to clearly separate

a customer, or someone who receives services of a professional person to involve yourself in another situation which is not helpful  –  to prevent an activity from being carried out properly.

Clients

Demarcate

unexpected, not normal

to insert something in between two other things

Answers: Interleaving – to insert something in between two other things. Interfere – to involve yourself in another situation which is not helpful – to prevent an activity from being carried out properly. Rogue – unexpected, not normal. Clients – a customer, or someone who receives services of a professional person Demarcate – to clearly separate.