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Preliminary information
Level: Intermediate/upper intermediate
Time: 90 minutes
Aims:
To give extensive & intensive reading practice
To provide some memory tools
To give oral fluency practice
To review & expand on the lexical field of 'memory'
Assumptions:
That the stds will find the topic interesting & useful
for their learning
That, in general, the vocab will not be too difficult
That the grammar will pose no problems to comprehension
Anticipated problems:
Some vocab items might not be known - depending on the
group.
Materials & aids:
Board
Article &
Techniques from the Daily Mail 17.4.01
Comprehension tasks - see below
Procedure
Stage 1: Lead in to raise interest - memory
test
std<>std, tch< > stds, 10/15 mins
1. Ask the stds if they have a good memory,
would they benefit from improving it etc.
2. Dictate a list of words, which when they've finished taking
them down, have 1 minute to write down as many as possible.
| Possible list of words; guitar, red,
house, light, English, work, sex, scissors, tree, teacher,
sun, window, computer, song, book, friend, car, brother,
selfish, television |
3. Stds compare how many they remembered
& discuss how they went about trying to remember them.
4. General feedback - discuss the techniques & tell them
about the article they are going to read.
Stage 2: Reading - to
view the whole text
std, std<>std, tch<>stds, 25mins
Part 1
1. Set the task for
the first paragraph - what three types of memory does the
author mention? (ans: semantic, episodic & implicit)
2. Stds read & compare answers in pairs.
3. General feedback - discuss the answers.
Part 2
1. Take out the headings to each section:
I'm sorry, what was your name?
Thursday night is football night
Cracking the code
Boost your memory by 'chunking'
Use it or lose it
So why did you go into the kitchen |
Stds read quickly - set a time limit of e.g.
two minutes max. - & decide which section corresponds
to which heading. Stds do this individually & then compare
in pairs.
2. Feedback
Part 3 - comprehension check:
1. Stds read & answer the following tasks:
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1. Explain the following
terms, as defined in the article:
registration
retention
retrieval
chunking
2. What can help 'retention'?
3. How does 'chunking' help?
4. What's the difference between long & short-term
memory?
5. Look at the 5 ways to avoid forgetting & put
them on a scale of easy to difficult to do.
easy-------------------------------------------------------------------difficult
6. Identify the different techniques
in the last section 'So why did you..'
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2. Stds do the task individually & then
compare in pairs.
3. Feedback.
Stage 3: Language focus - 20 minutes?
You decide what you feel your group would benefit from
focusing on. The text is good for cohesive devices, overall
coherence of the article - trace the way the writer argues
the case, newspaper article style, relative clauses
The lexical field of 'memory' can be extracted
& expanded upon:
From the first section only!
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brain, computer, forget,
remember, memory improvement, memory power, sharpen
up your mind, learn, master, re-learn, skill, experience,
research, general knowledge, factual material, improve,
store, semantic memory, episodic memory, implicit memory,
fairly constant, decline with age, keep your mind active,
memory/skill...will come back, memory boost.
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Get the stds to underline the related vocab,
write them out into a 'mind map' (together with the word stress!)
- prepare your own on an OHP, if possible. Then focus on your
& ask if any you missed & they copy any they missed
- explain any words as necessary. Choose some to expand on
& look at the word family.
Stage 4: Information exchange & discussion
stds<>stds, tch<>stds, 25/20
mins
1. Put the stds into groups of four &
hand out one of the 'Tricks for Everyday Experiences' - see
the end of the text for these. Explain that they have
to tell their group about this technique & they have to
try & persuade the others that their technique is more
useful than the others.
2. Activity - monitor & take notes.
3. Feedback - see if anyone's technique dominated & why.
4. In their groups of four the stds then have to decide how
they can use all this information - from the article &
the techniques - in their language learning.
5. Discussion - monitor & take notes.
6. Feedback - draw together the different ideas - make a list
for yourself to feed in if they are not forthcoming from the
stds.
Stage 5: Performance analysis
tch<>stds, 5/10 mins
1. Discuss the good & not so good utterances
that came out during the lesson, with specific reference to
language that you have been recently been dealing with.
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