This week we're taking a first
look at Readers, reading material written with the language
learner in mind. Each publisher has a series of graded readers,
each level covering a numbered vocabulary. Some of these
can seem childish & inappropriate for our adult learners
but more & more appealing readers are being written.
As they are graded, they are much more accessible for our
learners than authentic literature.
Clearly the idea of readers
is a good thing as the more our learners read the better.
If the learners are in a non-English speaking country then
this is an even more acute need.
So what to do with them? If
the learners are motivated, then the readers will be borrowed,
read & returned. Fine, but how do you go about motivating
a group to start borrowing readers from the school library?
Choosing an interesting story
that the group will be interested in is obviously essential.
If you have enough copies of the same book here are a few
ideas for collaborative reading:
- spend time on introducing
the project, explaining the benefits & look together
at the chosen book, discussing the cover & the back
cover synopsis. Better still, if you have lots of different
class sets, the group could decide which book to read.
- talk about how they might
read the book. Discuss the disadvantages of reading word
by word & the advantages of fast extensive reading.
-
as a warmer, pair the students up to discuss their impressions
of the chapter they all read for homework. (If they hadn't
read it, they listen in to the activity & hopefully
feel the pressure to do the homework for next time.) In
the general feedback sort out any problems they might have
had.
- you might give out a comprehension
check that would help them to all understand the chapter,
before ploughing on to the next chapter. Or instead of you
writing out the check, get the students to do it - they
bring it along to the class, swapping them around for all
to answer someone else's comprehension check. Some readers
have their own comprehension questions in the back of the
book.
- an alternative check would
be to ask the students to write a summary of each chapter,
handing it into you as an on-going writing project. If the
chapters are short they could summarise every two or three
chapters. It could be included in their 'learner diaries'.
- read the chapter that they
are to discuss in the next lesson yourself to see if you
could exploit any of it. For example, is there is a dialogue
that contains enough interesting language to be read aloud
in class & then analysed? Does this language fit into
the syllabus you are following? Is there a lexical set you
could focus on? Or some functional exponents to pick out
of the text?
- to continue motivating the
learners, get them to predict the next chapter. If you do
this often, get them to make notes & make a competition
of it - who has guessed the nearest.
- encourage language notetaking
at the end of each chapter. Show the different areas that
they could take notes on; grammar, function, vocab, cohesive
devices. If you take this seriously encourage them to come
to you with questions they have about new language they
find. You could incorporate this into the initial impression
swapping task. And then sit back & watch them teaching
each other!
In a future Tip, we'll look
at ideas for when the students are all reading different
graded readers.
There is a very good book
on graded readers called 'Class Readers' by Jean Greenwood
(OUP).
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|
Get with the
rhythm!
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Have you got rhythm? Have
your students? Although there is debate surrounding rhythm
in natural English speech, an awareness for our students
is still useful & it is a nice way to get to arrive
at 'sounds in combination'. Here is a way of introducing
the idea to your students:
Write on the board:
1 2
3 4
Get the students to say together
the numbers - drill them, several times.
Then put the following on
the board & get the students to say them together.
1 and 2 and 3 and 4
Then put the following on
the board & get the students to say them together.
1 and then a 2 and then
a 3 and then a 4
Then put the following on
the board & get the students to say them together.
1 and then put a 2 and
then put a 3 and then put a 4
Then interchange the words
in between the numbers:
1 and 2 and put a 3 and
then put a 4
Play around with combinations,
getting the students to repeat together. It should be lots
of fun.
The idea is that, in theory,
each line takes the same time to say. We push the little
bits together between the main stress & it is this that
causes rhythm. To further exemplify this put the following
on the board:
Take it home
(3 syllables - 2 stresses)
Watch it in the air
(5 syllables - 2 stresses)
Elicit the number of syllables
for each & the number of main stresses. This should
clarify how words are squashed between the main stresses.
Then on to some practice activities.
It would be better, initially, to use obvious material for
this. If you have cuisenaire rods handy, check out the page
on 'Some nursery
rhymes to illustrate rhythm using cuisenaire rods'.
There is also a similar idea
using limericks in the Teaching Tip There
once was an English teacher
Rap songs are also good for
focussing on rhythm. Put up the lyrics, get the students
to mark the tone units, the stresses & then chant them
aloud as a group. To
see an explanation of tone units & prominence.
Now that you have established
the idea of rhythm, move on to what happens to the words
when they get squashed between the main stresses with
'sounds in combination'.
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A grid, clues: down
& across (9) |
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Crosswords can be lots of
fun at any time & there are many uses from them in the
classroom. Here are a few:
- Collaborative Crossword:
a normal crossword that reviews recently taught vocabulary
or is leading into a theme, done collaboratively with the
whole class - it's fun to do it together. Encourage them
to give further clues rather than shout out the answers
when they have them.
- Pairwork Crossword: give
half of a completed crossword to each person in the pair.
They have to make up the clues for their set of answers & then they tell each other until both have a completed
crossword.
- Class Crossword: give out
a crossword to each student but with a different answer
filled in on each. The students think of the clue to their
answer & then mingle telling each other their clues
& listening to each other until all have completed the
crossword. Good for revising vocab.
- Advanced Crossword: give
out the crossword, with all of the clues about the vocabulary
that is going to come up in the next two weeks. As the fortnight
proceeds the students can do a bit more of their crosswords
- the first to complete it gets a small prize. Then use
the crossword to review the vocab covered.
- Invented Crossword: in pairs,
get your students to make their own crosswords up based
on the vocab recently covered. When finished, swap them
around for each pair to do a new one. Lots of vocab reviewed
in both parts of the activity.
- Coursebook Crossword: at
the beginning of a course when you are showing the students
what is involved in the coursebook, instead of a list of
questions that asks them to look through the book for the
answers, design a crossword to fill in.eg. 3 across: the
section near the back with lots of verbs (9, 4, 4) (Irregular
Verb List).
- Comprehension Crossword:
As in the above activity, when students are looking for
information to answer comprehension or scan reading questions
in a text, they can be presented in the form of a crossword.
- Picture Crosswords: for
the younger learner, the clues are in picture form instead
of definitions.
- Phonology Crosswords: design
a crossword that reviews vocab but instead of putting in
the letters for the words, the students put in the phonemes
for the words. For word stress, choose the pattern you want
to look at & for each clue give three words, the right
answer being the one that fits the pattern.
Don't forget about the logistical
language the students might need to do the above activities & deal with it beforehand to maximise the effectiveness
of the tasks e.g.- have you got the clue for four across?
- the language of dis/agreement - the language of negotiation
Most people find crosswords
interesting & if integrated into classes, they can be
motivating & fun for your students. And for the teacher
in a non-English speaking country, normal newspaper crosswords
are a great way of trying to keep your English vocabulary
from diminishing.
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