Short week this time. Two days on, one day off, one day on. Since all of our holiday fall on either a Monday or Wednesday the schedule becomes unbalanced for the students; those in Tuesday and Thursday classes end up with an extra week and a half of classes.
As such, today was a bit of a non-day. The classes I held today were less formal and more about test prep and tasks. We did photo description and opinion making and in one class a game about asking questions. The special activity for me, and the one I saved for the blog, was a reading activity.
The reading activity was a bit deceptive. I stitched together a few different news articles into one sheet and made handouts. The first article was written for ESL students in 2010. It was about a NK missile launch. I just changed the dates and a few names and it seemed to work. The next part was from a NYT article, as was the next bit, but for that one I dumbed-down the language a bit and broke up the dependent clauses into separate sentences. One reason I did this was to test their level, I figured they would have trouble with the middle section. Another reason was that I wanted them to give opinions, and everyone has an opinion about NK. This article would also give them evidence to attach to reasons. Finally, I wanted to see how they would evaluate the claims put forward by US, AK and NK officials for missile launches.
The assumption I was basing all of this on was that their schema, which would be in L1, would be applicable in L2. That is, they have the understanding already, so they should be able to carry out the cognitive processes even if the input and output are both in TL.
I used a common reading method process - skim to yourself, read aloud with a partner by trading off lines and then as a class. However, I critically misjudged the time. I planned for 20, gave them about 15 minutes which they used to read to themselves and each other, but we didn't read as a class. I also had to rush the discussion. Before the discussion I used a lot of closed display to check comprehension. It was surprisingly good. They picked up words I didn't expect them to (I noted that they understood what it meant that "Obama leaned on China") and showed a strong understanding of everything. They seemed to get the long quotes from the unaltered section, but I didn't probe as much as I wanted to. They also produced good arguments and referred to parts of the text (I have here examples that related to food aid) and gave critical evaluations of the claims (not surprising to find that that did not believe NK, but it was surprising when they quoted the text to do it, especially the use of "commemorate").
While I liked the exercise and think it was a good way to utilize schema and develop interest, I know now that I need something a little longer and involved and with better in class activities and guided discussion. Hopefully I can get ahead of the book at some point and use my pieces instead.
Clever topical lesson. No discussion or evidence of warm-up? As for your lesson -- one thing to highlight for today: you say it is a common 'reading method process' to skim, then read aloud to each other. Let's substitute the word 'strategy' for the 'reading method process' term, and tell me when was the last time you took turns with a friend reading aloud to each other? :-) Just a schema activating warm-up Q for tomorrow's class :-)
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