Resources & Materials Elementary Simplified Version

CAMBRIDGE DELTA COURSE

PRACTICAL TEACHING ASSIGNMENT

RESOURCES AND MATERIALS FOCUS ON INTRODUCING CLASS READERS “TALES FROM THE EAST”

Candidate’s Name: Paraskevi Andreopoulou Centre Number: GR 108 Candidate Number:

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LESSON PLAN Class Profile:

This is an Elementary class of adult students, the majority of whom come from Afghanistan, Iran and the Congo. There are twelve students in it and the class has had lessons since February 2008. They have finished using Cutting-Edge Starter course book and have now moved to using Language-To-Go Elementary. The class meets three times a week for a two hour session each time and so far, I have observed them three times and taught them once. The class consists of Anatolyi, a very strong student who, being ahead of others both grammatically and lexically tends to assist his classmates with language problems at times. On the same level, there are two more students, Ali and Victor, who, in my opinion seem to have grasped the main linguistic features and vocabulary items and are able to interact with their classmates and the T well. In addition, when they are given instructions on how to perform a task, they are always able to follow them immediately and they also bring to the class a great sense of humour, enthusiasm and motivation. Shamel, from Iran, is also one of the stronger students. Fifie, who is Victor’s wife, is a teacher of French, and participates in all activities well, providing that they are geared to her schematic knowledge and culture. Fifie, specifically, volunteers to speak her mind freely, with a rather heavy French accent using the TL.

On the other hand, Ahmed, Ashmatulah, Hassan, Sayed, Mahdi and Sieta (from Congo) are rather weak learners who need prompting, guidance and clear instructions so as to ensure their participation. They seem to have difficulty in reading and writing. Apart from Sieta (from Congo), all the others are from Afghanistan or Iran (Ahmed).

Lesson Aims / Objectives For Students

Evidence:

Primary Aim (s):

•

To appreciate literature as means of developing their reading skills • to read for pleasure • To enable Ss to practise their reading skills (skimming, scanning, reading for specific information); also, to activate top-down and bottom-up processing skills (Nuttal, 1996) • To use class readers as means of promoting out of class reading

• • •

•

Secondary Aim(s):

Grammar: • To revise Simple Past.

Vocabulary: • To expand their vocabulary

Listening: Page 3

By presenting one literary text from the second chapter “Tenal Ram & the thieves”, prompting Ss to read them in groups To provide them with texts culturally targeted at them By providing them with different reading sections cut up into strips, which they will be able to rank them into the correct order, in their groups and later, they read on for further prediction and /or final check. By providing Ss with class readers “Tales from the East” culturally targeted at them, with a view to activating their schematic knowledge and encouraging them to read out of class

Grammar • Ss will be given flashcards to narrate the story in the past.

•

Vocabulary By answering wh-questions, both high and low order ones, (Carter R. & Long M.N. 1991) given on a handout.

Listening:

•

To practise their aural abilities, to aid listening comprehension and to enhance their knowledge of the structure of the language, ie.(syntax, phonology) (UnderWood, 1989)

Speaking • To enable Ss to retell the story in their own groups orally referring to the past and to predict the ending of it

•

By listening to the tape or T read out the plot of the text for them to aid their listening comprehension and enhance their knowledge of the language

Speaking: • By being able to narrate the story in the past in a circle.

Source Aids / Handouts 1. Visual prompts downloaded from the website (well, thieves, gold and jewellery) to arouse their interest and to activate their schematic knowledge targeted at the topic of crime (see Appendix A’). 2. Three literary texts taken from the Readers “Tales from the East” simplified by West M, Fielding K.J., and Parker B.M. Editions Longman Group Ltd 1997 to introduce Ss to the plot of the story (see Appendices B’, G + F). 3. Cut up strips of paper to practise wh- questions, minimum vocabulary expansion (see Appendix C) for both texts. Also flashcards with characters and verb actions in their infinitive form to retell the story in a circle (see Appendix G). 4. In addition, cut up slips of paper from the “Into the well” text for Ss to put into the correct order (see Appendix F). 5. The copies of the end of the story “Thank you!” (See Appendix I).

Linguistic Assumptions The particular group of Elementary students has already covered places in a town/city and rooms in the house, so, I presume that they must be familiar with the vocabulary of (garden, plants, water, trees, bed), they are already familiar with the topic of My home Town and description of a place, so, I do not think that they will face serious problems understanding the description of the scenery in the country. They have already been taught home vocabulary, hence, I presume with photos as an aid, they will be able to make out the meaning of the lexical item, hole. They have also covered the verb forms of to –be, there is/are, possessive adjectives, object pronouns, the Present Simple Form alongside adverbs of frequency, wh-questions, can/can’t for ability, want to, going to and the Past Simple Form both regular /irregular; hence, I believe that they will be able to understand the extracts receptively, perform the tasks accordingly and enjoy literature.

Anticipated Language Difficulties 1. Students might not have been introduced to class readers before.

2. Students will definitely not be familiar with receptive vocabulary in the extracts.

3. Students are not aware of the continuation of the story.

Solutions / Remedies 1. They will be invited to predict and confirm the plot through visuals; gradually they are introduced to the idea with the two paragraphs related to their culture, and with careful selection and grading of activities, hopefully, any fears will hopefully disappear. 2. In the handout of concept check questions, there will be a task expanding their vocabulary storage possibly with synonyms, antonyms, explanations, drawings; in pairs, they will choose any two to use them in context. 3. T will hand out strips of paper with the continuation of the story, which they need to reorder and find out what happens.

4. Students are not familiar with the end

of the story

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4. First, they will predict it based on the evidence they have and in the end, T will hand out copies of the end for them to read.

Timetable Fit This group of learners has already had previous contact with the Simple Past both regular (-ed) and irregular forms +was/were); hence, I assume that they might be able to tell the continuation of the story in a circle. Furthermore, these students have covered the Present Simple Form along with adverbs of frequency; for this reason, I think that they will be in the position of grasping the gist of the two literary texts and perform successfully the tasks.

well

thieves

jewels

Board Plan(s) Unknown Vocabulary & Pronunciation

Read and find

Read and Find

Who?

Where?

What happened?

Vocabulary Expansion Hole

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?

Through?

Commentary: The lesson was designed for an Elementary class of adult students. The target group comprises 12 students who originate from the Middle East, Central Asia and the Congo (Africa); with this particular goal in mind , the simplified reader extracts (Tales from the East: simplified by West, M., Fielding , K.J & Parker B. M. 1977) to be taught were selected related to the country or culture of the readers so as to avoid the cultural difficulties of the text, which are numerous, real and proportionate to distance from an English-speaking location (Carter R, & Long M, N 1991). Hopefully, the selection of literary extracts will help students achieve an engagement with the reading of them, the extent to which students carry with them beyond the classroom, an enjoyment and love for literature which is renewed as they continue to engage with literature throughout their lives.( Carter R., Long M., N 1991). Reading a literary text is definitely not passive, but, a learning process from which students add to their learning store of knowledge, which can be activated when reading further works of literature(:ibid). Listening also to sections of the story that had been cut up earlier to pieces to re-unite later, after the T has read them out, will definitely enhance students’ structure of the language, ie. Syntax, phonology, for them to fathom out what is meant by the words (Underwood 1989). I believe that the common language teaching sequence of “presentation- practicereinforcement” (McRae J, 1991) will meet the needs of the students and hopefully will live up to the expectations of my lesson plan. Furthermore, using literature as a resource can be special for personal development and growth, an aim being to encourage greater sensitivity and self-awareness and greater understanding of the world around us (Carter R, & Long M, N. 1991). In the beginning, my primary aim for activating students’ schematic knowledge and arousing their interest is to present visual prompts demonstrating key-words that enable Ss to predict the content; in this way, Ss need to see a point in reading, since we all live in a world dominated by television, magazines, comics, pulp romantic and adventure stories (Carter R, & Long M., N., 1991). Ss skim their respective texts to provide an answer to a pre-reading stimulus; the texts offer a narrative line which lend themselves better to reading aloud, allow marked patterns of action in the early stages, are clearly and energetically signalled and they lead to a great sense of involvement on the parts of the Ss (Carter R. & Long M. N. 1991).

List of References

Carter R. And Long M. N. “Teaching Literature” Longman Group UK Limited 1991 Duff A. & Maley A. “Literature” c Oxford University Press 1990 McRae J. “Literature with a small “l” Prentice Hall Monographs, First Published1991 by Macmillan Publishers Limited Nuttal C., “Teaching Reading Skills in a foreign language” Heinemann 1996 Underwood M. “Teaching Listening” Longman Publications 1989

Readers West M. , Fielding K. J. & Parker B. M. “Tales from the East (simplified Level 1)” This Edition c Longman Group Ltd 1977

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APPENDICES

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B: Read the text and confirm your predictions:

a.

Tenal Ram and the Thieves

The first man said, “Tenal Ram and his wife go to bed at nine o ‘clock”.

“We can wait for two hours after that”, said the thief. We can make a hole in the wall at eleven o’ clock. Then, you go through the hole in the wall and open the door.”

“Does Tenal Ram have much money in the well?” asked the first man. “Oh, yes!” said the other man. “He has a lot of gold and jewellery, but, in a box in his house. He’s very rich.”

“Ha! That’s good!” said the first man.

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(What can the thieves do at eleven o’ clock?)

Read and find

Who?

Where? What happened?

Which picture is........ Hole?

Which is through?

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F.1.Try

to put this text below into the correct order (into the wellcontinuation of the story):

He said “They took my friend Ali’s gold and jewels”

Perhaps they will come to this house

“We can put our gold and jewels in a good place where they can’t find them” “Bring me the box and some stones”, he said

to his wife. “I will put this box where the thieves will never find it!”

“Now, I will close the box”, he said. “Help me to carry it!”

Tenal Ram and his wife carried the box and threw it down the well.

Then, they went back to the house, with no lamps and waited.

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G1.Into the well (the original continuation of the story- not to be distributed- T

reads it) He said, “I have heard that there are some thieves in this place. They took my friend Ali’s gold and jewels (1)”. “Oh! They may come to this house”, said his wife (2). “Yes, they may come here. We must hide our gold and jewels in a good place where they can’t find them. Bring me that box (3)”. So his wife brought the box. Tenal Ram showed her the stones and said in her ear; “Those are our gold and jewels”. Then, he said, “Bring me the gold, and I’ll put it in this box (4)”. She brought some stones. Tenal Ram put the stones in the box (5). He said, “Ha, ha! I’ll hide this box where the thieves will never find it! Bring me the jewels!” She brought some more stones. “Now, I’ll shut the box”, he said. “Help me to carry it (6).” Then Tenal Ram and his wife carried the box and threw it down the well (7). It made a great S-P-L-A-S-H when it hit the water.

Then they went back to the house. They put out the lamp, and waited (8).

G.2. Now retell the story in your circle about:

1.They took my friend Ali’s gold and jewellery.

2.They came to his house.

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3. “We put our gold and jewellery in a good place where thieves didn’t find them”

4. 4. “Tenal Ram’s woman brought the box and some stones”

5. “I put this box where the thieves didn’t find it!”

6. Tenal Ram and his wife carried the box and threw it down the well.

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0. They went back to the house, with no lamps and waited.

I.

“Thank you!”(to

be distributed at the end of class)

The first thief said, “They have put their box of jewellery and gold in the well! They have gone to bed. They ‘ll soon be asleep”. After some time, Tenal Ram looked out of the window. He saw the thieves at the well.

The first thief said, “We must get the water out of the well. Then, I’ll go down and get the box”.

So they began to take up water from the well and the other thief threw the water on the garden. There was a lot of water in the well. They worked all night. Daylight came and they were still working. Tenal Ram opened the window. He called out: “Thank you, my friends, for watering my garden. That box in the well is full of stones, and the Sultan’s men are coming along the road............................... Goodbye, my friends! Goodbye!............. Thank you again!................

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