FP008 – DEVELOPING LANGUAGE SKILLS IN THE CLASSROOM PRACTICE ACTIVITY, Trabalhos de Língua Inglesa

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FP008 – DEVELOPING LANGUAGE SKILLS IN THE CLASSROOM

PRACTICE ACTIVITY

Name and surname:

MAO

Group:

FP_TEFL_

Date:

July, 2023

PRACTICE ACTIVITY:

TASK 1

The authors use a “bottom-up” strategy, and according to FUNIBER (2019), these strategies involve the decoding of a passage step-by-step from small textual elements like words and phrases. This kind of strategy was very much used as the traditional way of teaching reading. Criticism has been given to it regarding that the individual parts of the passage are given more relevance than the passage as a whole. It means that the understanding depends on a succession of separate sentences that may not have any connection. McCarthy (1991) believes that: The best reading materials encourage an engagement with larger textual forms (for example through problem-solving exercises at a whole-text level) but do not neglect the role of individual words, phrases, and grammatical devices in guiding the reader around the text. The authors lead the reader through very basic general comprehension questions in exercise one, for instance. They help the reader extract the main ideas using the skimming technique, which consists of reading in a general sense rather than for finding out the meaning of every word. In exercise two, the authors use Widdowson’s Truth Assessment type of questions (True or false), which helps students check information from the passage and grow understanding of it. At this point it is developed the scanning technique, in which the students do not have to read the whole text but ‘look for specific information’. When it comes to activity three, vocabulary one and two, the authors of the book request the learner to define words from the text and give three alternatives, according to Greenall and Swan’s (1986), ‘dealing with unfamiliar vocabulary’, it is a micro skill, and it belongs to the bottom-up strategy. In this exercise it is expected that the students find where the word or expression is, and according to the context, they are able to guess its meaning.

There are two other aspects that should be mentioned: variety of accents and international English. The former because when people travel, they do not meet only people with the same accent s/he has learned, and they are expected, and they also need to communicate. The latter comes to explain that most of English-speaking people of the world are not from English speaking countries as L1 (Source: World Population Review 2023). They learn English as a foreign language, it comes down to that they maintain their original language and it may influence in the accent, speed, pronunciation, rhythm, etc. Andrews (1993, cited in Funiber, 2019) agrees with that when he states that his students “need International English, and International English is Slow English, often with simpler structures and clearer articulation and with fewer idiomatic expressions”.

TASK 3

Listening is considered a receptive skill and according to Mary Underwood (1989, cited by FUNIBER, 2019) listening activities are divided in three types: ‘pre’, ‘while’, and ‘post’ listening activities. Having read the listening activities proposed, it can be identified that there is a ‘pre-listening activity’ that has been already defined in the statement of this task 3 as ‘looking at a list of items’ or ‘looking at pictures and talking about them’. Task 1 students are invited to ‘speculate’ about the definition of three words (that may be new to the students), later discuss in groups, and write notes about the three previous words. The last action involves ‘completing part of a chart’. All of the actions from this task 1 help students raise their awareness about the topic or build knowledge if they do not know yet. Also, for beginners, instill confidence and motivation for the next task. Task 2 is the listening itself, or as Underwod stated, ‘while-listening activity’. It involves ‘checking items’ from the table they have just speculated. As students have just discussed about it, the vocabulary and the ideas are fresh in their minds, making it easier for them to check if what they have written is right or not. Task 3 belongs to the same typology of task 2 and it provides students with one more listening opportunity, but now it requires them to ‘complete grids’ in the next column if they had marked any cross in the previous exercise. Task 3 also integrates skills when students are invited to check answers in pairs orally (listening is the ‘driving’ skill and speaking is there just to provide more practice and involve more than one skill, showing students that the four skills are integrated. Task 3 also involves ‘extending notes into written responses’. Task 4 is the ‘post-listening activity’ and it implicates in two typologies that happen in the following order: ‘sequencing’ and ‘matching with a reading text’. The former inviting students to read sentences from ‘a’ to ‘i’ and complete the to which factor they are related,

the latter to match sentences ‘a’ to ‘i’ to make coherent paragraphs. This activity is a wrap up one, leading students to a closure to this topic and helping clarify any doubt left.

TASK 4

You might like to note that Keller’s listening activity starts with a ‘pre-listening activity’ which involves ‘making list of possibilities’ and ‘pre-viewing language’ because the exercise anticipates vocabulary that may be heard soon. This kind of preparation guides students through the vocabulary that may be heard soon, or in other words, preparing the ground for the next more challenging exercise. The next step is the ‘while-listening activity’ and it is characterized by ‘seeking specific items of information’, which means, as they listen to three students they must identify them in the pictures, then write their names down and which country they are from. The next exercise is still in the ‘while-listening activity’ typology, and its characteristic is of ‘true or false’. According to Widdowson (1978), when using a truth assessment type of question, it is more satisfactory because the sentences “provided appear within the passage and that some explanation is offered to support the correct choice”. Then comes an interesting activity named ‘intensive listening’. The name itself challenges students to want to do more. It is a ‘while-listening activity’, and then it proposes that the student does the task while listening to a police officer describing to journalists three people. The aspect now is of ‘completing pictures’, once students have to complete the drawing of people. Students can rely on the Schema Theory in which a script theory describes the role of our prior knowledge in comprehension. This script is a predetermined, stereotyped sequence of actions that define a well-known situation (Schank and Abelson’s, 1977, cited in Funiber, 2019). The last exercise composes Underwood’s triad, a ‘post-listening activity’. The activity involves one student looking at exercise 1 again, preparing a short introduction for him/her and present it to the whole class, so its aspect is of ‘simulation’. The second and last activity is a mix of ‘post-listening activity’ because it is after the listening itself and it wraps up the subject. In contrast it is also a listening activity, because one student A is invited to describe a picture or photograph to student B, who has not seen it. As student A describes the picture, student B should draw it (without seeing the picture, just by