Assignment

Assignment 2.3
Skills Assignment
Part1: Text and Rational (250 words)
The text is an extract from Donna Poisl's article "Immigrants must Learn English and Become Americans" published on www.articledestination.com. I selected this text for two reasons: the first is related to the content, while the second is related to the language.
In my search for the right text, I was looking for something authentic and relative (i.e. handles an important issue in the lives of this group of learners). This would have a positive effect on the motivation of the students and the meaningfulness of the tasks. I was looking for a common topic shared by all of them, or at least most of them. It was also very useful to take into consideration the diversity of the students in the class and their purposes of learning English. Thinking this way, I could see that they share one objective which is to be fit to live in a community where most of the people speak a language that is different from their first languages, and their possible tool to achieve this is to learn English. So, I picked a text that highlights the importance of learning English for an immigrant to survive in the American society, and later to be an American citizen. I wanted them to know how beneficial it is to learn and use English for their future lives in the US. Realizing how important the topic is will make them more likely to participate in the assigned tasks.
The language used in the text is at an appropriate level of difficulty for the student which makes the text at the students' instructional reading level. The text starts easy enough to develop confidence and facilitate comprehension. However, at times, it requires reading in depth to make inferences.

Part 2: Exploitation for Receptive Skills (300 words):
According to J. Harmer in his book The Practice of English Language Teaching, “receptive skills are the ways in which people extract the meaning from the discourse they see or hear”..(P.199). In this article "Immigrants must Learn English and Become Americans", the main skill to be practiced is reading along the way. This will happen by developing the three sub skills of skimming for gist, scanning for pits of information and reading for details.
This article comes in 8 paragraphs which makes it a good opportunity for students to quickly identify the main idea. The will need to skim the article to identify the main idea, what the article is all about.
As Harmer suggests in "How to Teach English" "….Students need to be able to skim a text-as if they were casting their eyes over its surface- to get a general idea of what it is about (P. 69)
On the other hand, the proper nouns, the facts and the figures make the text appropriate for scanning. They will need to scan for the percentage of people who can speak more than 2 languages in both Europe and the United States and whose immigrants who can survive in the US without the need for using English.
"…..They need to be able to scan a text for particular pits of information they are searching for. This skill means they don't have to read every word and line…" Harmer's "How to Teach English" (P.69).
By the end of the class, students will read in more depth to answer questions like" Why should the government help the immigrants to learn English?"
"When looking for details, we expect students to concentrate on the minutiae of what they are reading." (P.69)
The enhancement of the students' ability to utilize the different reading sub-skills will accelerate the rate at which they comprehend a text.
Reading tasks:
I write the title of the article on the board, and then I ask students to take some time and make predictions on what they think the article will be about. I monitor and elicit some ideas to write on the board for a later discussion.
a) Reading for gist
Then I ask the students to read the article quickly for a couple of minutes to check if the predictions they made earlier were there in the article.
After discussing the text briefly students will be asked to read and answer the questions in Ex.1 (see attached exercise worksheet) in order to check if they have understood the general idea of the text.
After checking their answers the teacher will ask the students “What is the main idea of the text?”, “ Is this something that you would try yourself?”.... [continues]

2) Reading

a- Scanning for bits of information
Activities (Tell whether a statement is true or false) b- Reading for details (Answer Wh questions)

Part3: Exploitation for Productive Skills (200 words)
1) Speaking:
Group work:
Ss discuss the reasons why they think learning English is important for an immigrants with reference to their own experience.

2) Writing:
Each student write a paragraph of at least 5 lines about the possible ways that can be of help in learning English and why he thinks they are effective

Part 4: Plan Outline (100 words)

Adapt before using with learners. Keep the materials as authentic as possible, but change all language content, including vocabulary and structure. Break down the activity into a series of smaller, interconnected tasks: * Provide background information. * Rewrite the material. * Reformat the writing in terms of font style, white space and font size. * Consider the quantity of material. * Consider the layout on the page. * Consider expectations of tasks. * Be consistent.
http://www.esl-literacy.com/essentials-life/classroom-strategies/materials-esl-literacy-classroom/authentic-materials