John Mcrae, Representational Language Learning: from Language Awareness to Text Awareness

Anita Weston, “Picking holes: Cloze procedures in prose”

--State-of-play: What types/variations of cloze procedures are known to us? Wd u prefer an ‘objective’ cloze or a ‘controlled’ one (gap-filling)? Have you tried any of these in your classes? How did they work?

Which type of gaps do u think wd be the most easy/effective/enjoyable from the students’ point of view?

On what grounds does Anita Weston suggest that clozes are “the best thing since sliced bread”?

p.117: which one of the two sides (plus-minus) wd u accept as valid contentions?

--Aural cloze procedure

What is the point in this kind of exercise? Have u noticed that two pages (120-121) are missing from your text?

--‘As kill a king’…

Agree or disagree w the following: “since we ourselves, as teachers, are often ourselves unable to guess an

author’s choice of word unless we ourselves have doctored the text, it is unfair to expect our students to do so.”

--Practical examples

What do u think of these examples? Are they not too advanced for grade school or even high school students? Which one did u like best? Can u explain why?

What is your overall impression of the Weston essay compared to the other assigned readings you have covered so far?

Hilary Tham, ______

I came to you at ______

With silvery dew on sleeping lotus

Sparkling in my gay hands;

You put my flowers in the sun.

I danced to you at ______

With bright raintree blooms

Flaming in my ardent arms;

You dropped my blossoms in the pond.

I crept to you at ______

With pale orchids

Trembling on my uncertain lips;

You shredded my petals in the sand.

I strode to you at ______

With gravel hard and cold

Clenched in my bitter fists;

You offered me your hybrid orchids,

And ______

--What can u say about the last lines, verse by verse? How many different kinds of flowers or plants can u find?

--Is the poem as a whole positive or negative, in your opinion?

--Read it again, suggesting words to fill in the gaps. Now compare your suggestions, and decide which of them work best, both in terms of grammar and in terms of poetry.

--Is the last line a happy ending or not, for most of the class?

--Which of the two (‘I’ or ‘you’) do u think is male, and which female?

--Compare the verbs in the first line of each verse. And compare the adjectives in the second lines. Is there a progression? What does the semicolon at the end of each third line indicate, in your opinion?

--Suggest a title for the poem.

In the “Knock, knock” jokes on the following page, fill the gaps by supplying the missing (first) names.

Knock, knock Knock, knock Knock, knock

Who`s there? Who`s there? Who`s there?

______