CELTA ASSIGNMENT 3
Kate
14/06/11
WORD COUNT: 813
PART 1 – Justification of material choice
Selecting a proper type of authentic material is essential on every language learning stage. The authentic material which I have chosen is flight status information (observe Appendix 1). The task is aimed at the students of elementary level. With the reference to the class profile information most of the students are motivated by travelling and career goals, which means that they definitely need the provided material as far as they can have business trips or any individual needs implementation. There are precisely formulated flight situations, structured and modeled with the purpose of passengers’ rigorous informing. The current statuses activate the target language of students and make the learners get aware of planes departure and arrival timing. It helps to learn the topic “Travel” with the real stimulation. The students are to be able to read and understand airport flight statuses in live. The point that the following material has been downloaded from the website shows its relevance and the practical usage of the target lexis among passengers.
PART 2: Receptive skill -reading/sub-skill - gist reading
PROCEDURE
In order to practice gist reading there can be the following procedure to suggest.
Beforehand for arousing the students’ interest in the topic the teacher tells the story about his/her usual travels and says that he/she doesn’t always understand which gate to fly from and which flight number is relevant for take-off or departure. He/she asks the learners, “What do you read to understand present flight information?” The students may elicit, “We read a table with flights”. The teacher helps to provide a proper name for this piece of authentic material, notably, a “flight status”.
Concerning the task the teacher will ask the students to predict which country the flight status (handed out after without the main word WASHINGTON in the headline) belongs to by looking at the headline: “Is it a British flight status?” The answer: “No, it isn’t”. Is it an American flight status? The answer: “Yes, it is”. The teacher provides appropriate time setting and the feedback upon the results
MATERIALS:
AIMS: to develop students’ ability to skim the text for gist
RATIONALE: By providing the students with the following task I believe to teach them to find the answer quickly, without reading every word - by speed-reading allowing the learners to find out the main idea from the layout (Scrivener 186:435).
Receptive skill – reading/sub-skills-reading for specific detail
PROCEDURE
The vocabulary listed in FSs needs to be pre-taught for setting up the scanning reading activity. The words to be taught are: DUE AT, IN CUSTOMS, PM/AM, and GATE
Concerning the task the teacher will ask the students to work in pairs and put the split statuses (handed out after the instruction) together in order to answer two questions: “Is flight 516 in customs?”/ “Is flight 3800 due at 7 pm?” The teacher sets the time limit of 3 minutes. He/she may ask the students to check task in double-pairs. The teacher monitors the class during the activity and provides an open-class feedback afterwards. The answer for the first question will be – “No, it isn’t”. The answer for the second question will be the same.
MATERIALS:
AIMS: to develop students’ ability to scan the text for specific information
RATIONALE: By giving the students the following task I believe to teach them not to concentrate on understanding every word but allowing them to generate the abilities of quick searching for appropriate information. Because word-by-word approach is not always the method we use in everyday life. In order to make students better readers the teachers need to practice different reading techniques (Scrivener 185:435).
PART 3 Productive skill – speaking
PROCEDURE
On the preliminary step the teacher explains to the students that every pair will get a card which they have to read for playing a “Our busy travelling life” game. The card may have the following information: “You are businessmen who fly very often. You are very busy. Speak about cities you visit and travelling problems you have”. The following task is based on the flight status (Appendix 1). The teacher may provide modeling of a possible monologue. The teacher sets the time limit of 3 minutes not to turn the task into a writing activity. The teacher provides an open-class feedback afterwards
MATERIALS:
AIMS: to enable students to speak on the topic applying the vocabulary learnt
RATIONALE: By offering the students the speaking activity I hope to encourage the students to try using the language from their own “store”. They will be enabled to try out the language that has not become their active personal “repertoire” yet. This activity may be fine to set up a balance more than some pressure. It is aimed at building and developing fluency and confidence of the students in practicing the newly learnt material (Scrivener 149:435).