My Monday morning course is a
“technical” English course that is actually very free. As long as
the students are happy and learning English, there is no text or
material requirement and no test at the end of the course.
Usually, in the class, we read
target-language articles about new technology in the students' field
and then have a variety of activities for discussion. The problem
with this set up is that we usually have to read two pages of text
before we can get to the fun, communicative activities (instead of
the summarizing and predicting). With this is mind, I have been
looking for a way to make the process of going through the text more
interesting and making the language more accessible.
I used an activity based on the
“Textplosion” activity on page 66 of Teaching Unplugged, along
with a modified dictation activity. I printed the first sentence of
an article we were going to start on to individual word-cards, and
then I mixed them all up. I gave them to the students and asked them
to tell me, based on the words they saw, what the article would be
about. One student pointed out that it was a little difficult because
there were so many “small words,” and not so many “important”
words. So, from there, I had them separate the word cards into “small
words” (or “grammar words”) and “important words” (or
“content words”). Once they had done that, I read the original
sentence out loud and had them put the content words in order. After,
I read it again, and they filled in the grammar words.
This activity worked really well on the
day I tried it, because the two students who showed up were the least
advanced, and usually, they have a little trouble keeping up. This
activity made the text very accessible, and helped them feel
successful about their language. Since it didn't require as much
instant comprehension, and because we worked with the same text for
the entire class period, they were able to process it and understand
it by the time they left.
