Amersham & Wycombe College

Skills Related Tasks

[Assignment 3]
Submission date: 24/05/2013
Omar Hussain
Skills Related Task

This is a news article titled, “Stop juggling, start ingle-tasking” from the Evening Standard newspaper. I have
chosen to use this material to teach the upper-intermediate class. I think the ss will find the topic quite
interesting as most of them are au-pairs and have to multitask at some time during their work. They may
also be able to closely relate to it and also benefit from it. I have chosen it for the upper-intermediate set of
students as I believe it would be a nice little challenge or them. There are no blocking words in this article
although there are quite a few words which they can guess from the context. So overall I do not see this
piece as too hard for them.

1) Lead in / prediction task:

As the aim of the lead in is to stimulate an interest in the topic, I would begin by displaying the main picture
from the newspaper and getting the class to work in pairs, I would ask them to predict what the topic of the
newspaper article would be. However because the picture could mean numerous things, I would give them
the real title of the article (“Stop juggling, start single-tasking”) and two more titles (1- “First Chinese man
to join circus” and 2- “The rise of unemployment”). This is a very student centred activity which creates
interest in the content of the text and “activates schemata” [Harmer, p. 271]. I would not drag this on for
too long, but just enough to raise interest in what the text may be. Once they have discussed this in their
pairs, a class feedback would be done and everyone will state their predictions which I will write down on
the WB. Once this stage has been completed, “the chances are that they will read [the text] with
considerably more interest.” [Harmer, p. 288].

2) Skimming (Reading for gist):

Prior to giving the ss the text, I would need to make sure there are no blocking words, i.e., words that
would prevent the ss from gaining an overall understanding of the text. I believe there are no blocking
words in the text, there are a few words which I will ask them the meanings of by having them guessing the
meaning from the context, however this will be done in a later stage. However at this stage I do not see any
words that will hinder the ss from gaining an overall understanding of the text.

I would now ask the ss to skim read the article, giving them a few mins to do so, and at the end I would ask
them to discuss in pairs whether their predictions were correct or not before doing a whole class
discussion. The purpose of giving them this short time span is to ensure they only gist read the article and
do not read it intensively. This task is used to develop the students’ sub-skills of reading for gist, or
skimming [Scrivener, p. 185] Also, “In order to make students better readers we need first of all to raise
their awareness that it’s not always essential to understand every word, and that practising some different
reading techniques in English may be very useful to them.” (Scrivener, p. 153, [1994]).

3) Scanning

The next step in a receptive skills lesson is to give the ss practice in reading for specific information. The
purpose of this sub skill is for the ss to get a little bit more information about certain specifics in the text, or
as Jim Scrivener puts it, the aim is “finding out items of specific information.” [Learning English, p. 424]. See
appendix 1 for scanning task.

The scanning stage “allows students to get a feel for what they are reading before they have to attack the
text in detail, which is, more difficult to do.” [Harmer, p.270] And “although scanning is involved with
details of the text, the way that a reader finds those details involves processing the whole text, moving her
eyes quickly over the whole page, searching for key words or clues from the textual layout and the content
that will enable her to focus in on smaller sections of text that she is likely to get answers from.” [Learning
English, Jim Scrivener, p. 185]

4) Intensive Reading (for Detailed Comprehension)

In order to develop the sub skills of reading for detailed comprehension [Harmer, p 270], I would set a
series of true/false questions. These being as follows: (see appendix 2).

I would get the ss working on their own for this task underlining where they got their answers from. Once I
believe they have completed the task, I would get them to pair check their answers and discuss where they
found their answers. During this stage I would monitor their discussions. I would now get the whole class
feedback, nominating a ss and also asking them to expand on their reasoning, as well as asking further
questions or even getting their personal views. I will not just get a true/false answer from them but I will
want them to prove to me that they’ve understood it. This would be done by asking follow up questions.
This is as Harmer states 'we should always ask where in the text they found the answer, this provokes a
detailed study of the text...' [Harmer, p. 286] and the purpose of this comes back to the stage aim, mainly
“reading texts closely and carefully with the intention of gaining an understanding of as much detail as
possible.” [Learning English, Jim Scrivener, p. 188]

5) Guessing Meaning From Context

By now the ss will have a general meaning of the text and would have grasped much from the text. At this
stage I would give them a few words for them to guess the meanings of. The words being:

a) Interleaving
b) Interfere
c) Rogue
d) Clients
e) Demarcate

I believe these words may be unknown to the ss, hence why I chose them. For this stage I would encourage
the ss to guess the words and I believe the context will help them a lot in doing so. Rather than giving the ss
the meaning to these words I would give them the sentence where it is taken from and then elicit from
them the meaning of these words. See appendix 3.

Follow On Writing Tasks:

Lead in Discussion:

Now I would first talk about an experience where I tried to multitask but failed. This would be something
along the lines of cooking dinner and simultaneously keeping an eye on the kids as well as doing the
laundry. I would give my own personal experience of how I am not good at multitasking, and end by asking
the question, “are men good at multitasking?” and let the ss discuss in pairs before I get some feedback
from them.

Further discussion:

Then I would then write the question “Are women better than men at multitasking?” on the WB and ask
the ss to work in pairs and discuss the question. This would be done because working on their own,
sometimes the ss “can’t come up with ideas.” [Harmer, p. 329] If I see the ss failing in producing creative
ideas I would give them ideas, as “sometimes we will feed in ideas to a student or students as they do the
task.” [p. 329]

This discussion would raise the ss’ interest for the following writing task.

Pre-Writing

I would then inform them that would need to write a letter to a male au pair who is asking for advice on
how to multitask in his job. This would be a formal letter and would be written at home however the
classroom time would be used to prepare them for this task. This is, as Harmer states, “we must make sure,
however that we give them enough information to do what we have asked.” [Harmer, p. 329]

This letter would be a formal letter; and to prepare the ss for this task I would need to discuss the layout of
a letter, paragraphs, and the difference between a formal and an informal letter (“How to teach Writing” by
Jeremy Harmer, p. 37) I would them remind them to look at the vocabulary in the text to help them draft
their letter as “we will want to make sure that they have enough of the right kind of language to do the
task.” [Harmer, p. 329]

With this done I strongly believe the ss would be able to complete the letter at home and bring in the
finished copy the next lesson.

Word Count: 1136

Lesson Plan:

STAGE NAME / TIME STAGE AIM

Lead in To stimulate interest in the topic
(5-7 mins)

Skimming To give ss practice in reading for gist

(10 mins)

Pair check & Feedback To build ss’ confidence

(5-7 mins)

Scanning To give ss practice in reading for specific

(10 mins) information

Pair check & Feedback To build ss’ confidence

(5-7 mins)

Intensive Reading To give ss practice in reading for more detailed

(10 mins) comprehension

Pair check & Feedback To build ss’ confidence.

(5-7 mins)

Guessing Meaning From Context To give ss practice in guessing the meaning of

(10 mins) unknown vocabulary from the context of a text

Pair check & Feedback To build ss’ confidence.

(5-7 mins)

(Follow on Writing Tasks) To create interest in writing task

Lead in & Discussion
(10 mins)

(Follow on Writing Tasks) To give ss ideas and help them in the writing task
Further Discussion
(10 mins)

(Follow on Writing Tasks) To get ss to practice language and also the use of
Pre-Writing writing a letter.
(15 mins)
Bibliography:
Websites:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/client?s=t

www.oxforddictionaries.com

www.dictionary.cambridge.org

www.macmillandictionary.com

Books:

How to Teach Writing, by Jeremy Harmer, 2004

Learning Teaching, by Jim Scriver, 2005

The practice of English Language, Jeremy Harmer, 2007

Appendices:

Appendix 1: Scanning Task:

Scan the text and find who the following people and tell me who they are:

a) Professor Nick Charter

b) Dr Michael Sinclair
c) Zadie smith and Jonathan Franzen
d) Eyal Ophir

Appendix 2: Intensive Reading Task:

Read the text again and answer the following questions with either True or False:

1) It is easy for the human mind to multitask when doing your regular activities.
2) According to Professor Nick Charter most of the times we are not multitasking but rather moving
from one task to another.
3) Eyal Ophir believes multitasking is good for focusing.
4) It easy for the author of the newspaper to multitask, e.g, to write an email while on the phone.
5) According to Dr. Michael Sinclair, multitasking increases stress levels and harmful to our
productivity.
6) Writers such as Zadie Smith and Jonathon Franzen find it difficult to single-task.
7) Multi-screening is to look at multiple streams of media at one time.
8) To practice focusing on one activity at a time is a good way to stay focused.

(Answers: 1 = F, 2 = T, 3 = F, 4 = F, 5 = T, 6 = T, 7 = T, 8 = T)
Appendix 3: Guessing Meaning from Context Task:

Match the words from the left to the meanings on the right.

Interleaving to clearly separate

Interfere a customer, or someone who receives services of a

professional person

Rogue to involve yourself in another situation which is not helpful –

to prevent an activity from being carried out properly.

Clients unexpected, not normal

Demarcate to insert something in between two other things

Answers:

Interleaving – to insert something in between two other things.

Interfere – to involve yourself in another situation which is not helpful – to prevent an activity from being
carried out properly.
Rogue – unexpected, not normal.
Clients – a customer, or someone who receives services of a professional person
Demarcate – to clearly separate.