Celta- Language Skills Assignment Essay Example

are first exposed to the topic of the text, although the link to the text may well still be tenuous. For example, students are shown a picture, or the teacher writes a word or part of a phrase on the board or the students are fed a few clues. This activates the students’ “pre-existent knowledge of the world” (Cook 1989: 69) or schema and they can then attempt to predict what a text might be about. The teacher can then introduce a pre-planned exercise or discussion to arouse further interest. This skill is called predicting. It gives the students a reason to read and is essential if students are to engage in the text.

The while reading phase

During this phase the students see the text for the first time. They will gain an understanding of why the text was written, how it has been structured and what the text is actually about. Before the text is seen by the students, the teacher introduces an exercise or task to develop the target language or specific grammar, in accordance with his or her own lesson plan. This phase normally consists of two different exercises. However, both have very different end goals. The first exercise demands only a general understanding of the text. For, example, the students may be asked to find out how many characters there are in the text and what their names are. The skill required to carry out this task is known as skimming- reading for general understanding or gist.

The second exercise, leading on from the first may then require that the students read the text for specific information. In this case, they could be

asked to find phrases that describe these characters in depth and to go on to describe the characters’ physical appearance as they imagine from information given in the text. This skill is called scanning- reading to extract specific information or for detailed comprehension. Work carried out during this phase should commence with general understanding of the text before moving on to paragraphs, words and sentences to gain understanding of grammar or vocabulary. Thus, skimming takes place before scanning. (Williams 1996)

The follow up phase

The aim of the final phase is to allow students to consider the text content and relate it to their own held opinions, beliefs and interests. In this phase students will practise the vocabulary, grammar or language structure targeted by the teacher. This may take the form of group-discussion or a written piece of work. As discussed in the introduction, speaking and writing are known as productive skills and it is likely that productive and receptive skills will be integrated in this final phase. Following on from the example used above, students could now be asked to imagine that they are one of the characters.

The teacher could ask them to imagine “what happened next?” They could then be asked to re-write the text in the first-person, imagining that they are involved in the story. The follow up phase does not, however, have to relate directly to the text. It can emerge from students discussing whether they liked the text or found it useful for their everyday lives. For example, in the text “How to have a perfect interview” (part 2 of the assignment attached) a follow up task could be to write a

C.V. or create interview questions and answers, which the students could then role play. In this example, the students could use the text as a reference point for specific interview vocabulary, therefore, using scanning skills along with the productive skills associated with writing questions and practising interview role play.

Reading is a process that involves the use of various skills, namely; predicting, skimming and scanning. We have seen above how these various skills can be grouped under the three separate phases creating a framework for the teacher to use to generate interest, purpose and teach language. Each phase requires students to utilise and, therefore, develop a particular receptive skill depending on the reason for reading determined by the task set by the teacher.