Reflecting Teaching and Learning

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Week 4- Reading/Writing Skill-building

Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL Students Using E-books

I have read Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL Students Using E-books (2004) by Mei-Ya Liang. It focuses on intermediate and advanced ESL/EFL students. The objectives of this lesson are to guide students to read authentic e-texts outside of the classroom and to improve their overall reading. These activities can be adapted to other levels as well.

These three activities are designed to help students choosing books, reading and sharing and evaluating books and other resources critically. Students are provided 10 e-books of different lengths and varying difficulty and study guides as scaffolding for learning. In each activity, goals, procedures and study guide are provided in which the goals describe what the students would achieve from that particular activity while the procedure explains the steps to be followed by the students and the teacher. In the study guide section there are websites given for the students to access the readings (I found that some websites are not working) and after that students are expected to answer the questions provided on the Study Guide section. The evaluation activity leads students to higher-order thinking, applying, synthesizing and evaluating information from the online texts and resources and making judgments.

From this reading, I have found ‘The Greek farmers’ strategies’, the classical argument as an interesting model I can use in my class. The web site is:
http://www2.winthrop.edu/wcenter/handoutsandlinks/classica.htm
‘The Greek farmers’ strategies’, the classical argument model includes, the introduction, the narration, the confirmation, the refutation and concession and the summation. The site also gives suggestions and strategies for developing each section of a classical argument. This is a useful site for my students as it is a model for writing argumentative essays and in the university, students do lots of argumentative writings and debates. I have already added the site to my delicious page so that I can easily find it when I need.
ABCD Objective: Here is an ABCD objective I have created for a lesson to use this classical argument in my class.

The students of my class (Audience), after reading this classical argument model(Condition), in groups discuss and note down (Behavior) at least two points (Degree) they could include under each part of the classical argument, the introduction, the narration, the confirmation, the refutation and concession and the summation for a given topic (Condition).

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