Matching while-listening activities to the instructional goal, the listening purpose, and students' proficiency level.

· Students need to act upon what they have heard to clarify meaning and extend their thinking. Well-planned post- listening activities are just as important as those before and during. Some examples follow.

· · To begin with, students can ask questions of themselves and the speaker to clarify their understanding and confirm their assumptions.

· · Hook and Evans (1982) suggest that the post-mortem is a very useful device. Students should talk about what the speaker said, question statements of opinion, amplify certain remarks, and identify parallel incidents from life and literature.

· · Students can summarize a speaker's presentation orally, in writing, or as an outline. In addition to the traditional outline format, students could use time lines, flow charts, ladders, circles, diagrams, webs, or maps.

· · Students can review their notes and add information that they did not have an opportunity to record during the speech.

· · Students can analyse and evaluate critically what they have heard.

· · Students can be given opportunities to engage activities in that build on and develop concepts acquired during an oral presentation. These may include writing (e.g., response journal, learning log, or composition), reading (e.g., further research on a topic or a contradictory viewpoint), art or drama (e.g., designing a cover jacket after a book talk or developing a mock trial concerning the topic through drama in role).

№8 Give an example of a teaching reading class: speak on the aim and objectives; describe the procedure; explain the type of feedback you will suggest; describe evaluation and assessment tools.

There are many reasons why getting students to read English texts is an important part of the teacher's job. In the first place, many students want to be able to read texts in English either for their careers, for study purposes or simply for pleasure. Anything we can do to make it easier for them to do these things must be a good idea.

Reading is useful for language acquisition. Provided that students more or less understand what they read, the more they read, the better they get at it. Reading also has a positive effect on students' vocabulary knowledge, on their spelling and on their writing.

Reading texts also provide good models for English writing. At different times we can encourage students to focus on vocabulary, grammar or punctuation. We can also use reading material to demonstrate the way we construct sentences, paragraphs and whole texts. Students then have good models for their own writing (see Chapter 8).

Lastly, good reading texts can introduce interesting topics, stimulate discussion, excite imaginative responses and provide the springboard for well-rounded, fascinating lessons.

Example 1: sunscreen (pre-intermediate)

In this example for pre-intermediate students, the students first look at a picture of people sunbathing and say whether it is a positive, safe and attractive image - or whether it is the opposite. They might discuss how people should protect themselves from the sun. The teacher then asks the students to read the text and identify where they think it comes from. They should do this fairly quickly.

When the class has agreed that the text is from a magazine for teenage girls (this is obvious, partly because of the format - photos combined with short texts - and also because of the language: 'and let's face it', 'gorgeous guys', 'babes', 'not only really cool'), the teacher asks them to read it again and put skin, hair and eye colour in order of least vulnerable to the sun to most vulnerable. They can do this individually or in pairs.

The class can now study some of the language in the text - including 'SPF', physical descriptions ('freckles', 'fair hair', 'dark-skinned', etc) - and the teenage language mentioned above.

There are any number of activation possibilities with this text: students can write descriptions of themselves for the same page in the magazine. They can decide which of the four people they would most like to meet and why. They can role-play an interview with the characters in the article (see page 125), or they can prepare a short talk on how people should protect themselves against the sun, depending on skin type.

Many magazines have articles like this which we can bring into class. However, we will need to make sure that the language is not too complex for our students' levels, and we will need to think carefully about the kinds of tasks we ask students to do with them.

Example 2: campaigns (intermediate)

The following reading sequence is designed for teenage students. After doing comprehension work on the reading text, students are involved in a role-play which follows on from the reading they have done.

The sequence starts when students are asked to look quickly at the reading text and say where they think it comes from and what - at a first glance - they think it is likely to be about. They may do this in pairs, or in response to the teacher's prompting. This 'first glance' should both engage students and also allow them to start predicting what they are going to read. The teacher listens to their predictions but does not confirm or deny them at this stage.

Students are now asked to read the text fairly quickly in order to answer the following questions:

What's the important news?

Why did the council change its mind?

Once again, they can discuss their answers to these questions in pairs before the teacher solicits answers from the whole class.

The teacher can now ask students for their reactions to the story before getting them to do some study work. First of all, they are asked to match words (from the text) and meanings:

When they have worked through this exercise successfully (and as a result cleared up doubts about the meaning of certain words), students are asked to read the text in detail again in order to correct sentences such as 'Most young people aren't interested in the youth centre', 'The council is going to pay all the money for The Grove', and 'Johnny ran the campaign alone'.

Finally, students are involved in an activation role-play (see page 125). They are told to work in groups of five in order to have a radio discussion. They are told that the council wants to close their school and open a new shopping centre. One student in each group is the radio presenter, two represent the council and two represent the school. Each student is given a role-card. For example, the presenter is told: 'Prepare your ideas with presenters from other groups. Plan what to say and how to control the discussion'. The presenter is also given some appropriate language such as 'Good evening and welcome to ...', 'I'd like to introduce ...', etc. The council representatives are told: 'Plan your ideas. Practise expressing your ideas and opinions politely', and they are given some language to help them do this. The school representatives are told to think about why they want to keep the school open (and are given some useful language such as 'Our school is special because ...'). The groups now have their 'radio discussion'. While they are doing this, the teacher can go round helping out with any difficulties. The groups can then report back on what they discussed.

This sequence will appeal to teenage students because of the topic and the fact that it is presented as a web page. The sequence demonstrates very clearly how work on one skill can lead naturally to work on another.

Example 3: webquest (intermediate to advanced)

The previous activity asked students to read a text (from a book) that pretended to be a snapshot of a web page. However, a lot of reading activities can use the Internet itself (where both teacher and students have easy access to it). One type of activity using the Internet is a webquest.

In a webquest, students visit various websites (pre-determined by the teacher) in order to find information to use in a class project. And because we have determined (in advance) the websites the students are going to visit, we can be confident that they will not spend endless hours in fruitless searching of the entire Internet. The quest is, as its name suggests, a search for information.

According to Gavin Dudeney and Nicky Hockly, webquests normally have four basic stages: the introduction stage (where the overall theme of the webquest is presented with appropriate background information. Sometimes key vocabulary is offered at this stage), the task section (in which the task is explained, and the students are engaged with it), the process stage (in which students are given web links to click on to get the information they need) and the evaluation stage (where students and teachers evaluate what they have learnt - and perhaps do some study work on language they have encountered and used during the quest). It can be seen, therefore, that much of the webquest procedure is concerned with activation. However, both at the introduction stage and the evaluation stage there may be many opportunities for language study.

In this webquest sequence about UFOs (unidentified flying objects), designed by JoAnn Miller, the process stage includes not only the quest itself, but also a role-play discussion based on what students have found.

The students are first given the introduction to the quest.

When they are clear about the information given here, they are told that the quest is to find out (a) if UFOs really exist, (b) whether people have really been abducted by extraterrestrials and (c) whether there is life on other planets. For the task, students will be divided into groups, and each group will prepare a different aspect of the debate. The students are told that because the web pages they will be visiting are real, and not designed just for schools, they may find the reading level challenging. They are reassured that they are free to use an online dictionary or any paper dictionary that is available in the classroom.

Students now begin their quest with background web links for everyone: All the students have to do is click on the links, and they will be taken to the relevant website.

When the students have visited their websites, collected their opinions (and downloaded any images they might need), the groups then debate the original questions (a-c above), using the arguments they found in their own quests.

Finally, in the evaluation phase, the whole class tries to come up with a statement about UFOs that they can agree with, and JoAnn Miller suggests that they post their opinions on a website which discusses the topic (this provides real-world interaction which should be highly motivating).

The UFO webquest obviously depends on the class having easy and instant access to computers. It also requires a certain level of English from the students. Furthermore, it takes a long time to complete (quite apart from whatever preparation time the webquest designer has to put into it). But if time is available, this kind of reading - with the teacher on hand to help if things are especially difficult for the students - is highly motivating and yields great results.