Celta Assignment One

7/29/2019 Celta Assignment One

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Assignment 1: Religious Festivals around

the World

Teacher: Jane Jenvey, Francine Warren and David

Albery

Date of submission: 5/2/2008

Christopher Beaumont


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The aim of this assignment is to identify the receptive language skill and/or sub skills that could be practised

using authentic text. In addition, productive language skills that could also be practised in relation to the text will

also be identified. All design tasks relating to the text will be attached with a brief rationale of my choices.

I have decided to choose a text concerning religious festivals around the world for the Entry 2 level learners. I

feel the article will be ideal for the students because the text is accompanied with images which will benefit

those students who are visual learners. Also, the Entry 2 class has students from a variety of countries including

Algeria, Somalia, Czech Republic, Lithuania, China and Sri-Lanka, some of whom are Muslim, Hindu and Christian

and will be accustomed to some of festivals touched upon in this article. These different elements of

personalisation to the students lives should enable them to engage more efficiently in the lesson thus allowing

a productive and beneficial session to occur. This seems like the perfect opportunity to incorporate various tasks

that will enhance both the students receptive and productive language skills.

Students have a tendency to approach reading texts in detail and to stop once they have comprehended each

word. This method has it benefits as a way of improving vocabulary and understanding of grammar, however, it

does not necessarily make them better readers. This is because it is not the way that we read in real life.

In order to make students better readers we need first of all to raise their awareness that its not always

essential to understand every word, and that practising some different reading techniques in English may be

very useful to them (Scrivener, Pg 153, 1994).

Students will have the chance to exercise receptive skills such as skimming for the more general tasks early on in

the lesson and scanning or intensive reading (accurate reading) later on in the lesson as learners of the English

language may need to concentrate more. The latter is typically used with short sections or sentences when we

need to understand or study information or language use in details (Scrivener, Pg 153, 1994).


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There are certain stages in a reading lesson that must be taken when preparing it, which are essential for the

understanding of the text. The stages for a reading lesson are as follows; lead in, pre-teach vocabulary (look at

the article and predict between 5 8 words that the students may find difficult), set task 1 (general), check in

pairs, check as a group, set task 2 (detailed) check in pairs, check as a group and finally a follow up activity

(speaking, writing, role plays, something productive and related to the text).

During the lead in stage, I will attempt to engage the students with some questions regarding festivals and

celebrations eliciting the answers from them to increase the student talking time (STT). I will ask questions such

as, What aresome of the different religions around today?. Once I got some feedback, I would write some of

the different religions on the board, listening out for pronunciation problems and assisting whenever necessary.

Then, I would ask, What festival/celebration do Muslims / Christians / Hindus etc celebrate? I will again write all

answers on the board and pay close attention to pronunciation. This task should be straight forward for the

Entry 2 level class due to the diverse religious background. For the students who are not affiliated to any

religion, e.g. the students from China, I will ask the group, What are some of the celebrations celebrated in

your country?

The teacher is able to pinpoint precisely what students know and what they still need to work on (Scrivener,

Pg 100, 1994).

I would then continue by asking questions like, When we celebrate, are we happy or sad? holding up flash

cards of a smiley face and a sad face also using facial expressions. I would ask the class, When we celebrate, do

we wear new clothes or old clothes? This question would be asked while I am wearing a new item of clothing

and also holding an old item of dirty clothing with many holes and rips in. Lastly I would ask the students while

holding some examples in my hand, Whenwe celebrate, do we wear a lot of jewellery or no jewellery? This

method is particularly good when teaching students because when you bring a real object or a real device into a

class, there is no ambiguity. This is called realia. Students can engage and touch objects as they might be

tactile learners. (Notes from Jane Jenveys class, 2008)


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The next stage in a reading lesson is to pre-teach any vocabulary necessary for the reading task that will hinder

the students understanding of the text. This is always done before the lesson in the planning stage. As a teacher,

I am expected to read through the text and predict between 5 8 words that may be difficult. A successful

method when teaching a new word is to show students a picture and elicit feedback from them to check their

understanding. You can ask questions like, What is this?, the idea is the increase productive skills like student

talking time (STT). Depending on the word that is being taught, useful concept questions can be asked to learn

whether students understand the basic concept of the word such as, What are its uses? and When is it not

used?. The best answers are yes or no because they are quick. The next step is drilling. This is when you get the

class to repeat chorally (wholeclass) and individually. This is an opportunity to check the students pronunciation

of the words and assist them wherever necessary. It can be beneficial to then write the words on the board

including the phonetics which will aid the students with there pronunciation. It is important that the teacher

does not write the word on the board before the pronunciation, rather the pronunciation should be done first

and then the word written on the board. This will avoid any confusion with how the word is spelt compared to

how it is pronounced.

Before the students begin to study the text, I would give them a pre-reading task. I would split the class into

three groups and give them each a piece of paper with one of the festivals touched upon in the text written in

the middle. The idea would be for each group to create a mind storm around the words, writing down any other

words that they would associate with them. Once the time limit set has expired, I would encourage some group

feedback, allowing all students to input there views.

Reading task 1 is intended to act as a exercise focusing on their receptive sub skill, skimming. Students will be

asked to match each picture with the correct text. This is a general task whereby students are only required

read for gist. They will be asked to check in pairs and then we would check as a group.

Reading task 2 will help the students practice scanning for specific detail. Using this receptive sub skill, they will

be asked to answer questions about specific items of information. Once this is complete, they will be asked to


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check answers in pairs and then check answers as a group. These answers will be written on the board to avoid

any confusion.

During the follow up activity, students will get the chance to activate what they have learnt with use of

productive skills such as speaking and writing. They will be asked to write five sentences about there own

cultural celebration, then discuss and inform their partner about it. This final activity is imperitive as it relates to

finding out whether or not the aim of the lesson has been met.


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Books:

Scrivener, J. Learning Teaching. Macmillan Publishers Limited 1998 Jane Jenveys CELTA course notes. Lewisham College 2008

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Celta Assignment One

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