Students: 6~8 Korean international students; highly motivated. They attend international bilingual school where they are at a par with Western children.
Age: 12~14
Objective: Reading comprehension. Vocabulary building. News website related to farming in Africa, to fulfill the ‘science’ component of our class.
Potential problems: Students may have difficulty with the speed of the narrator. This is why I will encourage them to pre-read this article twice. We will also go over it together as a class.
Student Instructions:
Step 1 Please read story carefully.
Step 2 Note words with difficult pronunciation or meaning. Look words up in your dictionary.
Step 3 Slowly read the article one more time or as often as you need to in order to understand.
Step 4 Go to the link and listen to the narrator live.
LINK: Farmers in East Africa
FARMERS IN EAST AFRICA STRUGGLE AGAINST CASAVA DISEASE
1. Meeting needs of instructional purposes.
Students do not listen to enough authentic
English. Articles such as the aforementioned one will show them the resources available on the internet that allows them to listen to 'live' and authentic English.
2. Why is this topic relevant?
In our class we have to have readings in the 'science' (any kind of science). An article such as this one would fulfill that requirement. Also, Korean parents really emphasize the learning of new vocabulary. As an educator I know that rote learning is meaningless. But in this way, students would be coming across difficult new words but words which are in context. As far as interest, it would be more of a trial-and-error thing; however, I like to broaden my students' horizon by taking them out of their comfort zone. So I often like to expose them to worlds they may otherwise not read about or come across. Africa happens to be one of those worlds that Asians often shun.
3. Handouts: As far as handouts, I would like to come up with a handout where they have to brainstorm in groups of 2 or 3. They would have to compare 'cassava' to the foods that Koreans eat. They would have to come up with alternate solutions to the problems presented in the article?
For example:
* State 3 ways we can avoid hunger, war, poverty.
* If Africans cannot eat cassava, what other fruits/vegetables can we recommend?
* Why do people resort to violence in time of need? How can we prevent that?
* Can richer countries help these developing nations? How?
5. Potential problems:
Potential problems may or may not be the difficulty of the language. Korean children are very diligent. In Korea, there are these silly books called "4,000" and students have to memorize 4,000 meaningless difficult words. So if they can do that, they can certainly master 10 or 20 difficult words in my class for 1 week. It's something Korean parents expect. This article has a lot of those difficult words that would satisfy Korean parents. On a more realistic level and from an educator's point of view, I would spend some time building their schemata in class. We would have plenty of time to talk about growing cassava in Africa, diseases, war, hunger, poverty and pollution in the third world.
Aramis,
ReplyDeleteWhat I really like about this reading is the tie in with universal themes like hunger, poverty, etc. As we learned in our ESL Literacy class, it is essential to try to address these universal themes so even if your students don't relate to eating cassava, they can certainly relate to hunger and the need to protect crops so that the foods they eat will be there.
I think the extension of the reading into the brainstorming and critical thinking is fantastic- especially in your situation. What I mean by that is that it would be more difficult for me to do something like this with my intermediate ESL elementary school students. But this meets the very real need of students to be able to think critically and begin thinking about world issues, and middle schoolers really get into that. I think this would be a highly motivating activity for them.
My only question would be is there another aspect to the vocabulary instruction besides looking them up in the dictionary? Are there any words in particular that you are targeting that you believe are essential to their understanding of the article?
Hi Aramis,
ReplyDeleteNice article! I especially liked the speed at which it was read. A bit slow for native speakers but just right for L2 learners. I think this is a good way for students to hear a native voice and they can listen to it over and over again if they want to.
I noticed on the website that those who read the article can also post comments. Perhaps you could extend the activity by having your students post a comment as well. You also might incorporate some maps of other visuals of Africa that you look at together before they read the article just to get their brains going in that direction and thinking about Africa.
Thank you for sharing!
Erica