首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
(1) I can still remember the faces when I suggested a method of dealing with what most teachers of English considered one of t
(1) I can still remember the faces when I suggested a method of dealing with what most teachers of English considered one of t
admin
2021-10-12
38
问题
(1) I can still remember the faces when I suggested a method of dealing with what most teachers of English considered one of their pet horrors, extended reading. The room was full of tired teachers, and many were quite cynical about the offer to work together to create a new and dynamic approach to the place of the stories in the classroom.
(2) They had seen promises come and go and mere words weren’t going to convince them, which was a shame as it was mere words that we were principally dealing with. Most teachers were unimpressed by the extended reading challenge from the Ministry, and their lack of enthusiasm for the rather dry list of suggested tales was passed on to their students and everyone was pleased when that part of the syllabus was over. It was simply a box ticking exercise. We needed to do something more. We needed a very different approach.
(3) That was ten years ago. Now we have a different approach, and it works. Here’s how it happened (or, like most good stories, here are the main parts. You have to fill in some of yourself employing that underused classroom device, the imagination.) We started with three main precepts:
(4) First, it is important to realize that all of us are storytellers, tellers of tales. We all have our own narratives — the real stories such as what happened to us this morning or last night, and the ones we have been told by others and we haven’t experienced personally. We could say that our entire lives are constructed as narratives. As a result, we all understand and instinctively feel narrative structure. Binary opposites — for example, the tension created between good and bad together with the resolution of that tension through the intervention of time, resourcefulness and virtue — is a concept understood by even the youngest children. Professor Kieran Egan, in his seminal book ’Teaching as Storytelling’ warns us not to ignore this innate skill, for it is a remarkable tool for learning.
(5) We need to understand that writing and reading are two sides of the same coin: an author has not completed the task if the book is not read: the creative circle is not complete without the reader, who will supply their own creative input to the process. Samuel Johnson said: "A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it". In teaching terms, we often forget that reading itself can be a creative process, just as writing is, and we too often forget that reading itself can be a creative process, just as writing is, and we too often relegate it to a means of data collection. We frequently forget to make that distinction when presenting narratives or poetry, and often ask comprehension questions which relate to factual information — who said what and when, rather than speculating on "why", for example, or examining the context of the action.
(6) The third part of the reasoning that we adopted relates to the need to engage the students as readers in their own right, not simply as language learners; learning the language is part of the process, not the reason for reading. What they read must become theirs and have its own special and secret life in their heads, a place where teachers can only go if invited.
(7) We quickly found that one of the most important ways of making all the foregoing happen was to engage the creative talents of the class before they read a word of the context. The pre-reading activities become the most important part of the teaching process; the actual reading part can almost be seen as the cream on the cake, and the principal aim of pre-reading activities is to get students to want to read the text. We developed a series of activities which use clues or fragments from the text yet to be read and which rely on the students’ innate knowledge of narrative, so that they can build their own stories before read the key text. They have enough information to generate ideas but not so much that it becomes simply an exercise in guided writing; releasing a free imagination is the objective.
(8) Moving from pre-reading to reading, we may introduce textual intervention activities. ’Textual Intervention’ is a term used by Rob Pope to describe the process of questioning a text not simply as a guide to comprehension but as a way of exploring the context of the story at any one time, and examining points at which the narrative presents choices, points of divergence, or narrative crossroads. We don’t do this for all texts, however, as the shorter ones do not seem to gain much from this process and it simply breaks up the reading pleasure.
(9) Follow-up activities are needed, at the least, to round off the activity, to bring some sense of closure but they also offer an opportunity to link the reading experience more directly to the requirements of the syllabus. Indeed, the story may have been chosen in the first place because the context supports one of the themes that teachers are required to examine as part of the syllabus — for example, ’families’ ’science and technology’, ’communications’, ’the environment’ and all the other familiar themes. For many teachers this is an essential requirement if they are to engage in such extensive reading at all.
(10) The whole process — pre-, while and post reading — could be just an hour’s activity, or it could be last for more than one lesson. When we are designing the materials for exploring stories clearly it isn’t possible for us to know how much time any teacher will have available, which is why we construct the activities into a series of independent units which we call kits. They are called kits because we expect teachers to build their own lessons out of the materials we provide, which implies that large amounts maybe discarded. What we do ask, though, is that the pre-reading activities be included, if nothing else. This is essential for the process to engage the students as creative readers.
(11) One of the purposes of encouraging a creative reading approach in the language classroom is to do with the dynamics we perceive in the classroom. Strategic theorists tell us of the social trinity, whereby three elements are required to achieve a dynamic in any social situation. In the language classroom these might be seen as consisting of the student, the teacher and the language. Certainly from the perspective of the student — and usually from the perspective of the teacher — the relationship is an unequal one, with the language being perceived as placed closer to the teacher than the student. This will result in less dynamic between language and student than between language and the teacher. However, if we replace ’language’ with narrative and especially if that is approached as a creative process that draws the student in so that they feel their ’own’ the relationship with the text. Then this will shift the dynamic in the classroom so that the student, who has now become a reader, is much closer to the language — or narrative — than previously. This creates a much more effective dynamic of learning. However, some teachers feel threatened by this apparent loss of overall control and mastery. Indeed, the whole business of open—ended creativity and a lack of boxes to tick for the correct answer is quite unsettling territory for some to find themselves in.
It can be inferred from Paras. 1 and 2 that teachers used to________.
选项
A、oppose strongly the teaching of extended reading
B、be confused over how to teach extended reading
C、be against adopting new methods of teaching
D、teach extended reading in a perfunctory way
答案
D
解析
这二段中有很多文字表明了当时的阅读教学情况:horrors,full of tired teachers,cynical,weren’t going to convince,were’unimpressed,…作者描述了当时的情景,并指出“We needed a very different approach.”。选项A强烈反对教授泛读,选项B不知如何教授泛读,选项C反对采用新的办法教学,都比较片面,故答案为选项D。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/g0IK777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
A、Englishlanguageproficiency.B、Differentculturalpractices.C、Differentnegotiationtasks.D、TheAmericanizedstyle.B本题考查在J
(1)There’sthisgreatrecurringSaturdayNightLiveskitfromseveralyearsbackwherePhilHartmanplaysanunfrozencavemanw
(1)There’sthisgreatrecurringSaturdayNightLiveskitfromseveralyearsbackwherePhilHartmanplaysanunfrozencavemanw
FormanyyearsitwascommonintheUnitedStatestoassociateChineseAmericanswithrestaurantsandlaundries.Peopledidnot
PASSAGEONEWhywouldsomanyChineseAmericansinCaliforniabeinvolvedintheoccupationsofrestaurantsandlaundriesinth
(1)It’s7pmonabalmySaturdaynightinJune,andIhavejustorderedmyfirstbeerinICervejaria,arestaurantinZambujeir
随机试题
如何鉴别化脓性关节炎和滑膜型关节结核?
中期评审工作的特点是
低渗性缺水的主要病因有______。
护士进行家庭访视时,描述错误的是
A.推断样本所属的总体均数与已知总体均数是否不同B.推断两个样本所属的两总体均数是否不同C.推断多个样本所属的总体均数是否不同D.推断两个样本所属的两个总体率是否不同E.推断多个总体率是否不同样本均数与已知总体均数的差别作统计检验的目的
最有利于晕厥与闲性发作鉴别诊断的病史描述是
()安全装置的作用是,在操作到危险点之前,自动使机器停止或反向运动。
在PowerPoint中,建一个演示文档的第一张幻灯片的默认版式是()。
你作为第六次全国人口普查员,上门普查时,对方不开门,也不接受调查。怎么办?
以下叙述正确的是______。
最新回复
(
0
)