ENG515 Important Concepts

Task Kinds

Four kinds of tasks are called experience tasks, shared tasks,guided tasks, and independent tasks.

Rippen’s Approach

Five stages of Seow in the process approach to teaching writing

Planning, drafting, revising, and editing, responding, evaluating and post writing

Close Test

Every fifth word has been taken out of a reading passage that the learners

have never seen before. The learners must fill in the missing words by

guessing. They look at the words before and after the empty space to help

them guess the missing words. The test measures how close the reader’s

thought is to the writer’s thought.

Vocabulary Test and Teacher

The teacher should sit next to the learner while the test is being done to make sure that the learner takes the test seriously, follows a sensible test-taking strategy, knows how to

handle the slightly unusual test format, and is not experiencing reading

problems which might interfere with the sitting of the test. It is very

important that the teacher does this because it has happened that a whole

class of learners sitting a test have not taken it seriously and have got low

marks. In this case, the teacher then set up a programme to teach the vocabulary which the learners actually already knew.

Speed Reading Graphs

When learners do a regular speed reading course they keep a graph of their

speed and a graph of their comprehension, and for each passage they read,

the results are entered on the graphs. This can be highly motivating for

learners, particularly if their speed can be seen to increase and their comprehension

remains steady. Similar graphs for comprehension are used with

the SRA reading boxes. These graphs can be even more motivating if a goal is

set. For speed reading this could be a goal of around 300 words per minute.

Reading Logs

A log is a regular record of work done. When learners do extensive reading,

they can keep a log noting the title, level, degree of enjoyment, and time

taken to read for each graded reader or other book they read. Bamford and

Day (2004) have several suggestions about the form of these logs.

Dicto-comp

When doing a reproduction exercise the learners read or listen to a story and then they retell it without looking at the original. This type of composition is easier if the learners are allowed to read or listen to the story several times, before they write it. The teacher can tell the learners to try to write the story so that it is very similar to the original, or to add extra details and make changes if they wish. The same technique can be used with spoken instead of written input. The teacher reads a story to the class. After they have listened to the story, they must write it from their memory. If the teacher wants to give the learners a lot of help, the teacher reads the story several times, but not so many times that the learners can copy it exactly. As the learners cannot remember all the words of the story, they have to make up parts of it themselves. This gives them practice in composition. This exercise is sometimes called a dicto-comp

Experienced and Independent task

The difference between an experience and independent task lies in the control and preparation that goes into an experience task. Experience tasks are planned so that learners are faced with only one aspect of the task that is outside their previous experience. Independent tasks do not involve this degree of control and learners may be faced with several kinds of difficulty in the same task.

The Purpose of Reinforcement Writing

Reinforcement writing has always been used as a means of reinforcing language that has, been taught. In its simplest form, teachers often ask students to write sentences using recently learnt grammar. Suppose, for example, that intermediate students have recently been practicing the third conditional (If + had (not) done + would (not) have done), they might be given the following instruction: Write two sentences about things you wish had turned out differently, and two sentences about things you are pleased about.

Activity Writing

Writing can also, of course, be used as an integral part of a larger activity where the focus is on something else such as language practice, acting out, or speaking. Teachers often ask students to write short dialogues which they will then act out. The dialogues are often most useful if planned to practice particular functional areas, such as inviting or suggesting.

English as a Second Language (ESL) - this term is normally used to describe students who are living in the target language community and who need English to function in that community on a day-to-day basis, Recent immigrants and refugees, for example, will have specific writing needs such as the ability to fill in a range of forms, or write particular kinds of letters (depending upon their exact needs and circumstances), alongside the need for general English development.

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) - many students study English for a particular (or specific) purpose. People who are going to work as nurses in Britain or the USA, for example, will study medical English. Those who are going to study at an English-medium university need to concentrate on English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Business students will concentrate on the language of management and commerce, and so on,

Creative Writing

Creative writing is one area (like painting and composing) where the imagination has a chance to run free. The world is full of people who achieve great personal satisfaction in this way. In their book Process Writing, the authors Ron White and Valerie Arndt describe an approach that ‘views all writing — even the most mundane and routine ~ as creative’. Such an approach would even include, at some level, the putting together of a shopping list, But we are concerned here with tasks that provoke students to go beyond the everyday, and which ask them to spread their linguistic wings, take some chances, and use the language they are learning to express more personal or more complex thoughts and images.