Structural information exercises

Structural information exercises are performed both in reading aloud and in silent reading. Students are taught how to read sentences, paragraphs, texts correctly. For instance: Flashcard reading game

Pick up your bags.

Go up to the door.

Point to me.

The teacher needs pieces of card with various commands written on them:

One student then stands behind the teacher. The teacher holds up the flashcard to show the rest of the class, who then have to obey the command written on the flashcard. The student standing behind the teacher has to guess the exact words written on the card. This is especially good for practising personal and possessive pronouns. For example, if ‘ Point to me’ is written on the card, the student must say this and not ‘ Point to you ’.

To be able to understand the sentence structure is an important step made towards the text comprehension. There are 42 structures to be learned during the 1^st year and 28 structures to be learned during the 2^nd year of study. This job can be made easier if the teacher uses word cards in blocks to compose sentences. It can be done on an easel/flannel/magnet-type board. The same kind of cards may be used as handout material to work in pairs. Having received the teacher’s task, the students compose the cards into the structures under study. This is done for reading technique development and for acquiring the mechanism of production of an utterance at the level of a single phrase. The exercises are aimed at composing a structure, at pattern substitution, at pattern transformation(extension and the like). E.g.: (a) Composing the structure

a

cat.

a

have

bag.

a

have

You

bag.

a

have

I

pencil.

a

have

I

(b) Substitution

He

I

She

(c) Substitution and transformation combined

has

Transformation a cat.

Substitutionhas has a cat.

(d) Transformation

studies

He

He

study

Does

at school.

he at school?

study

not

does

at school.

(e) Jigsaw picture/text game

This can be made quite simply. You need a piece of strong card, but one, which can be easily cut up into jigsaw shapes. Stick a picture from a poster or a calendar on one side of the card and a sentence (or a text) on the other. Finally, it can be cut into jigsaw shapes. If the sentence (or a text) and the picture are connected and are on a subject of interest to the students, then it can be a highly motivating game for low ability students.

(f) Matching game

The idea here is for students to make up completed recipes by matching the right title and ingredients to the right instructions. Three or four recipes are cut up into the three sections and pasted on the cards. The students can be required to match words to words, or words to pictures and the like.

Special attention is given to intonation, since it is of great significance for actual division of sentences into meaningful segments. Marking stress in the word combinations and sense groups singled out of the text and in the text itself can be very helpful: in_Èthe_È`classroom, at<sub>È</sub> the<sub>È</sub>`table. `This is a_\table. etc.

At the early stage of teaching reading, the teacher should read a sentence or a passage to the class himself. When he is sure that the students understand the passage, he can set individuals and the whole group to repeat sentences after him, reading again himself if the students’ reading is poor. The students follow his reading in their books. The procedure may look like this: T – Cl – T – P₁ – T – P₂ – T – P_n – T – Cl.

This kind of elementary reading practice should be carried on for a limited number of lessons only. When the class has advanced far enough to be ready for more independent reading, reading in chorus might be decreased, but not eliminated. The procedure is transformed into: T – Cl – P₁ – P₂ – P_n. When the students have learned to associate written symbols with the sounds these stand for, they should read a sentence or a passage by themselves. In this way, the students get a chance to make use of their knowledge of the rules of reading and an opportunity to manifest their ability to read to the teacher. The procedure is again transformed, but this time it looks like: P₁ – P₂ – P_n – T (Sp) – Cl (Sp).

Дата добавления: 2015-10-23