MASARYK UNIVERSITY. The Use of Authentic Texts in English Lessons

Transcription

1 MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF EDUCATION Department of English Language and Literature The Use of Authentic Texts in English Lessons Diploma thesis Brno 2014 Supervisor: Mgr. Radek Vogel, Ph.D Author: Mgr. Kristýna Loudová

2 Bibliografický záznam LOUDOVÁ, Kristýna. The Use of Authentic Texts in English Lessons. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, Fakulta pedagogická, Katedra anglického jazyka a literatury, Vedoucí diplomové práce Mgr. Radek Vogel, Ph.D. 2

3 Annotation The thesis aims to provide English teachers and their adult learners with practically oriented teaching units based on the authentic materials obtained directly from their original context and language community. Furthermore, the thesis goes on to prove that even within an artificial environment it is possible to profit from the authentic text s multifarious advantages. The use of appropriate activities enables to maintain the text s original communicative purpose; therefore maximizes its authenticity level. The theoretical part defines the term authentic text, compares the different concepts of authenticity, characterizes the reading process, skills and strategies, and mentions the principles of adult teaching. In the practical part the author states the research objectives, introduces the selected texts and activities, and presents the designed lesson plans. Lastly, the teacher s perspectives on piloted lessons and the learners' feedback are presented, followed by the summary of the research findings and the author s interpretation. Anotace Cílem této práce je vytvořit prakticky zaměřené hodiny anglické jazyka pro dospělé studenty a jejich učitele. Výukové jednotky jsou sestaveny na základě autentických textů, které byly získány z jejich originálního kontextu a jazykového prostředí. Autorka se snaží dokázat, že i v uměle vytvořených podmínkách je možné plně využít výhod autentického textu. Výběr vhodných aktivit umožňuje zachovat původní komunikační záměr textu, a tudíž i jeho autenticitu. Teoretická část práce definuje termín autentický text, srovnává různá pojetí autenticity, popisuje proces čtení, čtecí dovednosti a strategie a zmiňuje základní principy výuky dospělých. V praktické části autorka stanovuje cíle výzkumu a představuje zvolené texty, aktivity a vlastní návrhy plánů hodin. Závěr práce je věnován autorčiným postřehům z odučených hodin, zpětné vazbě studentů a shrnutí výsledků průzkumu a jejich interpretaci. Keywords authenticity, authentic text, teaching reading, adult learner, pre-intermediate level, lesson plan, pilot lesson, questionnaire, traveling Klíčová slova autenticita, autentický text, výuka čtení, výuka dospělých, mírně pokročilí, plán vyučovací hodiny, pilotní výuka, dotazník, cestování 3

4 Declaration I hereby declare that this diploma thesis is my own work and that I used the only sources listed in the list of references. Prohlášení Prohlašuji, že jsem závěrečnou diplomovou práci vypracovala samostatně, s využitím pouze citovaných literárních pramenů, dalších informací a zdrojů v souladu s Disciplinárním řádem pro studenty Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy univerzity a se zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb., o právu autorském, o právech souvisejících s právem autorským a o změně některých zákonů (autorský zákon), ve znění pozdějších předpisů.... Mgr. Kristýna Loudová 4

5 Acknowledgements My thanks are due to Mgr. Radek Vogel, Ph.D, who supervised this thesis, for his patience and valuable advice. I would like to thank Mr. Charles du Parc for his help with the language aspect of the thesis. I also would like to express thanks to Tareco family, who enabled my overseas stay in the USA. My special thanks go to my family for their support. Mgr. Kristýna Loudová 5

6 Contents 1 Introduction Authentic texts and authenticity Concept of Authenticity Types of authenticity and its criteria Advantages of authentic texts Disadvantages of authentic texts Types of authentic texts Choice of the authentic text Reading Process of reading Types of reading Intensive reading Role of the teacher and reading principles Reading activities Tasks Types of reading activities Phase of lesson Language processing and authenticity criterion Other common exercises Willis taxonomy of tasks Maley s taxonomy of tasks Cross-referenced task typologies Choice of reading activities Task authenticity and its rules Adult learners Adult learners advantages in ELT Adult learners disadvantages in ELT Personal relationship Principles of adult teaching Research objectives and methodology Research aims Research procedure

7 5.3 Research method Specification of employed materials Authentic texts used Activities and tasks used Lesson plans Lesson 1: USA Admission Documents Lesson 2: Money Lesson 3: Public Transport Lesson 4: Accommodation Lesson 5: Traveling and Sightseeing Lesson 6: Medicine and Insurance Research Learners' group specification Lessons' description Lesson Lesson Lesson Lesson Lesson Lesson Learners' Feedback Evaluation and improvements Lesson Lesson Lesson Lesson Lesson Lesson Discussion Conclusion References List of tables and figures Appendices

8 1 Introduction Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. (Twain M., n. d.) Man today lives in an age of undreamed of opportunities that enable him to explore the whole world, expand horizons, and experience new cultures, ideas, and opinions. It is undeniable that knowledge of the English language is a key that opens gates. However, it is not always an easy task to travel to foreign countries facing different languages, customs, and systems of justice. Generations of Czech people were raised under the communist regime, when the privilege of travelling as well as language study opportunities were restricted. This thesis aims to help teachers impart the knowledge how to survive in an English speaking environment to students with limited foreign language command. The master s thesis The Use of Authentic Texts in English Lessons is an attempt to provide teachers of pre-intermediate English courses with materials that will equip their learners with the knowledge, language and skills that are essential for travelling. The author of this thesis has been dealing with courses of this kind; therefore aims to prepare relevant, tried and tested teaching resources based on real-life situations for her own students. The output of this thesis should be a useful, practical and authentic survivor manual for an overseas stay in the USA or other English speaking countries. Regarding the authentic texts, it is generally believed that their use in ELT is beneficial. However, opinions of some scholars differ significantly, claiming that text authenticity does not exist outside of its original communicative purpose and socio-cultural context. Thus, it is not possible to maintain authenticity within the artificial conditions of the classroom (Mishan, 2005, p. 13). The author of this thesis disagrees with these notions and as a second aim determines to prove that even the classroom environment allows teachers to maximize the benefits of authenticity of the material and enables students to profit from its advantages. The thesis consists of nine chapters. The first chapter defines the term authentic text and enumerates the advantages and disadvantages of its use in ELT. The following paragraphs 8

9 deal with the text choices, types, and sources, along with activity design. The second chapter covers the reading comprehension and the reading process. Furthermore, it deals with the types of reading skills and reading strategies, especially reading for details. It comprises also work with texts, its phases and frequent problems. The following chapter focuses on the specificity of adult learners and principles of adult teaching. The theoretical part of the thesis is built on studies by Jeremy Harmer, Jim Scrivener, Freda Mishan, and Catherine Wallace. The practical part of the thesis comprises five chapters. The first one describes the research aims, procedure and method. The second chapter characterises selected authentic texts and activities. The next chapter includes six lesson plans based on various authentic texts: Visa, ESTA and APIS applications, ATM screenshots, a bus schedule, subway map, accommodation rules leaflets, travel brochures, a health insurance card, claim information form and patient information leaflet, all acquired mostly from the author s stay abroad. The following most important chapter gives details about the lesson plan piloting. It includes the learners' group specification, lesson description, learners' feedback, as well as evaluation and suggestions for improvement. The very last chapter summarizes the research findings. As for the sources of methods and activities, the author draws mainly on works by David Seymour, Maria Popova, Susan Sheerin and Liz Driscoll. The appendices contain the authentic texts that are the subjects of the presented lesson plans, as well as additional materials, such as visuals, hand-outs, exercises etc. and also feedback questionnaires. 9

10 2 Authentic texts and authenticity The term authentic texts refers to materials that are not prepared for learning purposes, but are intended primarily for native speakers and their author is also a native speaker. One of the first definitions comes from Morrow (1977): an authentic text is a stretch of real language, produced by a real speaker or writer for a real audience and designed to convey a real message of some sort (p. 13). The deciding criterion of an authentic text was for Morrow the purpose of communicating information. Wallace (1992) defines them as real-life texts, not written for pedagogic purposes (p. 145). Peacock (1997) characterises them as materials that have been produced to fulfil some social purpose in the language community (p. 146). According to Nunan (1999), authentic texts are written language data that has been produced in the course of genuine communication, and not specifically written for purposes of language teaching (p. 35). They are considered to be authentic language data from realworld contexts outside of the classroom (Oura, 2003, p. 67). The normal, natural language of authentic texts allows no concessions to foreign speakers and it is important to teach such language because that is what learners encounter in everyday life (Harmer, 1991, p. 273). In other words, these texts do not allow any reductive simplification such as morphological and syntactical adjustments so typical of texts designed for pedagogical purposes. 2.1 Concept of Authenticity Freda Mishan (2005) reports that authenticity has become a predominant paradigm for language teaching at the end of the 20 th century (p. xi). She sees the reason for this boom in the close connection between the sociological and pedagogical movements. The rush development of communications technologies has resulted in access to large amounts of various authentic texts. Moreover, current learners have become more responsible for their own learning; therefore the demand for authenticity in ELT have increased. Nowadays, much more stress is put on the authenticity of target language text, information about target culture, and interactions when acquiring this information (Mishan, 2005, p. xi). 10

11 However, it is not easy to decide, whether some material is authentic or not. As Meinhof (1987) states, authentic is the original piece of written or spoken language which occurred naturally between native speakers and could therefore be accepted as genuine communicative acts (p. 40). In other words, according to this strict definition, every piece of authentic text used in class for pedagogic purposes loses its authenticity. Although its origin is authentic, it does not appear in its natural socio-cultural environment. Also Widdowson (1990) asserts that authentic is material designed for native speakers of English used in the classroom in a way similar to the one it was designed for (p. 67). He also points out that in ELT authentic materials are usually used in an artificial way (they are used differently than they had been originally intended). Jacobson (2003) confirms this opinion when claiming that it is not simply the format of a text that makes it authentic, but how the materials are used and he stresses that even authentic materials can be used in either authentic or school-only way (p. 2). In short, it is not possible to ensure pure authenticity in the classroom, but teachers and learners can still benefit from authentic texts providing they are not presented in a non- authentic way, using unnatural, made-up exercises and tasks Types of authenticity and its criteria According to scholars, there are various criteria to assess authenticity of reading activities. Wallace introduces the category of authenticity of genre. She suggests that even teacher-written materials can be used successfully, when authenticity of genre (such as advertisement, news, detective story etc.) is maintained. However, she admits that the authenticity of a writer s purpose is lost. The genre serves as an organizer. There are certain rules and conventions that makes the text predictable and therefore comprehensible, which is very helpful especially for less advanced learners (Wallace,1992, p. 79). Breen and Widdowson come with a more elaborate division of different types of authenticity based not on material itself, but merely on an interaction between reader and text. Breen complicates matters further when he relates authenticity to the social context of classroom and the learners reaction to the extract. He distinguishes four different types of authenticity within the classroom: authenticity of texts, authenticity of learners own 11

12 interpretations of such texts, authenticity of tasks conducive to language learning, and authenticity of actual social situation of classroom language (as cited in Wallace, 1992, p. 81). According to his point of view, the first thing to consider, when choosing material for authentic reading, is whether it engages students prior knowledge and interest and whether they are going to be able to use it for their own purposes. Widdowson s words just confirm Breed s theory when pointing out that authenticity is based on the interaction between readers and text and how they use it for themselves. In other words, what feelings students have, how they approach the text and what they learn from it (Wallace, 1992, p. 81). According to this notion, the authenticity of text is not talked about, but the authenticity of language use that is linked to the response of language users. Widdowson emphasizes that no material can be authentic out of its original context: reality does not travel with the text (as cited in Mishan, 2005, p. 13). To sum up, both authors support a contention that authenticity is an interaction between reader and text, not the text itself. In order to exploit the full potential of a text and to maintain its aim, it is necessary to present authentic materials in the way readers approach it in an everyday situation. On the contrary, Harmer admits that it is not easy to decide what is or is not authentic because even in real-life situations people use simplified, more comprehensible language such as baby talk, stage play etc. (Harmer, 1991, p. 274). Mishan in her book tries to conclude a debate about various definitions and types of authenticity presenting criteria how to assess text authenticity when creating learning materials. She claims authenticity is a factor of provenance and authorship, original communicative and socio-cultural purpose original context learning activity and learner s attitude to activities and the text itself (Mishan, 2005, p. 17). Considering the concept of authenticity, the author of this thesis agrees with Jacobson that it is not the text itself, but the tasks and activities, what makes the lesson content authentic. The author believes that authentic texts should be followed by the real-life exercises that imitate real-life situations. According to the author, the key to success is to maintain the authentic text s communicative purpose (see chapter ). Although the text does not appear in its natural socio-cultural environment, it still fulfils the same function. In other words, the learner s interaction with the text is identical with the one of a native speaker. 12

13 2.2 Advantages of authentic texts It is more than advisable to employ authentic texts in ELT especially due to their authenticity. Text structure and choice of vocabulary are in accordance with the needs of real discourse. Authentic texts contain not only contemporary language that is current and responsive to changes, but also life and institutions, which means they possess an intrinsic educational value. In addition, they deal with a wide range of language styles that are not presented in ordinary textbooks. They are unquestionably a rich and varied source of language input. Mishan mentions the Krashen s theory that input should be just above the current level of the learner, but comprehensible enough for him/her to grasp the meaning in order to spur acquisition (as cited in Mishan, 2005, p. 23). These texts do not allow any simplifications such as morphological and syntactic adjustments. Structure of sentences is more complex, common is the use of clauses, idioms, colloquialism, and metaphors. Furthermore, she states that elaborative the changes of an authentic text are better for comprehension than simplification. According to her, authentic texts support the natural and consciousness-raising way of learning grammar and they stimulate the so-called whole-brain processing that leads to more durable learning (Mishan, 2005, p. 23, 43). Secondly, it is believed that the content of authentic texts corresponds with the needs and interests of students more than conventional teaching texts. They motivate learners because they demonstrate how knowledge of a foreign language can be applied in real life situations; thereby they produce a sense of achievement. Brinton claims that authentic texts reinforce for students the direct relationship between the language classroom and the outside world and Gebhard considers them to be a way to contextualize language learning (as cited in Oura, 2003, p. 68). Motivation for language learning is mostly defined either as integrative or instrumental. The former term refers to a student s need to integrate with the community of the target language, the latter stands for the need to achieve a certain practical goal. Surprisingly, it is the instrumental motivation that plays the most significant role in language learning. Authentic texts are being perceived as a bridge between learners and the target language culture, however students learning a language far from the country of its origin are motivated mostly instrumentally. In short, motivation, in respect of the attitude towards authentic texts, depends not only on learners preferences but also on the language learning situation (Mishan, 2005, 26). 13

14 Thirdly, authentic texts represent the target language culture. Every piece of linguistic material of a society such as headlines, advertisements, food labels, leaflets etc. is a product of that society s culture. Even the humblest material artefact, which is the product and symbol of a particular civilisation, it is an emissary of the culture out of which it comes (Mishan, 2005, p. 45). Such texts raise the awareness of the target language culture, which is crucial especially for students learning foreign languages outside the countries of their origin. They teach about the cultural-specifics that are necessary for a command of the language. In contrast, course books are often criticised for inhibiting language teaching because they do not develop language schemata. Schemata are considered to be groups of concepts that form our background-knowledge about events, scenarios, and objects and influence learners expectations when reading. Of course, even authentic texts do not have to convey culture in an explicit way and students need to learn how to read between the lines to find out about the specific aspects of culture. This particular skill is called cultural awareness and it leads to the empathy that is so important for understanding foreign society and perception of new reality (Mishan, 2005, p. 46). In addition, authentic materials are topical in both subject matter and language. Moreover, they bring a currency that can never be reached by course books. The integration of such texts helps to cover more controversial and up-to-date issues. And last but not least, the text difficulty might also be seen as an advantage because challenge is considered to be an impulse in learning. This notion is supported by the fact that it is not the difficulty level of texts, but the difficulty level of tasks and activities that matters. Even proficiency level materials can be used in elementary classes providing appropriate tasks are introduced. 2.3 Disadvantages of authentic texts One of the cons of authentic texts is the difficulty of comprehensibility outside the language community caused by the different socio-cultural knowledge and experience of learners. Also vocabulary choices can be irrelevant for their immediate needs. Furthermore, even words already familiar to students can often occur in an unknown context or phrase (Wallace, 1992, p. 76). For lower level learners comprehension might be impossible due to a great variety and mixture of structures used. For example, word order might not follow grammatical rules and grammatical relationships are not clearly marked. Work with authentic 14

15 texts demand thoroughgoing, therefore time-consuming, preparation by the teacher. Moreover, some types of authentic texts (e.g. newspaper article) become outdated very quickly (Martinez, 1991, p. 2). In addition, Mishan (2005) argues that, regardless of the fact comprehensible input leads to language acquisition, it does not necessarily mean it turns into useable learner knowledge In other words, what is understood is not automatically acquired. In short, what is at one time considered to be an advantage can easily turn into a disadvantage. Carelessly chosen materials can become extremely demotivating because learners do not understand, which implies how little they know, instead of what they have already learned (Harmer, 1991, p. 274). 2.4 Types of authentic texts Nowadays, media and institutions offer a really wide range of authentic texts. The most common are newspapers, application forms, flyers, brochures, schedules, assessment reports, and election materials. Useful are also advertisements, magazines articles, weather forecasts, ads, manuals, receipts, bank instructions, airport notices, cards, forms, welfare rules, loan paperwork, arrest rules, Internet search engines, chats, s, letters, taped conversations, meetings, talks, and announcements (Jacobson, 2003, p. 85). Further examples from every-day life are slogans, posters, menus, timetables, catalogues, iconographic texts, headlines, and signs. One of the biggest groups comprises novels, poetry, drama, song lyrics, rhymes, and proverbs. 2.5 Choice of the authentic text When considering the choice of an authentic text for ELT is considered, it is necessary to bear in mind that the goal of a lesson is not the text itself; it should be just a device for reaching the target. The key point is to use a text as effectively as possible. It should be in its original form and delivered in an original context. It should be relevant to the age and language level of the students. Moreover, it is important to consider the level of 15

16 comprehension - whether the aim is intensive or extensive comprehension, or the goal lies in lexical (expanding vocabulary range, synonyms, antonyms), semantic (new meaning of already known words), syntactic (implicit or explicit utterance), textual (the choice of crucial information), or pragmatic sphere (learners are able to use the language as a communication device). To sum up, it is important to assess text s compatibility with course objectives and its exploitability: for what purposes such text should be exploited and which skills are going to be developed (Wallace, 1992, p. 71). Furthermore, it is necessary to focus on students starting language skills and topic knowledge. Then teachers should analyse an excerpt and consider, if it is related to some reallife experience and if it encourages further reading (suitability of content). The chosen text definitely needs to arouse students interest and grab their attention. It should be attractive and relevant to their needs. Starting points for a high motivation and developmental progress are learners goals and interests. The instructional input must be challenging and relevant (Mishan, 2005, 27). In addition, the language aspect of a text is very important and teachers should take into account the proportion of already known and yet unknown grammar and vocabulary. A crucial aspect for comprehension and complexity is the average length of sentences and frequency of words; therefore shorter texts are selected generally for the lower levels of English. However, the main principle when introducing an authentic text in class is to keep in mind that it is not the text itself, but it is the activities and tasks that make the learning effective. Of course, the choice of text is important, but the choice of appropriate tasks is decisive (Mishan, 2005, p. 62). The level of a text can be adjusted to any level of language knowledge by choice of reading activities (see chapter ). When choosing authentic texts for her lesson plans, the author draws on ideas of Mishan and Wallace and follows their suggestions and steps in order to select an effective materials are substantial for the lesson success. 3 Reading There are four different ways by which people use language to convey information: they speak, read, listen, and write; therefore foreign language acquisition also demands these four 16

17 skills. Basically, these language skills are divided into two groups: speaking and writing are considered to be productive skills because learners are supposed to actively produce language themselves, in contrast, receptive skills, namely listening and writing, require to extract meaning from discourse. It is believed that these skills can not be taught in isolation because real communication involves all of them. In meaningful communication people employ incremental language skills not in isolation, but in tandem claims Hinkel (as cited in Harmer, 1991, p. 113). Both reading and listening are often considered to be more passive, however even these activities demand a considerable language activation. In other words, readers or listeners need to employ their brains using their knowledge in order to get the meaning of an utterance or text. Naturally, people involved in conversation need to speak and listen at the same time to be able to interact, equally reading leads to further conversation or written reaction, which means it makes no sense to teach these skills separately (Harmer,1991, p. 265). This thesis integrates speaking, writing, and listening, but the main focus area is the reading skill. The most obvious reason for reading is to get a piece of desired information; however reading also plays an important role in language acquisition. Readers encounter not only a wide range of vocabulary and grammar, but also see the way sentences and paragraphs are constructed within a text that serves as a good model for English writing. The side effect of reading for pleasure or particular information is always language acquisition. Moreover, teachers often use text reading as a topic introduction or to evoke discussions (Harmer,1991, p. 99). It is undisputed that reading is very beneficial in ELT; however, teachers face certain difficulties when introducing texts in classes. One of the most common problems is the learners assumption that they need to translate every single word. Such an approach is very time consuming and leads to boredom and loss of interest. At the same time, it does not necessarily improve their comprehension skills. Secondly, many students claim they are not able to understand the meaning of sentences, even though they decode every individual word. The way to make them better readers is to persuade them that it is not essential to understand every word and to make them read naturally, the same way they handle texts in real life situations, focusing on achieving a specific and useful goal, rather than translating the whole text word by word (Scrivener, 1998, p. 185). 17

18 3.1 Process of reading Wallace deplores the tendency to perceive reading as the text itself, as a static product. She claims that reading is a dynamic process of the reader s progression through a text (Wallace, 1992, p. 39). Nevertheless, Alderson suggests that product is what readers have gained from a text, but the way he or she reached this opinion or knowledge is called process. He believes that the text itself is not a carrier of meaning and its relation with reader is rather variable and moving. As Wallace agrees: texts do not contain meaning; rather they have potential for meaning (Wallace, 1992, p. 39). In short, reading refers to readers interaction with a text. Goodman comes up with a somewhat good-humoured, but apt expression that defines reading as a psycholinguistic guessing game. He implies readers rely on three levels of language: graphophonic, syntactic, and semantic cues. In order to understand the text s meaning, readers combine these cues, for instance knowledge of spelling, word order, and chunks (Wallace, 1992, p. 40). Hence, when learners are asked to complete the sentence Peter went to shop and a new jacket, they will probably assume that Peter did not went to shop and boat/boot a new jacket. Their syntactic skills will tell them that there needs to be some verb in the sentence and they use their general semantic knowledge to guess what people normally do in shops. Scholars such as Gardner, Lunzer, Smith as well as Goodman concur that reading is a unitary process, not a set of skills that would result in an effective reading (as cited in Wallace, 1992, p. 42). They come up with a notion that effectiveness in reading is based on strategies rather than skills. These strategies depend on a reading purpose, context, and text genre. The most crucial strategy is considered to be the selection of the minimum amount of relevant information and not the use of all possible cues. In short, Wallace (1992) suggests that in the secondary language teaching it is necessary to employ tasks that maximize the use of learners current linguistic and schematic knowledge. Furthermore, she points out that text interpretations are always influenced by social, affective, cognitive, as well as psychological factors. Although reading interpretation might seem to be a personal matter, every point of view is socially constructed (Wallace, 1992, p. 43) In other words, readers perceive a text in the same way as people with the same social background (same religion, political beliefs, ethnic group etc.) do. Another aspect that can shape comprehension is intertextuality. There is almost always a cross-reference between the text that is being read and materials dealing with 18

19 the same topic or written by the same author that were read before (Wallace, 1992, p. 47). That means the earlier read texts influence a reader s interpretation of the current texts. 3.2 Types of reading It is believed that in order to maximize the benefits of reading learners should face both major types of reading extensive and intensive. Extensive reading is also called joyful reading and it refers to reading for pleasure that takes place mostly outside the classroom (Harmer, 1991, p. 99). Learners are also often encouraged to choose longer texts of their own preference. Nevertheless, reading should be still controlled by the teacher giving students opportunity to share their experiences meaningfully during the class. Lecturers should also provide them with corresponding materials, guidance, and tasks. So-called graded readers that are designed for readers of a certain level, are very effective. These materials are adapted to the learners needs and skills, which means they make sure students understand the plot and enjoy the reading, which is actually the main aim of extensive reading. However, it is obvious that these texts are missing the language authenticity that is so typical for materials dedicated to native speakers; therefore this thesis deals mostly with intensive reading. This type of reading is usually done during lessons and uses much shorter texts such as magazine articles, poems, leaflets, websites extracts, instructions, menus, timetables, signs etc. and it is focused on the text construction (Harmer, 1991, p. 99) Intensive reading Generally, there are two aims of intensive reading. Firstly, there is fast reading for the gist of an extract called skimming. Students are supposed to skim quickly through a passage and get the plot, identify the main ideas and topics, and get familiar with the text structure. Scanning, on the other hand, focuses on detailed information. Learners quickly scan a text to find a paragraph containing particular data. However, both types are quick; thus do not require reading every single word and line and are considered to be so-called top-down skills (Scrivener, 1998, p. 185). 19

20 Top-down processing refers to an activity when reader gets a general view of the extract, moving from a big plot to small detailed items. It might seem that scanning is more of a bottom-up activity because readers focus on individual words and pieces of information. However, Scrivener (1998) claims that the way that a reader finds those details involves processing the whole text, moving her eyes quickly over the whole page (p. 185). In other words, even when scanning, the reader gets an overall picture of the passage. On the contrary, a bottom-up processing is based on focussing on phrases, cohesive devices, and single words, putting these details together in order to build up the whole message of the text. It can be understood as getting through small elements to the big idea. As Harmer (1991) acknowledges, the most beneficial way to approach a text is to combine top-down and bottom-up processing: sometimes it is the individual details that help us understand the whole; sometimes it is our overview that allows us to process the details (p. 270). To sum up, understanding single elements is useless without a general understanding and it is difficult to comprehend the global meaning without understanding a reasonable amount of details at the same time. According to Mishan (2005), elementary knowledge of target language enables top-down processing because learners have a poor syntactic and lexical knowledge and therefore rely on their previous general knowledge in order to understand. As a result, authentic texts are the best type of texts for top-down processing because they present topics that are already known to students from their everyday life. She also implies that students can benefit even more when practising processing strategies rather than focusing on correct grammar. In addition, Wallace (1992) introduces a slightly different typology of reading. The main criterion is also the purpose of reading as such. The first type is what she calls the reading for survival that she defines as a reading serving our immediate needs and wishes. This category involves reading road signs, street signs, advertisements, safety regulations, restrictions, timetables, patient information leaflets, food labels, clothing tags etc. Besides, in Ravinger s view there is another type: the literacy need for citizenship, which refers to ability to fill in forms, knowledge of rights and duties etc. (as cited in Wallace, 1992, p. 8). The focus of this thesis is actually on these kinds of reading and texts based on day-to-day use. The third type is called reading for learning and refers to an activity that enhances reader s general knowledge. It does not necessarily have to be related to schooling because materials such as instructions on equipment, user manuals or cooking recipes also expand reader s skills. Wallace (1992) determines reading for pleasure in the same way as Harmer; moreover, she adds the literacy 20

21 need of maintaining of personal relationship that encompasses letters, s, and nowadays also chats and social networks. 3.3 Role of the teacher and reading principles As has already been mentioned in the previous paragraph, intensive reading is a fast reading for a specific information or the main idea that can be implemented in lessons; therefore the role of the teacher is crucial. The main and the most difficult task is to create learners interest in reading. To reach this goal, it is a good idea to present materials of a student s choice where they can show their knowledge and feelings towards the topic. Instead of using an extract from a course book and asking about the ideas mentioned in the text, it is much better to discuss learners own opinions. As Harmer (1991) emphasizes, teachers should always ask their students how they like the text in order to give them space for an emotional reaction and text engagement (p. 288). A very good introduction to reading is brainstorming activities about facts that the students already know about the following topic and what they expect to learn from the next paragraphs. This raises their interest because they want to find out whether their assumption were correct, in addition they want to get answers to their questions. Another of Harmer s suggestions is to divide students into groups and let them read different paragraphs of the story. Missing a crucial part of a plot, students are much more willing to read, listen, and share. Furthermore, lecturers should be able to set a target and tell learners the exact and meaningful purpose of the following reading activity. Instructions should be clear and there might be a time limit for such activity. Certainly, teachers need to observe the class when reading in order to find out whether they have enough time for completing the task (Harmer, 1991, p. 286). Of course, feedback has to follow to find out, how successful was the general comprehension was. Moreover, such feedback can develop into lively discussions. Last but not least, lecturers should not forget to refer to language features within the text, especially to those that are as yet unknown to learners. The same applies when it comes to extensive reading; however here a supportive and positive attitude is even more important because 21

22 students motivation needs to be high, in order to read some longer excerpts or even books in their free time. The role of the teacher, when introducing a reading, is closely connected to reading principles. Harmer (1991) provides lecturers with six rules that should lead to efficient reading in lessons: 1 Encourage students to read as often and as much as possible. 2 Students need to be engaged with what they are doing. 3 Encourage students to respond to the content of a text (and explore their feelings about it), not just concentrate on its construction. 4 Prediction is a major factor in reading. 5 Match the task to the topic when using intensive reading texts. 6 Good teachers exploit reading texts to the full. (p. 101). Many pedagogues assume that it is crucial to encourage both extensive and intensive reading. During lessons students need to be fully engaged with the theme and tasks connected with the piece of presented text. They are supposed to notice the structure, grammar, and choice of vocabulary of a text. Whereas, when reading extensively at home, the main aim should be pleasure and joyful reading, time when they relax and have fun. However, the conveyed message and meaning need to be understood in both cases. Harmer suggests that teachers give students enough space to show their emotions and to provoke their personal engagement (Harmer, 1991, p. 101). To support comprehension, every text should be introduced with a pre-reading activity. In this period pictures, headlines, and book covers can be presented in order to give students hints about the content and help them to get into the article. Such materials initiate thinking and predictions. Expectations are set and the active process of reading is ready to begin (Harmer, 1991 p. 102). In addition, not only the text choice, but also the choice of tasks connected with reading are extremely important. Even the most attractive text can be completely ruined by boring and useless exercises. The choice of activities during and after reading can adjust an advanced text for intermediate students by changing the level of challenge (how difficult is to fulfil the task) (Harmer, 1991, p. 102). When coming up with reading activities, teachers should keep in 22

23 mind to exploit texts as much as possible. Such lesson plan can be fully based on the particular excerpt that determines the entire lecture topic. All tasks need to be integrated into this plan because it is not effective to jump from a reading to something else without giving any feedback, as well as to surprise learners with an unknown text without any previous introductory tasks. All things considered, it is necessary to be supportive and encourage students when reading and to give them guidance especially when struggling with authentic texts designed for native or competent speakers. 3.4 Reading activities As has already been mentioned in the previous paragraph, choosing an appropriate reading activity is as important as the text choice. According to Scrivener, one indicator of a classroom reading work is adherence to a real-life purpose; however he adds that it is possible to train specific reading strategies and techniques without any reflection on real-life situations (Scrivener, 1998, p. 186). Nevertheless, even such tasks as these should always be accompanied by tasks that imply the real purpose of a text in order to show students the way these materials are approached in everyday life. Basically, it is useful to let learners underline phrasal verbs in a tourist leaflet, although tourists would never do so, but it is necessary to add another task asking students to search for information about opening times, entrance fees etc. The use of creative tasks and authentic materials engages emotions and effects a brain laterality; therefore maximises the brain s potential and leads to deeper learning (Mishan, 2005, p. 41) Tasks The term task is often used as a synonym for a language learning activity. What is generally understood by task as a pedagogical model was specified in the 1980s within the Communicative approach to language teaching. Mishan presents Prabhu s definition: an activity which required learners to arrive at an outcome from given information through some process of thought and which allowed teachers to control and regulate that process (Mishan, 2005, p. 42). However, newer definitions omit the teachers role in a task. Nunan claims that 23

24 (1999) a piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing and interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form (p.4). The majority of pedagogues refer to a task as meaningfocused communicative activity with a specific outcome that is related to the real-world. Based on these definitions, each task has three stages that differ in the relationship between students and teachers. In the pre-task stage learners are working as a class together, fully under the lecturer s control in order to explain the main aim of a task. The second stage is the task itself and it is characterized by individual or team work with minimum teacher assistance. The last part is the assessment of the outcome that is done by the teacher (Mishan, 2005, p. 69). However, the more contemporary definitions of task emphasize the importance of language focus; therefore differentiate task stages as follows: pre-task stage that involves introduction to the topic, task-circle consisting of the task itself, planning and report, and language focus stage including practise of new vocabulary and grammar patterns. Another point of view is described by Nunan (1999), who names four components of a reading task: goal, input, activities based on this input, and the role of teacher and learner in this activity. The model of task has changed as a result of a shift in responsibility for learning from teachers to learners and with the growing attempt at real communication in the classroom. The teacher is perceived as a facilitator, guide, and resource within the task (Mishan, 2005, p. 69) Types of reading activities There are many types of reading activities and they could be divided according to various principles. The most common criterion is the lesson phase; however Mishan (2005) differentiates them according to the type of language processing and authenticity. Nevertheless, it is possible to find far more complex taxonomies of reading activities, for example Prabhu s Bangalore Project or the newer task typologies of Willis and Malley (as cited in Mishan, 2005, p 88). Mishan compares the above mentioned taxonomies in detail, but for the purposes of this thesis the author finds more convenient Willis and Malley s divisions because they correspond more with needs of second language teaching today. 24

25 Phase of lesson Firstly, it is possible to classify reading activities according to the lesson phase. Before the actual reading starts teachers should introduce texts with some pre-reading activities that get learners interested in the topic and develop a connection between extracts and students own experiences, hobbies, and relations. The next step is to present some elements of the texts such as headlines, pictures, book-covers, key words and let students predict what these excerpts are going to be about. The ideas of such brainstorming can be noted down for later comparison after the texts were read. The following while-reading activities need to be explained properly before the reading itself. The teacher can ask students to skim through the text in order to get a brief overview and to be able to compare the actual story with their predictions. Another option would be to instruct them to put pictures or events in the correct order or to think of a possible title for the article etc. Then scanning can be introduced, which is a reading for a specific piece of information, followed by reading focused on meaning, where learners are filling in some forms, drawing sketches, and comparing ideas. Furthermore, the teacher can draw the learners attention to particular language aspects such as occurrence of some grammar and vocabulary or ask students to fill in exercises with the help of the extract. Even the new explanation of the usage and form of new grammar could be done on model texts. Last but not least come the follow-on tasks such as discussions, personalised stories, written reaction, and role-plays. The very last step should be the conclusion when the teacher or learners themselves summarize the main points and point out what they have learned or discovered (Scrivener, 1998, p. 187) Language processing and authenticity criterion Mishan (2005) also presents the previous notion when claiming every task has three stages (see chapter 3.4.1), in addition she differentiates activities according the type of language processing. The top-down activities involve tasks such as identifying characters, situations, topics, text-types, and inferring relationships, missing information, sequences of events, and anticipating outcomes. On the other hand, the bottom-up activities are segmenting 25

26 the input into comprehensible components, identifying redundancy, and selecting elements with semantic content. Furthermore, learners can be asked to detect semantic chunks, conjunctions, and discourse markers in order to identify relationships between constituents (Mishan, 2005, p 39). Another point of view presented by Mishan is to divide reading activities and tasks concerning their authenticity. Based on Nunan s ideas, tasks are divided into real-world activities and pedagogic tasks. The former demands performance that is typical beyond the classroom such as to read a newspaper article and write a letter to its editor. The latter are more traditional and are artificial, so in this case an appropriate task would be to read an article and answer comprehension questions. Nevertheless, it can be argued that task authenticity depends on students because what is an authentic activity to one student (a technician is supposed to read and mark up a technical manual) can be completely inauthentic to the others (Mishan, 2005, p. 71) Other common exercises Ur in her book claims that the most common reading activity is answering comprehension questions; however she provides teachers with good examples of wrongly constructed questions. Comprehension questions should not repeat the same vocabulary and grammar used in texts because then students just fill in the words as into slots without understanding their actual meaning. In this case paraphrasing is the solution (Ur, 1996, p. 143). A good choice is also to have already given students these questions during the prereading phase and let them guess possible answers. It makes them more interested in reading the following text. Another option would be to let students think of their own comprehension questions for their schoolmates. Besides questions, it is very popular to give students titles and let them guess the plot of an article or to give them articles and let them think about their possible headings. Moreover, it is possible to cut a text into pieces and let learners guess what is going to happen in the story or what happened at the beginning (Ur, 1996, p. 146). Another possibility is to ask them to put extracts or pictures into the correct order. The text can be gapped towards the end and learners are able to complete the gapped sentence only when they have understood the previous paragraphs. Ur (1996) also suggests mistakes could be intentionally 26

27 made in the text that students should find and correct. A more advanced activity is to give students two texts on the same topic and ask them to compare what they have in common and how they differ. In case the text is a provocative article, written response could be required. Comprehension could be supported also with visual maps and diagrams representing relationships among things, characters or facts (Ur, 1996, p. 146). In addition, Harmer (1991) advises to give students the list of words and let them search for synonyms within the text, to find mistakes in the illustration prepared by teacher, to brainstorm ideas what learners already know about that topic, and to cut out some sentences and let students to find their original placement (p. 188) Willis taxonomy of tasks Willis typology of TBL tasks design divides all tasks into six simple categories. The first category comprises brainstorming and fact-finding when student are creating posters and mind maps. The second task group is sorting, also specified as ranking and categorising, followed by comparing. The term comparing refers to matching and finding differences and similarities. Problem-solving tasks deal with the analysis of real or hypothetical situations (puzzles, case studies) and results in decision making, problem solution, and evaluation. The next category is called sharing personal experiences and involves narrating, describing, and exploring different attitudes and reactions that lead to the expansion of socio-cultural knowledge. The last group are creative tasks that can combine other types of tasks. (Willis, 1996, p. 149) Maley s taxonomy of tasks In 1993 Malley introduced twelve generalizable procedures which is a system of activities that can be applied on any kind of text, although it was designed especially for authentic texts (p. xi). The first procedure is an expansion, which refers to the addition of paragraphs, comments, sentences, or just single clauses to a text. The opposite is a reduction when students are asked to shorten a text. The third procedure is a media transfer, in other words learners are changing the form or genre of a text (for example newspaper articles into 27

28 letters, texts into pictures, maps, or graphs, prose into poems, headlines into proverbs etc.). As well as Willis typology, Malley specifies matching as a correspondence between texts and visuals, headlines, or other texts. The following selection and ranking are defined as selecting according to a pattern determined by the teacher. The pattern could be the text suitability for a certain purpose, text complexity, formality, or individuality etc. Procedure number six is a comparison, which seeks to find similarities or differences between two texts concerning words, expressions, and ideas. Under the reconstruction of a text is understood inserting phrases or collocations into a gapped text, and reordering of jumbled sentences or paragraphs. Even more complex is a reformulation that demands rephrasing or paraphrasing, in other words using different phrases to convey the same meaning (for example retelling of a story, rewriting story in a different mood). A very challenging activity might be interpretation, which is based on learners own attitude towards a text built on their previous knowledge and experience. The aim of such task is to associate texts with opinions, to formulate own questions concerning a text or to assess its reality. Text creation is also considered to be a task connected with a student s own interpretation. Such extracts can be simply used as an inspiration for the creation of new texts. Malley suggests asking students to write a parallel text on a different topic or to use vocabulary from a template to write a new article. Another exercise is the language analysis of a text when students are listing the occurrence of various grammatical features such as tenses or creating semantic groups of words used within an excerpt. As an example of the last procedure Malley mentions project work. This is a matter of teacher s creativity; however Malley comes up with the idea of creating a whole advertising campaign with a cornerstone in the particular text (Maley, 1993, p. xi) Cross-referenced task typologies Based on these typologies, Mishan (2005) presents her own taxonomy that is built on the effect that texts have on learners and on what kind of engagement and interaction it stimulates as shown in Table 1. She differentiates seven task types: response, extraction, inferencing, extention, transference, reaction and analysis (p. 90). 28

29 Table 1 Cross-referenced task typologies by communicative purpose Note. From Designing Authenticity into Language Learning Materials, by F. Mishan, 2005, p. 92. In this case, the response is a reaction to an emotional input, extraction stands for a the extraction of factual information from the given material, and inferencing refers to concept and information interpretation (infer setting, basic story, intended audience). Under extension is understood to be the prediction of a situation or development and outcome; however transference is what Maley (1993) calls reformulation (p. xi). The term reaction stands for a response to non-emotive input in order to accomplish a task and by analysis is meant focus on linguistic forms and the use of figurative language (Mishan, 2005, p. 91). Combining this taxonomy with communicative purpose, Mishan (2005) introduces a very useful and universal table that can help teachers to determine which tasks are appropriate for a certain text considering its communicative purpose. She claims that each communicative 29

30 purpose can be cross-referenced to a set of possible tasks; therefore by determining the aim of a text it is possible to quickly assign the appropriate activities (p. 91, 92). However, more information about the choice of fitting and effective exercises is presented in the following chapter Choice of reading activities As has already been already mentioned, reading activities are often more important than the text itself. In addition, the level of a text can be adjusted to any level of language knowledge by the choice of reading activities. The golden rule of how to create a successful reading task is to ensure that such activity resembles the communicative purpose of a text, in other words students should handle this text in the same way and with the same aim as native speakers in every-day situations. Mishan (2005) claims that there are many activities even for elementary learners that imitate native-speaker interaction (p. 62). Moreover, she points out that partial understanding of a text is not considered as problem because it occurs naturally in the real-life situations as well. As an example, she mentions the way people normally read a newspaper article skimming quickly through, ignoring what is not clear or boring. Using visuals and background knowledge, in connection with decoding some known words, elementary students are able to deduce the meaning of a text Task authenticity and its rules In Mishan s account, there is a set of rules that should be followed in order for a task to be authentic. Firstly, such a task needs to be appropriate to a text and it should resemble the original communicative purpose of a text. The communicative purpose refers to what people want to do or reach through speech and it determines the genre of the text (Wilkins, 1976, p. 41). It can be either transactional (the aim is to convey information), interactional (the aim is to maintain social relationships) (Yule, 1983, p. 2), or reactional (the aim is to react to other people s ideas). It is possible to distinguish two types of purposes with a transactional function: informative and persuasive, and two with an interactional function: provocative and interactive. The reactional function has the engaging purpose. Table 2 aims to determine the 30

31 purpose of a text easily, which can help the teacher to create effective reading activity with the same aim. Table 2 Flow chart showing derivation of communicative purposes Note. From Designing Authenticity into Language Learning Materials, by F. Mishan, 2005, p. 78. For example, advertisements are designed to elicit information or action; therefore the task for students should involve action such as phone-call role play or written response. In addition, they might be provocative and can engage reader s emotions, so the appropriate task would be to write a complaint to an editor. Instruction manuals or directions for use have a purely instructional purpose; hence learners can be asked to follow these instructions. For example, they cook a dish according to some recipe, or download and use some program following some technical instructions. A piece of dialogue has obviously the interactional purpose, so the teacher can help students to find a pen-friend from a foreign country in order to exchange s in the target language. 31

32 Mishan (2005) warns that emotions should be handled sensitively and teachers should be careful when working with songs and poetry, introducing individual tasks rather, than open class work. In order to maintain appropriateness, teachers should consider the how native speakers are handling this text. Do they look for detailed information, study the text word-forword, or just skim quickly through? Do readers focus on the meaning or rather draw attention to the headlines and photographs accompanying the article? Reading tasks should reflect the natural way texts are handled. It is inappropriate to ask comprehension questions in the middle of an anecdote, or to let students underline phrasal verbs when reciting a poem (Mishan, 2005, p 81). Secondly, the task should provoke the learners emotional response to a text and activate their background knowledge of the text topic and of the target language culture (Mishan, 2005, p. 81,82). Teachers should think about the students approach to the topic and their relationship to it in order to respect their emotions. Will the text be intensely emotional for learners or is it neutral? Certainly, there are themes that are too sensitive or even taboo for some groups of learners and these should preferably be avoided. In addition, the chosen task should exploit learners knowledge about the target language culture; therefore it is more extremely desirable to equip them with information about factual things such as geography, infrastructure, currency, cuisine and, leisure habits on the one hand, and about the lifephilosophy such as social values and structures, religion and freedom on the other hand. Lecturers should consider what students already know and he or she should try to link the information in the text with the students own experience via appropriate reading tasks. Have students already visited the target language country? Will they understand the philosophy of this country or will they require any guidance or explanation? Will they be able to contribute to a discussion with their own experiences? Mishan (2005) suggests that students might be aware of pieces of factual information; however with the help of teacher they are able to connect them at a deeper level, such as life-philosophy of the target language country and get a more complex picture. Last but not least, reading tasks should reflect real-life task and comprise meaningful communication among students (Brumfit & Johnson 1979, p. 35). The idea is based on replication of activities that native speakers usually do subconsciously when reading a text. For instance, native reader do not write down a list of news that he or she has read in the newspaper, however it is a useful task to do with students, a learner can represent the 32

33 sequences of the story with a graph, native reader has such list and graph in his head (Mishan, 2005, p. 81). Such tasks lead to better comprehension. Furthermore, a reading task should involve communication between learners. The most common activities initiating communication are jig-saw reading, information-pooling, and drawing a picture or map according to other students instructions, where communication between students is demanded (Mishan, 2005, p. 83). 4 Adult learners Penny Ur (1996) claims that teaching foreign languages to adults is a poor quality activity because most of the language teaching is connected to schools (p. 294). Although the author of this thesis agrees that the second language teaching is mostly focused on children and young adults, she can not accept Ur s overall conclusion that adult language education is less important. Ur overlooks the fact that knowledge of one or two foreign languages is nowadays the deciding factor in grabbing employment opportunities and many adult specialists struggle to find a job because of insufficient language skills. Especially in the context of the Czech Republic, where the second language education was strongly restricted by the political regime; there, adult language teaching is very important. It is a generally known fact that many adults are disadvantaged by the lack of English lessons during their school years and in the evenings they attend language schools or company courses in order to catch up with today s needs. Since the Czech Republic opened its borders after the Velvet Revolution many international companies have established their subsidiaries here and language skills have become a gateway not only to travelling and working abroad, but also a way of earning a living in the home-country. The author of this thesis believes that in the last couple of years there has been a boom in adult language teaching and the golden age of language schools that might end after the last generation of people brought up in the times of communism retires. 33

34 4.1 Adult learners advantages in ELT Ur (1996) polemicizes whether teaching adults is easier and less stressful and she challenges the assumptions about language learning depending on age (p. 294). It is generally believed that young learners acquire language easier and faster, but Ur argues that when adults are given the same amount of exposure to a foreign language as a small child in the target language environment is given, the older learners performance is the same or better. In other words, the speed of a language acquisition depends more on the amount of exposure and in the so-called survival motive (see chapter 2.2.2) Furthermore, young children have not developed sufficient cognitive skills and self-discipline, they rely mostly on an intuitive acquisition, which is effective provided language exposure is extensive. Children and adults learn languages the same way providing it is an intuitive acquisition for daily survival, however in other cases there are substantial differences. Adults are able to develop various reading strategies and they have certain expectations about the learning process, so they use the strategies accordingly. Their logical though as well as their capacity for understanding are larger. Moreover, they are able to use abstract thinking and they have a wide experience with the world around them; therefore they can draw on this varied background knowledge that can increase their comprehension (Harmer, 1991, p. 84). In addition, they are able to handle their emotions which means they can cope with a frustration and even momentary discomfort during the lesson. Besides, they are more stable; thus their behaviour is predictable (Ur, 1996, p. 287). Moreover, the concentration spam is longer in adults which results in a higher tolerance of monotonous activities. Even the motivation aspect is different to that of young learners because most of the adult students choose a language course because they want to learn and they want to benefit from it. They are able to see the future profit such as better job, travelling, etc. so they are more determined and cooperative. All things considered, it is possible to involve them in longer activities or indirect learning through reading, listening or writing and speaking, in order to employ their other skills, knowledge, experience, and intelligence. 34

35 4.2 Adult learners disadvantages in ELT On the other hand, Ur (1996) admits that adult language teaching might be more demanding because it is very often directed towards special purposes and have to cover specific areas of language knowledge such as business, medical science, academic language etc. (p. 294). Adult lessons may require higher level of target language skills even from the lecturer which may include the level of a native speaker. Higher requirements are put also on the teacher s general overview, expression, and general appearance. The issue of the personal relationship between the teacher and adult learners might also be more problematic (see chapter 2.3.3). Furthermore, they can be very critical towards the lecturer and his teaching methods. They can be used to a different methodological style and might have difficulties in accepting the new one. The previous educational experience can definitely have a bad influence on adult learners. They might have had problems at school that resulted in a lack of self-confidence and a fear of failure in language learning (Jacobson, 2003, p. 31). Some adult learners are afraid of degenerative changes and, that their mental skills are not on the same level asthey used to be when they were young. It could be frustrating for a successful director, when he is the least successful student in the foreign language course. It is the teacher s job to consider all these factors that can be devastating for teaching efficiency. All things considered, teachers need to listen to students opinions and needs for concrete skills and knowledge as well as preferences and interests in order to modify the course plan if needed (Harmer, 1991, p. 85). At the same time he needs to be really careful when choosing the level of challenge of the teaching materials because too complex ones can lead to complete loss of self-confidence and the learner might quit the course Personal relationship Ur (1996) distinguishes eight possible relationships that can develop between adult learners and their lecturer. She adds that some of them are similar also for young learners classes and some of them are results of the chosen methodology rather of the age of students. The first type of relationship is defined as an authority and subjects of authority, where 35

36 lecturers are expected to give instructions and learners are expected to obey them, but in contrast to young learners, adult students expect high quality teaching that results in further benefits (Ur, 1996, p. 294). The second relationship is defined as assessor and assessed, where the former one is allowed to criticize the performance of the latter and dominance is on his side as with the younger learners. The next approach is based rather on methodology. It is called transmitter receiver relationship and refers to the situation when the lecturer is less authoritative and leave students more space for their own opinions, questions, assessment, and active participation. In addition, there is the motivator motivated relationship that suggests that adult learners take more responsibility for their learning. They do not rely just on the teacher s action and they actively participate in their own learning by home preparation, independent study, and creating their own exercises (Ur, 1996, p. 295). The activator and activated relationship is very similar to the transmitter-receiver and is built rather on employed methodology. In adult classes is the counsellor clients relationship that expects the teacher to base his lessons on learners own needs, is typical. The lecturer build his lesson programme mostly according the exact requirements of adult students and does not really stick to predetermined curriculum. His role is more of a guide giving a support to independently studying participants of a course. Another possible relationship might be called seller and buyers where students are customers that are buying a service offered by a lecturer; hence teaching is a product offered on the market. Obviously, this relationship diminishes the position of a teacher that is in a sense an employee of learners, who can noticeably influence the program of a course and are allowed to even dismiss the lecturer when their results are not according their opinion. The last type of relationship is the resource and users one where the mentor is considered to be a pure source of information and his role is rather passive, he is just conveying knowledge to learners that are asking about particular information. It is the students who are leading the whole teaching and determining what they want to learn and know. This situation emerges when the adults are experienced learners who want to acquire some concrete knowledge or skill (Ur, 1996, p. 296). 36

37 4.3 Principles of adult teaching There are certain principles that a good teacher should keep in mind when working with an adult learners group. He should have a respectful manner and ensure welcoming atmosphere in a class. Knowledge acquired in a course needs to have an immediate usefulness and materials should be relevant to adult students live. Moreover, lessons should be as engaging as possible and they should enable learners to share their own experiences (Knowles, 2006, p. 116). Getting to know students is crucial in order to determine their needs. It is possible to start with learners names, titles, jobs, and educational background. Furthermore, an assessment of different levels of skills within the course group might be very useful. Being aware of knowledge deficits leads to the desired goal of a course which is the acquisition of new skills that were not there prior to the training. The target should definitely not be vague, the course objectives should be a measurable term. It could be a kind of agreement between the lecturer and adult students. To ensure this, it is necessary to specify also the type of learning, if it is knowledge-based, skill-based, or rather attitude-based. The so-called SMART model summarizes the qualities of effective course objectives: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (nwcphp, 2012, p. 3,4). 5 Research objectives and methodology 5.1 Research aims As has already been mentioned in the introduction to this thesis, the author aims to employ authentic texts in her lessons. The authenticity of these excerpts was her main concern, because of the indisputable benefits for ELT. Detailed descriptions of these advantages are presented in chapter 2.2 that is based on the ideas of Gail K. Oura and Freda Mishan. However, the author is aware of the problem that even though authentic texts are introduced to students in their original form, it is not possible to maintain their original context within the classroom. Certainly, the level of authenticity of such material suffers from this fact and some scholars, for instance Widdowson (see chapter 2.1.1), claim that authenticity does not exist outside its natural socio-cultural environment. On the other hand, 37

38 Peacock asserts that authentic texts always fulfil a certain social purpose (Peacock, 1997, p. 146) and the author of this thesis believes that this social purpose, as well as the communicative purpose can definitely be observed in the class. In author's opinion the engagement of appropriate tasks allows learners and teachers to benefit fully from the authentic text. Therefore, the aim of this research is to prove that the use of real-life related activities enables to maintain the authenticity of the text. Next, the author wants to verify that it is possible to use the authentic material successfully in the lesson plan. What is more, the author would like to clarify what is understood under the notion successful use of authentic material. According to her, the successful use of authentic material leads to the acquisition of practical and before the lesson unfamiliar knowledge or skill that will help student in a real-life situation in the future. Among other features characteristic of a successful use of teaching material and successful lesson, the author focused on adequate language level, comprehensibility and meeting the learner's interests and needs. These are the goals that she wanted to meet when creating her teaching units. 5.2 Research procedure As far as the research itself is concerned, throughout the year 2013 the author was gathering authentic texts and materials that might be beneficial for ELT purposes. She encountered these in her everyday life and during her travels in the United States. At this time she did not have any theoretical background knowledge and she proceeded rather intuitively. The major initiative was to create a survival manual for people with basic command of English while traveling in English-speaking countries. Therefore, she decided to focus on adult learners with lower English levels, being influenced by her previous teaching experience in several language schools. As the author has mentioned in the introductory part, the older generations of Czech people still struggle to meet the contemporary English skills demand which is caused mostly by the lack of English language training during the era of communism. After her return she started studying the relevant literature to be able to build her research on an appropriate theoretical knowledge. The author was inspired by works concerning the notion and types of authenticity and authentic texts and defined the thesis 38

39 research objectives as they were presented in the previous chapter. The next stage was the selection of those authentic excerpts (for detailed information see chapter 6.1) ) that meet the criteria of authentic text choice introduced by Catherine Wallace and Freda Mishan (2.5). In order to find out the principles of lesson planning the author studied works by Jeremy Harmer and James Scrivener. Together with an awareness of basic rules of teaching adults, studied mostly from the works by Malcom Knowles and Penny Ur, the author designed six teaching units that are presented in chapter 7. Based on the author's notion of the successful use of authentic material and the study of Miroslav Chráska the author administered a questionnaire (see chapter 5.3) for adult learners, who were going to participate in the pilot lessons. This questionnaire researched participants opinions, in order to assess whether the authentic text was used successfully. The most challenging part was the piloting of lesson plans. The author introduces her aims in more language schools; however, since English lessons are considered to be a commercial product in this case, not every language school management was in favour of her research. As a result of this, the author conducted the research and taught her lessons in three different language schools within three different language courses. Originally, the author had hoped to gather the data from the same group of learners, in order to possibly draw an objective comparison among the individual lesson plans; however she believed that the pilot lessons taught under nonhomogeneous conditions were relevant for the objectives of her research and did not devalue its results. Immediately after the lessons, students were asked to complete the questionnaire. Finally, the author interpreted the research findings. 5.3 Research method As it has been mentioned in the previous chapter, the author chose a questionnaire (see Appendix A) as the main data collection method since this procedure seems to be the most appropriate for the research objectives. As Dörnyei and Taguchi (2010) assert the questionnaire has become one of the most popular research instruments applied in the social sciences (p. 1). The author 's questionnaire design was built up on the theory of Miroslav Chráska. He advises questionnaire designers to make sure their survey is not too extensive. Its items should not be suggestive, ambiguous and redundant, the comprehensibility of questions should be the major concern (Chráska, 2007, p. 169). Keeping these principles in mind the 39

40 author decided to administer her questionnaire in both the Czech and English languages. She found items of this survey manageable even for students of a lower English level; hence, she simplified the language of the questionnaire. However, she was still worried about distorting the research results; therefore she used Czech equivalents written in small font under English sentences. As far as the questionnaire items are considered, according to Chráska s concept, it is possible to distinguish three different types of contents that the items of questionnaire can focus on: facts, knowledge and personal attitude. Only the first item of author's short survey is questioning a fact: asking about the lesson topic. This question might seem trivial, but it serves mainly organizational purposes. The rest of items are investigating mainly personal attitude and opinion. Chráska (2007) emphasizes the precariousness of these questions that is caused by their possible sensitivity. Respondents might feel offended since the question might be too personal and intimate. In this case he suggests the designer should formulate the question as if it was aimed at the entire group, not just on one respondent. Such questions are called indirect or projective. (p. 168) Although the author conceded, she insisted on using direct questions, because she aimed to be personal in order to show learners she really cares about their own ideas and feelings. Furthermore, the author was aware of the fact that there was a danger of biased data collection due to insufficient anonymity within the small study group. In order to ensure anonymity, she told learners at the beginning they were going to submit the filled questionnaire into a bag ; therefore not directly to the teacher. However, the author s major concern was the validity of the questionnaire. In other words, whether it verifies or disproves the outlined hypothesis. At this point, she drew again on Mishan s and Wallace s rules for authentic text choice that relate very closely to the aims of the thesis. The research items investigate whether the lesson led to the acquisition of new knowledge or skill (question 3) of a rather practical character (question 5) that would help the student in the future, which means that the text met students needs and interests (question 4, 9). Items 6, 7 and 8 evaluate the language level adequacy and comprehensibility. All in all, the questions assess whether the use of authentic text was successful or not; and thus disprove or verify the author s hypothesis that it is possible to benefit from the authentic material use even within artificial settings. In other words, the survey shows whether the author achieved her goal to prepare relevant and valuable teaching resources. 40

41 6 Specification of employed materials 6.1 Authentic texts used As has already been mentioned in the introductory part, all lesson plans presented in the following chapter are based on authentic materials that were collected by the author during her stay in the United States. These texts are encountered on a daily basis during simple everyday activities. Excerpts that are to be found in the appendixes were chosen carefully in order to help learners to deal with situations that occur when traveling in that country. The author is aware that the text choice is essential for the creation of a high-quality lesson plan, therefore her text choice was determined by principles introduced by Mishan and Wallace (see chapter 2.5). The author's first selection criterion was that the texts were related to real life experience and they would provide students with highly practical knowledge. Secondly, these materials represented real language and were produced for a certain social purpose in the language community. They were products of society that could expand learners' awareness of American culture. The authentic texts' advantage for ELT lies in the valuable combination of language, cultural and factual information. Furthermore, in order to maintain the authenticity of extracts the author used them in their original form without any morphological and syntactical simplification. Obviously, this goes together with the level of comprehensibility of the text, which was the author's biggest concern. Her major aim was to help students with a basic command of language to cope with everyday issues. However, it inevitably means they had to face more complex texts. The author expected some of the chosen texts (Visa and ESTA forms, the Grand Canyon West visitor guide) were going to be above the student's level, but in her opinion with the appropriate help of teacher they would be able to benefit from these excerpts. The aim was not the extensive but intensive comprehension, in other words, this demanded the ability to extract particular information and fact, not the complete understanding of every single detail. The goal lied mostly in the pragmatic and textual sphere. Students were expected to learn to use the language as a communication device and to find the crucial information within the extract. Nevertheless, the stress was put also on the lexical aspect of the text; the lexical aspect was understood mainly the expansion of the vocabulary range. 41

42 Last, but not least the author considered the motivational side of the chosen texts. She tried to choose texts that were relevant to students ages and needs. Certainly, it is easier to come up with attractive materials for children s classes than for adult classes because they have very varied areas of interests. Hence, she selected practically oriented excerpts of universal topics such as money, public transport and health that are common to all adults. The other topics accommodation, sightseeing and the USA admission documents were aimed at a rather more limited group of learners that were interested in travelling. The author hoped that even though these topics might not have been attractive for all students, they would be motivated by the usefulness, helpfulness and currency of the text content. The first lesson about the USA admission documents is based on three texts. The simplest one is the APIS data form that the author copied from the reservation system of Lufthansa German airlines. The other two ESTA and Visa forms were downloaded directly from the Consular Electronic Application Centre of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. For lesson number two the author took pictures of the screen of the Bank of America ATM. The additional article Presidents on our Money was the only text that author did not come across during her stay in the U.S. and she copied it from the NerdWallet webpage. The third lesson plan includes activities with the screen pictures of a ticket machine of the New Jersey Transit company, bus schedule of Trans-Bridge Lines inc. and poster of planned service changes from the New York City Subway. Lesson four introduces two leaflets with the rules of hostels that were collected in Miami Beach International Travellers Hostel in Florida and Banana Bungalow Hollywood in Los Angeles, in addition a copy of the reservation mask from the webpages of these hostels. Tourist leaflets for the lesson topic traveling were obtained in Disneyland Park and Universal Studios Hollywood in Los Angeles and the visitors guide and site map acquired at the Grand Canyon National Park. For the last lesson plan focused on medicine and insurance the author copied various labels and patient information leaflets from the ordinary medical products stored by every American family. Moreover, she used her own health insurance card of Avi International and claim information form of United Healthcare. All the texts in their original form, as well as the sources are to be found in appendices. 42

43 6.2 Activities and tasks used This is the meeting point of theory and practice. The theoretical knowledge about the authenticity concept, teaching reading and teaching adults, projects into activities and tasks introduced in the lesson plans (presented in chapter 7). Firstly, the author was strongly influenced by the notions of Jacobson and Widdowson (see chapter 2.1). Both authors assert that it is not just the authenticity of the text itself, but also the authenticity of associated tasks and activities that matter. Furthermore, Jacobson (2003) questions the purpose of authentic text use in connection with artificial scholastic tasks (p. 2). The author of this thesis fully agrees that the in-class tasks should simulate the activity for which the text was designed for; therefore the tasks employed in her lesson plans imitates real-life situations in order to fully exploit the authentic text's potential. The examples of such types of activities she used are filling in the ESTA registration form, role-play of Visa application interview, imitation of ATM withdrawal, purchase of products with American currency, simulation of ticket purchase in a machine and dialog at a ticket counter, choosing appropriate accommodation according to offered services, filling in the online reservation forms, role-play of booking via phone, searching for a medicine for a particular healthproblem, planning a trip and preparation of an itinerary. However, the author believes that for the purposes of vocabulary expansion and revision; it is beneficial to also include rather school-way activities. Therefore, her lessons occasionally involve tasks such as underline unknown vocabulary (in Visa form) and guess their meaning from the context (vocabulary in the Grand Canyon West visitor guide), match them with the Czech equivalents (ESTA form section Do any of the following apply on you? ), explain or translate phrases (instructions in patient leaflets), match cut parts of collocation (phrases from the hostel rules), complete the gapped text with new lexis (instructions from patient leaflets) etc. Secondly, author employed tasks based on intensive reading, concretely scanning. As suggested by Harmer, the author is trying to involve both top-down and bottom-up processing activities (see chapter 3.2.1). For instance, during her lessons learners are asked to scan through the text, search for detailed information and answer comprehension questions (bus schedule comprehension questions), decide whether the fact is true or false (poster of service 43

44 changes), or to find the similarities and differences (between services offered in hostels). Moreover, they are asked to skim trough the forms (Visa, ESTA, claim information form) to get the general overview of what the document is about and what its purpose is. In addition, the author follows the order of reading activities suggested by Scrivener and Mishan (see chapter ). Each text is introduced by warm-up, pre-reading activities that should catch students' attention and connect it to their background knowledge, for instance guessing the topic from visuals (pictures of American places of interests), crucial phrases and vocabulary (cards with hostel amenities). Furthermore, the author asks learners to match the headlines with excerpts (APIS, ESTA, Visa forms), think of pros and cons of various money and banking connected products, think of tourist attractions in the USA etc. The while reading activities are mostly identical with those that has been already mentioned in connection with scanning, skimming and vocabulary work. As the follow up, post- reading activities, the author used dialogues, role-plays (hostel booking via phone) and story-telling (my last holiday). Moreover, the author assessed all tasks and activities of her lesson plans according to Mishan's Crossed-referenced task typology (see chapter ) that is based on the communicative purposes of authentic texts. The list of all activities assessed via this notion is to be found at the beginning of each lesson plan. Last but not least, the author took into account the fact that the activities are dedicated to adult learners. Based on Harmer's and Ur's insights (see chapter 4.1), the author employed tasks that draw more on background knowledge. It was also possible to involve activities demanding a longer concentration spam, for instance the very complex comprehension questions about the bus schedule and service change poster. The author believes it is appropriate to give adult learners the chance to influence the lesson activities; thus she let them choose the authentic texts they were going to work with, for example the amusement park leaflet or hostel they would prefer. This approach should help the teacher to find activities that meet students interests. All in all, the author attempted to enhance the authentic texts she chose with suitable tasks that would further develop their benefits. She tried to balance the authenticity of tasks with adult learners needs. Most of the activities employed are the author's own design, she drew on works of James Scrivener, Cathrine Wallace and Susan Sheerin. However, a few tasks (for example name the pros and cons of some bank products ) were adapted from 44

45 Reading Extra A resource book of multi-level skills activities by Liz Driscoll and 700 Classroom Activities by David Seymour and Maria Popova. 7 Lesson plans The main aim of this thesis was to design relevant teaching material for English students and their teachers. Furthermore, the author intended to prepare a survival manual for people traveling to and within English speaking countries, especially to the USA. In the next six subchapters she presents lesson plans built on topics corresponding to travellers everyday needs. The topic order follows a possible real-life scenario: firstly, the traveller obtains a Visa or ESTA registration, exchange money and travels to the destination, then he finds the accommodation and plans his travels. During his travels an accident or illness can occur; therefore the last lesson topic is medicine and insurance. As far as the structure of the lesson plans is considered, the author combined the arrangements of Sheerin (1989, p. 10) and Discoll (2004, p 8). At the beginning of each plan, the author announces the lesson topic, length and intended English level. The teaching units were designed to cover 60 minutes of elementary and pre-intermediate (British Council Rabat Level) A2 (CEFR) courses. After that, the author clearly defines the lesson target, which is mostly one or two practical skills (for instance the ability to fill in the ESTA form, the ability to withdraw money from an ATM). Then the communicative purpose of the text used is determined, which is connected to the reading focus and activities (see chapter ). The category key language presents the range of vocabulary and grammar that learners should acquire in this lesson and is entirely based on the language of the excerpt used. The lesson plan itself is divided into three basic parts: warm up, main activity and follow up that reflect the reading activities typology (see chapter ). In order to ease orientation in the plan, the author used different text fonts. The regular font is used for the description of tasks and instructions. The texts of exercises, comprehension questions, gapped texts etc. that are presented to learners are always written in bold. In italics the author introduces parts that are included just for the teacher, such as the key and possible solutions, sample answers, dialogues and explanations. As for the language of the authentic text itself, 45

46 there is in the lesson plan just the key language section and vocabulary lists and cards which learners use in some tasks. The whole text is to be found in the appendices. The author is aware that it would be more transparent to present all excerpts directly in the lesson plans, but with regard to the extent of these materials, she decided to introduce them separately. 7.1 Lesson 1: USA Admission Documents Level: pre-intermediate Time: 60 min Topic: USA Admission Documents Target: learners are aware of documentation necessary for Czech citizens to enter the United States, they are able to fill in the forms of ESTA and Visa registration Communicative purpose: informative, instructional Reading focus: reading for survival, reading for information, extraction Activity types: brainstorming based on background knowledge, matching of headlines with forms, comparison of two types of forms, vocabulary matching, completing form and matching, inferencing connecting a new piece of information with former background knowledge, speaking role play based on the previous brainstorming Key language: Vocabulary: embassy, native, marital status, address of residence, province, ZIP code, authority, issuance date, expiration, passport, lost and stolen, purpose, intended arrival, length of stay, refused admission, Visa denial, application, registration, appointment, requirement, relationship, given name, immediate relatives, describe briefly, employed, duties, fill out, travel companions, current location, communicable disease, mental disorder, commit, engage, involve, violence, crime Grammar focus: have you ever as a phrase, brief information about the existence of present perfect tense in English 46

47 Preparation: copy of APIS, ESTA and Visa form for each learner (Appendix B), blackboard, for each learner list of Czech equivalents for vocabulary in the ESTA form section Do any of the following apply on you?, blank cards for the famous person task Warm up: I) At first, each student gets the copy of the APIS, ESTA, and Visa registration form, they are asked to quickly skim through. These forms are missing their headings; therefore students are supposed to find out, what these documents are and what they are used for. Then students brainstorm in plenum whether they know any legal documents that are needed for admission to the United States. Where learners are not aware of APIS, ESTA, or Visa, the teacher briefly describes these documents. Secondly, students are asked to brainstorm various types of Visa. They should write them on a blackboard as the beginning of a spider diagram that will be created in the follow-up exercise (see Figure 1). Sample explanation: APIS stands for Advanced Passenger Information System. Travellers need to provide additional information when booking a flight to the USA. Without these data boarding is denied. They need to provide their full-name, gender, date of birth, nationality, country of residence, travel document type and number and address of the first night spent in the USA. Airlines collect these data and forward them to the Customs and Immigration Agency of the USA. ESTA stands for Electronic System for Travel Authorization. It is a Visa waiver program. The Czech Republic is a part of this program. It means that Czechs do not always have to apply for a Visa. However, before entering the USA they need to hold an approved ESTA Traveller Authorization. This registration is easier and faster than the Visa application and can be done via an online application system. It is not necessary to go to the embassy. For the ESTA Authorization the stay in the USA can not exceed 90 days. The purpose of this stay can only be for travel or business. It is necessary to apply for ESTA at least 72 hours before departure (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, n.d.). Visa Citizens of the Czech Republic, who want to travel to the United States for more than 90 days or have different reasons than just traveling and business need to have the valid Visa. It is possible to apply for the Visa online, but it is necessary to visit the American Embassy in 47

48 person. This appointment includes an interview with an American embassy official. There are many different Visa types: student visa, temporary employment, medical treatment, exchange visitor, tourist visa, business visa, media (U.S. Department of State, 2013). Main activity: I) Learners work in pairs, they are supposed to skim through the ESTA and Visa forms and find the differences. They should note them down. Differences: Visa: place of birth, other nationalities, social security number, national identification number, exact home address, mailing address, phone contact, reason of trip, travel plans, organization paying for this trip/address/contact, arrival and departure date, arrival and departure city, intended length of stay, travel companions, previous visits/visa/esta registrations, parents' names and dates of birth, relatives in the U.S., spouse's personal details, date of marriage/divorce, questions about employment/education/military experience, question about the program organization, reference people details II) After that, teacher gives each student a list of Czech vocabulary, learners are supposed to find English equivalents in the ESTA form section Do any of the following apply to you? (activity adapted from Wallace, 1992, p. 89). In plenum they check the correct answers and with the teacher's assistance they explain the main point of each question in this section. Word-for-word translation is not required at all. list: odsouzený convicted zatknout arrest majetek property přenosná choroba communicable týkat se involve disease narkoman drug addict/abuser nelegální užívání narkotik drug abuse porušení offence překupník trafficker kapavka gonorrhoea hledat seek opatrovnictví custody duševní porucha mental disorder hrozba threat blaho/prospěch welfare (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, n.d.) 48

49 III) Learners are asked to fill in the ESTA form. They should think about some famous person (singer/actor/politician/sportsman) and fill in the form according to some facts and their imagination. However, they do not fill in the name, this is supposed to be written on a small card separately. All forms and cards are mixed together and students match the name tags with the appropriate forms. Example of such form: Family name: Bonaparte Given name: Napoleon Country of birth: France Country of citizenship: France Country where you live: France Sex: male Date of birth: August 15, petitb@waterloo.fr F) no (Path2usa.com, ) Address while in the U.S.: Baltimore, Maryland A) yes (syphilis) B) no C) no D) no E) no Follow up: I) Students are supposed to brainstorm, which documents are required for the Visa registration and which questions the embassy official might ask during the Visa interview at the American Embassy. Ideas are written down on the blackboard as part of the spider diagram that was started in the pre-reading activity. Documents and questions might be noted in different pencil colours. Documents: Required: copy of interview appointment letter, receipt of fee payment, digital and hard copy of photograph, valid passport (validity for at least six months after arrival), DS160 US Visa application confirmation page Additional: travel itinerary with concrete data, bank statement, copy of last year's tax documents, letter of invitation (relatives, company, institution, program), medical examination certificate, copy of passport and Visa of spouse, employment verification (Path2usa.com, ) 49

50 Questions: reason and character of stay, travel plans, education and career profile, family background, future plans Figure 1.An example of the spider diagram. Created by the author based on information adapted from USA Visitor Visa Applicant Documents, , Retrieved March 23, 2014, from II) Learners work in pairs, they are supposed to role-play the Visa application interview. They can choose any type of Visa and use the corresponding questions. Sample dialogue: A) Why do you want to travel to the USA? B) I want to attend an orthopaedic conference in Boston. A) What do you do? B) I am an orthopaedic surgeon. A) What company do you work for? B) I work for the Military University Hospital in Prague. A) What is your monthly income? B) I earn about Czech crowns. 50

51 A) Do you have any relatives in the USA? B) My uncle lives in California. A) How long will you stay in the USA? B) I plan to stay five days. A) Do you plan to extend your Visa? B) No, I will continue working in the Czech Republic. A) Who will pay for your trip? B) My employer. A) Do you have any specific business events or meetings? B) Yes, the conference takes place from 8 th to 11 th July 2014 A) Who else is going with you? B) One of my colleagues is traveling with me for the conference. (adapted from Path2usa.com, ) 7.2 Lesson 2: Money Level: elementary Time: 60 min Topic: Money Target: Learners are able to recognize USD coins and bills and use them on daily basis, they can withdraw money from foreign ATM Communicative purpose: informative, instructional Reading focus: reading for survival, reading for information, reading for gist Activity types: speaking: discussion in groups based on questions related to background knowledge and own opinions, response, finding correct order of ATM withdrawal steps, reading: information extraction, information gap leading to transference, matching, practical application of theoretical information Key language: Vocabulary: exchange office, exchange rate, currency, ATM (automated teller machine), screen, account, coins, bills, cash amount, deposit, balance 51

52 inquiry, payment, transfer, receipt summary, check images, mortgage, withdraw, select option, enter / re-enter PIN, match, accept Grammar focus: sequencing: first (tly), second(ly), third(ly), then, later on, after that, next, last, finally, at the beginning, at the end Preparation: blackboard for warm up questions and tasks, for each student a work sheet with ATM screen pictures (Appendix C), for each learner a copy of the article Presidents on our Money and hand-out with follow-up tasks (Appendix C) Warm up: I) The teacher writes the gapped saying.. money makes the world go around. on the blackboard. Learners guess the missing word. Then the teacher reveals the lesson topic and inform learners about the lesson plan and its goals (Seymour & Popova, 2003, p. 25). II) Students work in small groups of three, they discuss questions: What is the currency in our country/ in the United States? (Czech crown, United States dollar) What is the exchange rate with the Euro/with the USA currency? (EUR equals 27,34 CZK, USD equals 19,69 CZK, EUR equals 1,39 USD) What forms of payment do you know? (cash, credit card, debit card, check, bank transfer, internet banking, payment gateway, invoice, repayment) What kind of bills do you have to pay every month? (expenses) (rent, mortgage, electricity, water, gas, insurance, building savings, telephone, Internet, alimony, tuition, re-payment, car (motor hull) insurance, life insurance, health insurance ) I) In the same groups learners are asked to think of one advantage and one disadvantage of: being rich, being poor, banks, credit cards, having mortgage, online banking (activity adapted from Seymour & Popova, 2003, p. 24). Sample answers: 52

53 (being rich: can buy many things/can be bored by everything, being poor: do not have to worry about his money being stolen/have to save money all the time, banks: you do not have to hide money under your bed/you always have to pay fees, credit card: you always have a lot of money in your wallet, it is easier and faster to spend money, having mortgage: you can have things that normally would take you more than 10 years to buy, you have to pay interests, online banking: you do not have to go to the bank if you want to pay even higher amount of money, someone can steal your data and misuse your account) Main activity: I) Learners are asked in plenum: What is it an ATM? What does this abbreviation stand for? How often do you use ATMs? Have you used ATM in a foreign country? How do you manage? Then each student gets a sheet with pictures of ATM screens, they are supposed to put them into the correct logical order. The teacher introduces some sequencing words, as mentioned in the key vocabulary section, and write them on a blackboard. A few chosen volunteers (depending on the number of students) describe the steps of the process aloud. Use of sequencing examples: At the beginning, you need to ask for the vacation. First, you need to have enough money. Secondly, you need to buy a plane ticket. Third, you need to book a hotel. After that, you can make plans for your trip. Then you need to register for ESTA. After that, you pack your suitcase. Finally, you can travel to the United States. Sample description: At first, I touch the screen. Secondly, I enter the credit card. I take my credit card back. After that I enter the pin code. I select other transactions. Then I press Deposit and select check deposit. After that I insert the check and wait. I agree that the check matches and I complete the deposit. I print my receipt. Next, I want to do another transaction. I enter the pin code again and choose the amount of money. I do not need a receipt for this transaction. Finally, I take my cash. II) The main aim of this activity is to get familiar with the shape and form of American coins and bills. However, students explore some interesting facts and learn a bit about American history too. Depending on the number of learners, they get one or two parts of the article 53

54 Presidents on our Money. Each student reads through their part and answers the basic comprehension questions written on the blackboard. Students are allowed to use dictionaries in order to search for unknown vocabulary. Then each student presents his bill or coin to the others. The practical knowledge acquired from the text is practised in follow-up activities. Comprehension questions: What is the value of this coin/bill? What is the nick-name of this coin? What is the name of the person on this coin/bill? Who was the person? What did he do? Is there any other interesting information about this coin/bill? Coins are in amounts of: 1 Penny, Abraham Lincoln, T. Roosevelt enforced AL to this coin to celebrate the 100 th birthday of AL 5 Nickel, Thomas Jefferson, drawing competition for TJ's 100 th birthday 10 Dime, Franklin Roosevelt, put on this coin to honour his work for March of Dimes Foundation (non-profit organization that works to improve the health of mothers and babies, to combat polio) 25 Quarter, George Washington, put on this coin to celebrate the 200 th anniversary of his birth 50 John F. Kennedy, $1 Susan Anthony or Sacagawea, suffrage leader who helped women to get the right to vote/ Shoshone guide, helped Lewis and Clark Expedition (to the West Coast, sponsored by TJ) Paper bills are in the amounts of: $1 George Washington, the first president of the USA, Founding Father, lifespan 18months $2 Thomas Jefferson, one of the authors of the Declaration of Independence $5 Abraham Lincoln, the 16 th president, bill ending slavery, saving the Union $10 Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, $20 Andrew Jackson, the 7 th president, several petitions to remove his picture from the bill $50 Ulysses S. Grant, 18 h president, Civil War general, suggestions to be replaced by Ronald Reagan 54

55 $100 Benjamin Franklin, considered to be president even though he was never really president of the USA, Founding Father, statesman, politician, lightning rod (NerdWallet, 2014) Follow up: I) Each learner gets a hand-out with the topic-related exercises and is supposed to fill them in individually. The first task is to match images of coins with their correct value and name. In the second exercise they have a set of coins and they are asked to write down the correct amount. Key: Task 1: Penny 1 Nickel 5 Dime 10 Quarter 25, Half-Dollar 50 Dollar $1 One Dollar Bill $1 Figure 2. An example of American coin images. Created by the author based on figures adapted from US Money Worksheets, , Retrieved March 15, 2014, from Task 2: cents cents cents 4. 7 cents cents cents cents 8. $1.72 (Miller, ) 55