sophie.nashashibi1
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Top-down processing is when students use context to better understand someone’s speech. Having background knowledge on what someone is about to say allows them to anticipate vocabulary and imagine a script.
Bottom-up processing happens when for some reason students are unable to understand the topic or content of a listening exercise. For example when there is an accent. Teachers can prepare students for this by exposing them to and informing them about different colloquial patterns of speech.Understanding when listening probably varies dependent on the context more than understanding when reading. Things like accents and background noise may impede students’ ability to understand people’s voices, and it can be difficult to understand in contexts where you can’t see the speaker’s mouth- on the phone, for example.
Reading level is more consistent, you likely have the opportunity to re-read the text and to read it at a pace that allows you to process it. You don’t have that same control in a conversation.Tip 7: Use pair checks after EACH task you ask students to do. If the teacher marks all tasks themselves, or goes straight to full-class feedback, the students lose the opportunity to discuss and compare their answers.
Tip 1: Choose a text that your students will be interested in. If the students enjoy the process of reading they will engage more fully with the text and the class.
Tip 9: Pre-teach lexis will help students’ comprehension, but do not go overboard. Trainee teachers may either forget to pre-teach difficult/key words, making it difficult for students to engage with the text, or over-explain vocabulary which would waste lesson time and distract from the main purpose of the class.
For Hannah’s lesson:
I would split the students into pairs or threes (depending on class size). I would assign each group one of the three stages of life (birth, marriage, death) and ask them to talk with their group about it.
If the students are of mixed nationalities, I would ask them to talk with their partners about how that event is celebrated in their culture and feed back to the class about what their partner has told them.
If the students are largely of the same nationality, I would write questions on the board to prompt their discussion. For example- have you ever been to a wedding? What normally happens at a funeral? I would then ask the questions to the whole class and ask for volunteers to feed back.I would allow 4 minutes for discussion and a couple of minutes for feedback.
Whilst I like the creativity of this intro, I think that asking the students to draw an image of the life stage is unproductive as it will not require them to use their language skills. I also think that trying to translate these life stages into the plant and animal world may provoke some confusion.
