Module teaching and integrating language skills lesson 1

Activity 2 Text A
A TOUR GUIDE’S STORY
As a third-year student, I was taking a couple of English-speaking tourists for a walk around Samarkand. We were passing by «Институт каракулеводства (Korakulchilik Instituti)» and I said, ‘This is the karakul sheep breeding institute’. The tourists looked at each other in surprise. Then one of them politely asked me: ’Sorry, but why would you need such an institution here where there’s no sea?’ Another said: ‘I just wonder why is a dockyard called an institute?’
Activity 2 Text B
A TOUR GUIDE’S STORY – Continued
‘At first I couldn’t understand what they were talking about but then by asking a few questions I found out that they heard me saying ‘ship building’. The fact that I didn’t say ‘sheep’ and ‘breeding’ properly plus not enough context plus traffic noise caused the confusion.’
Ask the following question and elicit a few random answers:
~ Can you think of any other similar examples that often cause confusion?
Discuss the example. Say that such words like walk-work; thing-think; back-beg-bag; bath-bus are often confused by learners of English and thus need special attention. As an example, compare ‘I need to take a bath / I need to take a bus’ and ‘We must walk / We must work’. Suggest that with advanced students such an activity might be followed by a task to write a similar short story exploring other confusing words.
Establish that in the classroom teachers often focus on getting their students to say words and phrases ‘correctly’. However, they often ignore the ways in which students say these words or phrases: what intonation, pauses and stresses they use, what emotions they want to express, what meaning they want to convey. In authentic real life contexts, it is also important to notice how your speech is perceived by other people. Suggest that this is particularly important for emotional meaning.