Universite d’antananarivo ecole normale superieure

Step 2: Jigsaw reading: “NO REGRETS” (45 minutes)

Objective: To develop students’ listening and reading skills about expressing regrets.

Language skill: LISTENING and READING

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  Teacher shares sheets of paper containing the beginnings of the texts to the students and give them time to read it silently:
  

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  Teacher shares other sheets of paper containing the continuations of the text and give time to the students to do the task:
  

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  After the correction, students listen to the track to check if they really found the right continuations for each text. The right answers are: Ericae_d; Leroy f_c; Marianne b_a.
  
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  Students read the text loudly. Then, they answer the following question:
  

1- How did Erica get the money for her business? 2- How long did the business survive?

3- Why couldn’t Leroy get a good job when he left school? 4- How did he pay for his education?

5. 
   How old was Marianne when she got married? 6- Why does she feel jealous of her friends?
   

Comments on the performance:
It was really difficult to explain the meaning of third conditional sentences, probably because the students were confused, and even frightened by the verb tenses in the sentences. Although they knew in advance that they were going to learn how to express regrets, they had trouble imagining the real situations behind the regrets in spite of the contextualization. We were obliged to translate a part of the explanation in Malagasy, and that worked because the students did not have problem with the practice and the production stages afterwards. It is worth mentioning that communicative approach accepts judicious use of mother tongue. As usual, the practice stage is done to check accuracy before moving to the communicative activities in the production stage. We have taught the same class during our first experimentation. As such, the students were less reluctant to talk to their friends during the production stage. We moved around to listen to the students’ conversation, and we could hear that they manage to use the third conditional appropriately to express their regrets. We would say that the objective of this first part of the lesson was reached.

This lesson focuses on the topic “REGRETS”. That is why third conditional is not the gist of the text we have chosen in the jigsaw reading activities. The listening and reading activities are meant to fix the notion of regrets in the students’ memories. They also develop the students’ listening and reading skills. We found out that the students were interested in the text as the situations in it are authentic, and they enjoyed listening to native speakers. It was a pity that we could not finish the correction before the bell rang. However, we would say that the lesson was successful. We realize that teaching third conditional sentences communicatively and integrated in the lesson about regrets is feasible and efficient in “Terminale A” class.