Task A: Gist reading

Part 1

Harmer (2001) highlights the importance of our pre-existing (schematic) knowledge in helping us understand a text. He stresses that although schematic knowledge is not a necessity, it is useful in giving the reader clues as to format, style, or context of a written piece. When planning a reading lesson, teachers not only consider how appropriate or interesting a text is (Riddell 2003), but equally how accessible the text is to the students with respect to their prior knowledge. I have chosen the article ‘Sleep: Your stories...’ as an authentic text to teach my Upper-Intermediate class as I feel that it is suitably challenging, ‘the feature article’ format will be familiar to the students and the topic naturally evokes feelings/emotions. Although the students may have no prior knowledge of the topic, if the text provides some affective triggers (like prompting sympathy/empathy towards the speakers) then this should relate to the students global schema and keep them engaged.

Part 2

Scrivener (2011) mentions the benefit of receptive tasks that mirror real-life reading/listening techniques. He suggests that in real life people often use top-down approaches (like reading for gist and scanning) when they encounter a text, as opposed to intensive or bottom-down techniques (such as reading for detail). Harmer (2001) intuitively suggests that, as both skills are important, an interaction between top-down and bottom-up focused tasks during a receptive skills lesson would strongly benefit the students.

With this is mind, I have chosen two tasks that focus on these skills somewhat independently.

Task A: Gist reading

This task would appear after a lead-in to interest the students in the topic of sleep behaviour. Before orientating the students to the text, I would ask the students a question:

What crazy things might people do whilst they sleepwalk?

Students discuss this in pairs (3 mins). They should be encouraged to be creative with their answers, thinking about ‘extreme examples’, not just obvious answers. The students in this class are definitely competent enough to do this, and would likely appreciate the freedom to explore a rather unconventional topic.

During OCFB (2 mins), the teacher elicits ideas from the students and creates a mind map/list on the board, e.g.

These responses form the basis of the gist task. Students would be oriented to the text, then instructed to read it ‘quickly’ (2-3 mins, as its long), and check whether the article mentions the things on the board. After reading, students discuss their thoughts in pairs and OCFB would be briefly conducted (for further examples see ‘gist task stage’ from lessons 2 and 5 in portfolio).

The benefits of this task are:

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