Treasure Hunt

Treasure Hunt: In-Class Activity, March 11th, 2011



1. Textbook info: 두산동아, Lesson6: "Dear Children of the Earth"

2. Reading topic: Endangered Species of Animals

3. Your comment on the reading activities in this chapter:

Activities in this Chapter:
  As whole, there are 'Listen And Understand', 'After You Read', 'Talk and Talk', ' Words / Sounds', 'Grammar in Action', and 'Expressions in Action',

  In Listen And Understand, before the actual lesson, the activity activates schemata among students in the class, which facilitates apprehension of the virtual content discussed in the chapter. The demerit of this activity is that some students, usually in the lower level may have difficulty understanding the main forms of language if the teacher does not inform of them beforehand.
  In After You Read, there are activities such as multiple choice and writing down a short essay associated with the lesson. This is beneficial to students in that it allows the teacher to check and give feedback to students, for he can tell which students are aware of the content and which are not. Some drawbacks are that some students not intimate with writing essays may be bewildered, which may in turn, give them a negative feedback.
  In Talk and Talk, two pairs of students are engaged in an authentic communication that will incite their acquisition of the second language. Also, since it's not groupwork, they may feel safe and sound, not feeling any peer pressure. The demerit of this is that some students may not actually participate in pairwork, doing things they are not supposed to do. Thus, the monitoring of students by the teacher is necessary.
  In 'Words/Sounds', in learing the actual phonetics and the articulation of alphabetical sounds, they can have an easier when comprehending the listening scripts or texts. However, one thing that the teacher should be aware of is that he or she should not engage in the process of pronouncing the words by his bias. Instead, he or she should implement the means of the actual radio scripts or diverse multimedia to students.
  In 'Grammar in Action', it introduces adverb clauses and practicing the grammatical forms. By the deductive method, studens can tell what they are learning and dealing with. The reason is that they may have had an arduous time figuring out the bits and pieces(grammar) of language. However, since the content is not related to the passage, students may have a hard time interpreting the content.
  In 'Expressions in Action', the students are introduced to idiomatic expression' such as 'ask for' , 'care for', 'make a big difference'. By understanding these expressions, students can ;pay more attention to the text. Conversely, students can be driven to rote learning, which may hinder language acquistion in the long run.

  Overall, grammatical forms in activites should be introduced step by step before going on to the next step. That way, many students would be satisfied in understanding grammatical forms that may be hard other wise. In the activity of writing activities, many students don't have appropriate essay skills, like punctuation, indenting, and structure of paragraphs. Accordingly, these factors should be considered when introducing the activity to them. In Talk and Talk, students may just talk by themselves with a subject not related to the topic. So, the teacher should be involved in the monitoring process. In Expression in Action, students may soley memorize the whole chunk of language and it's not associated with the text. Thus, the teacher should present activities in which students can have time to sincerely acquire the forms as a unit, not just memorizing.


4. Treasure hunt (supplement activity)
http://projects.cbe.ab.ca/ict/2learn/mlsloane/africa/threats/threatsmain.html
Q. Why is the elephant in danger? (Recognition of Details)
Q. Fill in the blank:                     and leopards are the chimpanzees main enemies. (Recognition of Details)
Q. In dictionary, what is the meaning of the word, "mane "? (Dictionary Skill)
Q. What is the meaning of ivory in this sentence? (Inference)
     People poach the elephant for its ivory because ivory is worth lots of money.
Q. Based on the reading, who is the main enemy of all eight endangered animals? (Inference)
     1) The farmers are taking the land that zebras use for grazing.
     2) Farmers are killing lions because lions are living
         on their land.
     3) People in Canada in make a plea for the farmers to stop
         taking the land used for grazing and for the poachers 
         to stop killing the animals.
Q. Find other two more african animalas in danger. (Further Activity)