Making Studying Smarter

Monika Ševečková, Czech Republic

Monika Ševecková is a teacher of Russian at Masaryk University Language Centre, Brno, Czech Republic. She is interested in creative approaches to teaching students. Current professional interests are ethnolinguistics, linguoculturology and spiritual culture of Slavs. Enjoys working with linguistics games. E-mail: seveckova@email.cz.

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Introduction
Sample activities
Conclusions
References

Introduction

Have you ever seen how little children look forward to starting school and how eagerly they learn to read and write? Sometimes, however, it happens that children at elementary or high school are bored, are rarely seen with a book in their hands and then at university they seek ways of working with various kinds of texts. Foreign language teachers should be able to explain to students the importance of developing their reading techniques in the course of language practice. The following illustrations are a modest contribution to the teaching of those teachers who wish to inspire their students and nurture in them a love of foreign languages. Enjoy!

Sample activities

1. Reading in boxes (B1+/B2)

Step 1: Technical text connected with the theme of the seminar (approx. 400 words, eg. Priority Regions for Czech Businesses, Problems of Environmental Protection, etc.) divided into logical blocks (eg. paragraphs of about 80 words) and students divided into groups or pairs depending on the difficulty of the text and language ability of the students (all have access to the whole text from the start).

Step 2: During the first reading, students underline new words in their part of the text which the teacher then writes on the board and, together with the students, explains their meaning (asking if any of the students know the expression and if they can explain it in the target language), thus helping students, in amongst other things, to guess the meaning of unknown words through context.

Step 3: During the second reading of the text the students underline about five key words/collocations and five words/collocations which are typical for academic language (again the teacher writes these words on the board but in a different colour than those from Step 2 and explains key words where necessary). In this way they systematically work through the paragraphs.

Step 4: Then the students, working in groups (pairs) create questions (about 5) which the groups or pairs ask each other and search for the answers in the text while the teacher monitors their performance.

Step 5: At the end, the whole text is repeated in the form of a news report – students report information from their part (paragraph) of the text (in chronological order in accordance with the original text) – imitating a live news broadcast (using more colloquial language than in the original technical text).

The aim is to practice orientation in an unknown text, vocabulary work, intensive work in groups (pairs), improvised speaking, changing register between academic and more colloquial language. Length of activity – 25 minutes.

2. Put the paragraphs in order and reconstruct the text (B1+/B2)

Step 1: A journalistic style article (lingua-cultural texts dealing with, for example, the problems of tourism) is divided into paragraphs and each group/pair of students gets one paragraph cut into strips. The students' task is to put the cut up sentences into the right order and into a logical whole and bring the result to the others (the teacher monitors the students' work). At the end, each student gets a copy of the whole text to compare their result.

Step 2: If the teacher gives each pair the same paragraph individual pairs have the following tasks (students have a list of vocabulary relating to the theme, typical phrases, colloquial collocations etc.):

• rewrite the paragraph in a different tense (eg. future),
• rewrite the paragraph for a textbook for high school (emphasising the typical phrases used in these kind of texts),
• rewrite the paragraph for a women's internet magazine (emphasis on colloquial language),
• change details to make the text more amusing,
• invent your own ending etc.

If this is used for level A2, the students can be given the task of writing down the reconstructed text but with one sentence from the middle of the text removed by the teacher. The students must then replace the missing sentence with one created in their own words with the aim of practicing prognosis necessary for technical reading.

The students show the results of their work to the others.

The aim of this activity is to activate their vocabulary and particular areas of grammar, to practise discrimination between different registers and to deepen their knowledge of the themes. Length of activity – 20 minutes.

3. Poem (A2)

Step 1: Working with a poem of four verses. The teacher explains to the students the aim of the given activity – this can be developing their knowledge of a theme or revision/reinforcement of grammatical structures (eg. word transformations), prepositional phrases etc.

Step 2: Students are divided into 4 groups (A/B/C/D) and their task is to learn the whole poem by heart for a seminar and then to recite it like a choir.

Step 3: First each group learns its own verse and then the groups teach each other the other verses (A–B/C–D; A–C/B–D; A–D/B–C) while the teacher monitors their performance. It's helpful to give the students a time limit.

The aim is to incorporate folklore material into teaching and to motivate students in reciprocal learning and cooperating in a group. Length of activity – 15 minutes.

Conclusions

The activities described above are aimed at developing various techniques for working with texts, offering the chance to work with both technical and colloquial vocabulary. The students learn predominantly in pairs and the learning is reciprocal, helping them retain a greater amount of information. If there are students in the group from various branches (or faculties) the teacher can build up a collection of texts, for instance, by getting students to bring in 2 or 3 texts per semester from their own branch of study.

I hope that some of the activities described above will be of interest to you and that your students will like them.

References

Buttner, A. (2007). Activities, games, and assessment strategies for the foreign language classroom, Larchmont, NY: Eye On Education.

Сhubarova, O. E. (2008). Shkatulka, Moskva: Russki yazyk. Kursy.

Sosnowski, V. and M. Tulska-Budzjak (2014). S Rossiej na „ty“! Moskva: Russki yazyk. Kursy.

Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the English Language Improvement for Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the English Language Improvement for Adults course at Pilgrims website.