Media mania: Writing, listening and speaking
Upper intermediate level
Description
Materials
Main Aims
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To provide students' the opportunity to practice their writing skills through the context context of media- designing a questionnaire about an aspect of media-
Subsidiary Aims
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To foster studens' listening and speaking skills through the same context.
Procedure (39-53 minutes)
The teacher greets his students and welcomes them to his class again. The teacher proceeds by sticking a set of pictures on the whiteboard. The teacher presents the pictures and elicits different types of social media and the words ''addiction'', '' addict''. The pictures show different social cetegories who are extremely addicted to social media. The activity enables students to get familiarized with the topic and creates an opportunity for students to react. The rationale behind this activity is to activate student's schemata and connect them to the next tasks after feedback.
The teacher asks students whether they have been interviewed with a questionnaire before to help gather data about a cerain topic. The teacher gets quick reactions about the question in order to set the context for the next activity. The teacher gives instructions about the activity and tells students that they will hear people answering questions about various aspects of the media, and for each questions, students should provide the questions that think those people were asked. The teacher plays the recording and pauses after each section to give students time to write the question. The teacher asks students to peer check their answers and then gets whole class feedback and moves on to the next activity.
The teacher gives instructions about the next activity. The teacher gives handouts to students, the handouts contain different topics related to media, some of these topics are related to the answers in the previous activity. Students will be asked to identify certain topics with the corresponding answers. The teacher gives written feedback to students in the form of an answer key and proceeds to the next activity. The teacher pairs up students in order to their height and gives instructions about the next activity.
While in pairs, students choose one of the topics in the second activity or two related topics. Then, students have to decide what general issue they would like to investigate and find out more about. Before students engage in the task and if need be, the teacher hands in a sample of useful language (A) in a piece of paper to each pair that they may refer to while on task. Students should prepare eight to twelve questions to design their questionnaire in pairs and should have a copy each and leave a plenty of space to take notes. The teacher monitors the activity. When students finish, the teacher asks them to use their questionnaires and interview each other while taking turns, students are encouraged to get information from as many students as possible and take notes. When time is over, students get into their intial pairs and compare their answers then provide a summary of their results. The teacher gives students a handout containing useful language (B) that they may use while summarising their answers. The teacher gets quick feedback and moves to the next activity
Once students reflect on their findings and write a sumary of their questionnaire, the teacher will swap papers among different pairs to correct ech others' mistakes then students take back their original drafts and review them. Then students share the summary of their results with their pairs through reading it in class.