The Role of Context

1=Recall/Recognition            2=Explanation            3=Application            4=Evaluation            5=Synthesis

Omaggio Hadley  (Ch. 4)

4<     Based on your examination of a textbook, comment on the following:
         a.  Do the textbook's chapters explore themes that are relevant for learners and based on authentic cultural contexts?
         b.  Are language experiences contextualized or personalized?
         c.  Are students encouraged to use language in discourse-length rather than sentence-length frames?
         d. Are readings drawn from authentic sources?
         e.  To what extent are advance organizers provided?
         f.  What suggestions would you make to the publisher if you were asked to provide input for a revision of the text?

2<    Littlewood's continuum
1<    Background knowledge
1<    Advance organizers
1<    Schemata   [Also in C&D, p. 135]
1<    Script

4 & 5< After a workshop on developing students' reading comprehension, a colleague comments that pre-reading activities take too much time and probably don't help anyway.  How would you respond?

Curtain & Dahlberg (Ch. 2)

2<   Explain the analogy between the music setting and the FL classroom.

3<   C&D explain that many attempts to personalize classroom activities are "thinly disguised drills that provide no opportunities for actual sharing of information" (p. 33).  Revise a "traditional"  exercise so that it is a meaningful, contextualized activity.

3<   A fellow teacher tells you that she has tried teaching in the target language but gave it up.  The children just got too confused. She might be willing to try again if she had some concrete advice.  What could you suggest to her for her next effort?

Ohio Academic Content Standards  (p. 155-158)

2<   Compare and contrast the traditional approach to teaching vocabulary and grammatical structures to a standards-based approach.