30 Teaching Reading & Listening

14th February 2017

1 Valentine's Day

Every February 14, across the United States and in other places around the world, candy, flowers and gifts are exchanged between loved ones, all in the name of St. Valentine. But who is this mysterious saint, and where did these traditions come from? Find out about the history of this centuries-old holiday, from ancient Roman rituals to the customs of Victorian England.

Approximately 150 million Valentine's Day cards are exchanged annually, making Valentine's Day the second most popular card-sending holiday after Christmas.

The Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred. One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.

Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons, where they were often beaten and tortured. According to one legend, an imprisoned Valentine actually sent the first “valentine” greeting himself after he fell in love with a young girl–possibly his jailor’s daughter–who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter signed “From your Valentine,” an expression that is still in use today. Although the truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories all emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic and–most importantly–romantic figure. By the Middle Ages, perhaps thanks to this reputation, Valentine would become one of the most popular saints in England and France.

Origins of Valentine’s Day: A Pagan Festival in February

While some believe that Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine’s death or burial–which probably occurred around A.D. 270–others claim that the Christian church may have decided to place St. Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to “Christianize” the pagan celebration of Lupercalia. Celebrated at the ides of February, or February 15, Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.

To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at a sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification. They would then strip the goat’s hide into strips, dip them into the sacrificial blood and take to the streets, gently slapping both women and crop fields with the goat hide. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed the touch of the hides because it was believed to make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city’s bachelors would each choose a name and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage.

Valentine’s Day: A Day of Romance

Lupercalia survived the initial rise of Christianity and but was outlawed—as it was deemed “un-Christian”–at the end of the 5th century, when Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day. It was not until much later, however, that the day became definitively associated with love. During the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating season, which added to the idea that the middle of Valentine’s Day should be a day for romance.

Valentine greetings were popular as far back as the Middle Ages, though written Valentine’s didn’t begin to appear until after 1400. The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt. (The greeting is now part of the manuscript collection of the British Library in London, England.) Several years later, it is believed that King Henry V hired a writer named John Lydgate to compose a valentine note to Catherine of Valois.

Typical Valentine’s Day Greetings

In addition to the United States, Valentine’s Day is celebrated in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France and Australia. In Great Britain, Valentine’s Day began to be popularly celebrated around the 17th century. By the middle of the 18th, it was common for friends and lovers of all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes, and by 1900 printed cards began to replace written letters due to improvements in printing technology. Ready-made cards were an easy way for people to express their emotions in a time when direct expression of one’s feelings was discouraged. Cheaper postage rates also contributed to an increase in the popularity of sending Valentine’s Day greetings.

Americans probably began exchanging hand-made valentines in the early 1700s. In the 1840s, Esther A. Howland began selling the first mass-produced valentines in America. Howland, known as the “Mother of the Valentine,” made elaborate creations with real lace, ribbons and colorful pictures known as “scrap.” Today, according to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated 1 billion Valentine’s Day cards are sent each year, making Valentine’s Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year. (An estimated 2.6 billion cards are sent for Christmas.) Women purchase approximately 85 percent of all valentines.

2 Listening

Start by making them listen in silence.

Aim to make them realise listening is active.

Brainstorm what we listen to inside and outside classroom and how that listening differs.

Elicit what their learners need to do in the test – what are they being trained for

Use Garnet listening for academic English unit 1 to highlight potential problems and brainstorm to add more

Analyse what kind of listening/ reading activity that falls under or difficulties it helps with

3 Reading

Discuss the meaning of each. Model a reading that I skim and scan. Do the matching activity from task.

skimming(略读) scanning(扫描) 区别

阅读技巧,如scanning(查阅)和skimming(略读/跳读),

略读(skimming)是常用的阅读方法之一,其主要特征是选择性地阅读。通常的阅读要求看到每一个词,每次注目看1-2个词.

阅读技巧，特别是速度技巧中，有两个重要的方法：Skimming＆Scanning。

Skimming是只看主要大意的速读。一篇文章的大意是有重点的。比如，当出现first second的这种归类总结的地方，或because，as a result这样的因果关系，或是 but，however的语意转折处，都需要格外留心。托福文章讲述主要观点之后通常会有for example来佐证，如果看懂了主要观点，那么对示例所用的时间和精力就不需要太多了。Skimming的技巧在第一遍阅读文章意图抓住文章大意时是非常重要的。

Scanning是“扫描”，但具体到阅读中，大家最熟悉的莫过于查词典时。在有意识地去查某个生词的时候，我们不会去把它所在的页上每一个字都看一遍才找到想要的。几乎眼睛对词典中的一页扫一下，脑中只有要找的字，看到它，其他的地方都像没有看到一样。在托福的阅读中，scanning的技巧在回答问题时，根据题干中问到的内容，在文章中scan，可以帮助考生准确地定位，找到答案。

That reading can be mechanical and accurate e.g. You can train students to recognise grammatical patterns and sentence structure so they are able to answer most comprehension questions, but that doesn’t necessarily imply that they have understood the meaning or inferences as that is deeper.

Need text – FIND TEXT

Give them 1 minute emphasise speed and then ask what strategy they’ve been using

Elicit at what stage in a reading and listening lesson drawing on or building up ss schema would come – mainly in the pre-listening/reading

Is our enthusiasm motivating or our lack of it demotivating for our learners?

1. Reading Comprehension Skills for English Language Learners

On this page

Why reading comprehension skills are particularly important for ELLs

Classroom strategies: Steps for explicitly teaching comprehension skills

Other ideas

English language learners (ELLs) often have problems mastering science, math, or social studies concepts because they cannot comprehend the textbooks for these subjects. ELLs at all levels of English proficiency, and literacy, will benefit from explicit instruction of comprehension skills along with other skills.

Examples of comprehension skills that can be taught and applied to all reading situations include:

Summarizing

Sequencing

Inferencing

Comparing and contrasting

Drawing conclusions

Self-questioning

Problem-solving

Relating background knowledge

Distinguishing between fact and opinion

Finding the main idea, important facts, and supporting details

These skills are particularly important for comprehending what is generally known as information reading or expository reading.

Why reading comprehension skills are particularly important for ELLs

ELL students will still need a lot of vocabulary development and teaching of comprehension strategies even if they:

have been mainstreamed after some bilingual instruction;

are being pulled out for English as a Second Language or Sheltered English instruction; and/or

have been assessed as English proficient but you know that they still need additional help with language, reading, and writing.

Here is a way of thinking about the support your ELLs will need:

Classroom strategies: Steps for explicitly teaching comprehension skills

The following steps are useful for all students. However, these need to be complemented with the additional steps below to ensure comprehension for ELLs.

Introduce the comprehension strategy or skill (see above list) through examples. Discuss how, when, where, and why the strategy or skills are used. For example: contrast main idea with details, fact with opinion, good summaries with poor summaries.

Have students volunteer additional examples to contrast and discuss.

Label, define, model, and explain the strategy or skill. For example, after listing four facts about a healthy diet and four opinions about what is good to eat, label one list as facts and the other list as opinions.

Give students opportunities to practice using the strategy with a peer as they apply it to a short, simple paragraph from a science text or any expository text.

Debrief with the whole class to ask students to share how they applied the strategy or skill.

Additional steps for ELLs

Identify vocabulary words that you think might be difficult for students to understand when they read the text. Write ELL-friendly definitions for each - that is, simple, brief definitions ELLs can easily understand.

Model think-alouds. For example: verbalize a confusing point or show how you use a strategy to comprehend something. "This sounds very confusing to me. I better read this sentence again."

Demonstrate fix-up strategies. For example: I need to think about this. Let me rethink what was happening. Maybe I'll reread this. I'll read ahead for a moment.

Partner ELLs with more dominant English speakers and ask each student to take a turn reading and thinking aloud with short passages.

After working with partners successfully, ask ELLs to practice independently by using a checklist such as the following. Be sure to explain all the terms and model each.

While I was reading, how did I do?

Skill I used

Not very much

A little bit

Much of the time

All of the time

Blending

Chunking

Finding meaning of new word

Making mind movies as I read

Rereading

Reading ahead

Celebrate each ELLs' progress with recognition notes, praise, and/or class applause.

For advanced ELLs

When students' English proficiency and basic reading skills have increased, you can teach the following steps not just to ELLs, but to all students – because everyone will benefit.

In pairs, have students survey the text and use an idea map to record the main idea and details.

Ask partners to read the text.

Have partners restate the main idea and supporting details. At this point, they can add to their idea map or make necessary corrections.

Then ask students to reread the text and either develop their own questions (pretending to prepare a test for their partner) or write a short summary of what they just read.

After that, have partners check each other's work.

Finally, partners can share their questions or summaries with other teams.

Other ideas

For building ELL comprehension

Teach students how to use these tools for informational or expository reading:

Titles

Headings

Bold print

Captions

Side bars

Maps

Graphs

Pictures

Bullets

Ask students to use the following strategies to summarize (orally or in writing):

Retell what you read, but keep it short.

Include only important information.

Leave out less important details.

Use key words from the text.

Questioning ELLs after reading

After the ELLs and/or whole class have completed the reading comprehension activities above, you can anchor or test their comprehension with carefully crafted questions, taking care to use simple sentences and key vocabulary from the text they just read.

These questions can be at the:

Literal level (Why do the leaves turn red and yellow in the fall?)

Interpretive level (Why do you think it needs water?)

Applied level (How much water are you going to give it? Why?)

2 Reading Comprehension Strategies for English Language Learners

By Lydia Breiseth

This article focuses on reading comprehension strategies that are part of three main approaches: building background knowledge, teaching vocabulary explicitly, and checking comprehension frequently.

On this page

I. Build background knowledge

II. Teach vocabulary explicitly

III. Check comprehension frequently

Note: This article originally appeared in ASCD Express: Vol. 5, Issue 11, "Reading to Learn."

Comprehension is the reason for reading, but it can be the most difficult skill to master — especially for English language learners (ELLs). ELLs often have problems learning science, math, or social studies concepts, for example, because they cannot comprehend the textbooks for these subjects.

ELLs at all levels of English proficiency and literacy development will benefit from improved comprehension skills, which allow them to:

Related Videos

Video bonus: See classroom videos and interviews about reading comprehension in our related resource section and classroom video library!

Build students' background knowledge

Students with limited or interrupted schooling may not have that same level of knowledge as their peers, especially when it comes to historical or cultural topics. When starting a new lesson, look for references that may need to be explicitly explained.

Take students on a "tour of the text"

At the beginning of the year and each time you hand out a new textbook, take students on a "virtual tour." Show them different elements of the text, such as the table of contents and the glossary, and discuss how these sections can be helpful. Explain how the text is organized, pointing out bold print, chapter headings, and chapter summaries. Once students learn how to recognize these elements, they will be able to preview the text independently. Remember that students need to know how to use a tool in order for it to be useful. Learn more about this strategy in Teaching ELLs to Navigate Textbooks Effectively.

Use a "picture-walk"

This strategy can be used for fiction or non-fiction books. "Walk through" the book with the students, pointing out pictures, illustrations, and other graphic elements. Ask them what they notice about the pictures and how they think those details may be related to the story or content.

Use outlines to scaffold comprehension

Provide a brief, simple outline of a reading assignment or an oral discussion in advance of a new lesson. This will help ELLs pick out the important information as they listen or read.

II. Teach vocabulary explicitly

Focus on key vocabulary

Choose vocabulary that your students need to know in order to support their reading development and content-area learning. Provide student-friendly definitions for key vocabulary.

Include signal and directional words

Remember that students may also need explicit instruction in signal or directional words ("because" and "explain"), in addition to key content vocabulary ("photosynthesis" and "revolution").

Use a "picture-walk" for vocabulary

Once students know a new word's definition, ask them connect those new words to the pictures they see in the text.

Teach students to actively engage with vocabulary

Teach students to underline, highlight, make notes, and list unknown vocabulary words as they read.

Give student practice with new words

Ensure that your students can:

Define a word

Recognize when to use that word

Understand multiple meanings (such as the word "party")

Decode and spell that word

Incorporate new words into discussions and activities

For students to really know a word, they must use it — or they will lose it. Use new words in class discussions or outside of class in other contexts if appropriate, such as on field trips. Give the students as many opportunities to use and master the new vocabulary as possible.

III. Check comprehension frequently

Use informal comprehension checks

To test students' ability to sequence material, for example, print sentences from a section of the text on paper strips, mix the strips, and have students put them in order.

Test comprehension with student-friendly questions

After reading, test students' comprehension with carefully crafted questions, using simple sentences and key vocabulary from the text. These questions can be at the:

Literal level (Why do the leaves turn red and yellow in the fall?)

Interpretive level (Why do you think it needs water?)

Applied level (How much water are you going to give it? Why?)

No matter what the proficiency level of the student, ask questions that require higher-level thinking

To probe for true comprehension, ask questions that require students to analyze, interpret, or explain what they have read, such as:

What ideas can you add to…?

Do you agree? Why or why not?

What might happen if…?

How do you think she felt…?

Use graphic organizers

Graphic organizers allow ELLs to organize information and ideas efficiently without using a lot of language. Different types include Venn diagrams, K-W-L charts, story maps, cause-and-effect charts, and timelines.

Provide students lots of different ways to "show what they know"

Drawings, graphs, oral interviews, posters, and portfolios are just a few ways that students can demonstrate understanding as they are beginning to develop their reading and writing skills in English.

Summarize

Ask students to use the following strategies to summarize what they have read (orally or in writing):