Exploratory task 4.11

Read the text and draw a sketch of the “Monument to the Third International”. Share your results with the peers. Tick off the “factors of success” that helped you in comprehending the text (use a separate sheet for your drawing)

Text

Factors 

Kinetic Art Kinetic Art, a form of art, usually sculpture, in which movement plays a primary role. The source of this movement can be mechanical, the natural motion of surrounding air currents, or an interaction with the viewer. Monument to the Third International (1920), by Russian artist Vladimir Tatlin, is a landmark of kinetic art featuring three cylindrical glass chambers, rotating at different speeds around a tilting axis and surrounded by spiral scaffolding. It was planned to be 400 meters high and was never built full scale. Usually kinetic art pieces were constructed out of industrial materials.

Intelligence Critical thinking Experience Strategies Situation Emotions Motivation

Input reading 5

Teaching text comprehension

Warming up discussion 5.1

You need to make it easier for your learners to comprehend the text of the poem by Robert Frost “Fire and Ice”. What message would you like your learners to get from the text of the poem? What techniques of “teaching text comprehension” would you use working with this poem?

Text	Techniques
Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice (R. Frost)

An important way to teach text comprehension is using the questions. Questions for teaching comprehension consist of "echo" questions, "comprehension checks" and "comprehension guides". Echo questions repeat textual fragments in the unaltered way, making learners simply reproduce the contents they have head or read. Comprehension check questions make the learners go deeper in the text seeking for explanations to the events and behaviors. These questions often start with "why" and are called "why-questions". Comprehension guides pursue the goal of forming reader's/listener's response to the text. For this purpose a problem is set before the learners and a search for the solution is organized with the help of "comprehension guide" questions. These questions take the learners closer to the research process.

Exploratory task 5.1

What questions can you ask your learners or peers to enable them to comprehend the text better?

They are called 'baby killers' - not because they kill babies, but because they are trained to kill while they are still legally minors, and therefore cannot be punished as adults. This seventeen year old boy from a Mafia-dominated town in the Southeast corner of Sicily has admitted to Police that he is a trained Mafia hit-man. He has been carrying a gun since his uncle gave him one for his eleventh birthday, he told prosecutors (Adapted from the BBC Radio World Service). Echo questions Comprehension checks Comprehension guides

To teach the comprehension of the communicative text message, a number of techniques can be used. Advance organizer contains the necessary orientation for the learners to recognize and comprehend the text. The essential meaningful link of the text is deliberately left missing however in the advance organizer and the learners are to bridge this gap after having read the text.