MODULE 2- Developing receptive skills through

literature
UNIT 2 - Literature for listening
Foundations of listening skills
There are lots of free ways to bring audio versions of the literary texts you're studying into the
classroom. How do you usually do it?
Watch Sangeeta talk about how she does it, and compare what she says with your methods.
Video transcript
[ON SCREEN: Three ways of bringing texts into your listening class.
Sangeeta Sathe, Teacher and ELT materials writer]
SANGEETA [talking to the camera]: It's easy to think about how we can use literary texts for
developing reading skills, but actually they're a really great resource for developing listening
skills as well.
Often in literary texts, they include dialogue which may well be more, more natural, more
authentic, include language which is more authentic than the sort that you find in your standard
coursebook listening.
The trick, then, for teachers is how we can bring those texts into a suitable format into the
classroom. I'm going to suggest three ways that you could use to bring these kinds of texts into
your classroom.
The first one, and the most straightforward, doesn't require any planning, is to read the text in
your class. You can use all kinds of different extracts from novels or poems. I've used a lot of
children's stories and I particularly like the books by Julia Donaldson. These work really well in
class.
You take the text into class and read it to your students, simple as that. One useful tip if you read
the extract in class is to record yourself.
So, the first time you read the extract, record yourself on your phone and then when you want
your students to listen a second or a third time, then you have the recording on your phone and
you, this is, it's a great way to save your voice. You don't have to read again and again.
You could record before class, but actually if you do it in class, you get a more natural delivery.
It doesn't matter if there's a couple of mistakes, so I think it's fine.
Another possibility is to have someone read it for you. You could ask a colleague or a friend or a
family member, and this way you get a range of voices, so your students get to listen to a voice or
an accent that, that is different to yours.
There are lots of sites where you can stream and download a literary text or poems or audio
books, and often you can find these for free. You might think about talking to your colleagues…
maybe you know someone who subscribes to an audio book site and there you can share access
to, to these resources.
Option number three is to find what there is in the coursebook. Sometimes textbooks use extracts
from novels or poems and they'll have a recording of that poem, so have a look through your
textbook or maybe some of the other textbooks in your school, maybe from other classes, and use
the recording with your students.
Learners need to build their listening skills to be able to understand audios from short stories,
children's picture books, novels, poems and songs.
How do you teach listening skills? Look at the responses to this question from two teachers
below. Is your teaching approach closer to Teacher 1 or Teacher 2? Why?
When I'm asking learners to listen for very specific information from an audio literary text, or for lexis
from a poem or a song, I like to give them the chance to listen more than once.
Sometimes, I'll play the same part of a listening text a few times until learners can answer the question. If
there's an answer none of them caught, I'll give them the answer and play that section of the recording
again. I think that this helps them focus on key ideas in the text, or key lexis in the poem or song.
Teacher 1

Before class, I check the transcript to find difficult words or cultural background which learners need to
get an overall understanding of the text. I make sure the learners know the meanings of these words before
they listen.
Then I ask them a couple of questions about the theme or general ideas in the text as they listen for the first
time.
After they listen, I ask them to summarise with a partner what they've understood. I get a pair to tell us in
'open class' so we can all check together. After that, we listen again to answer some general
comprehension questions.
If I know learners in my class need more help with listening, I give the transcript as a support before they
listen. This really helps them contribute to the discussion of the themes.
Teacher 2
Listening is an active process of receiving information or messages.
Read the following definition:
Listening is one of the fundamental language skills. It is a medium
through which children, young people, and adults gain a large portion of
their education, their understanding of human affairs, their ideals, sense
of values and their appreciation.
Saricoban, 1999

Listening implies two things. One, paying attention so that you hear accurately. The
other is understanding the message well, so that you can respond.

Listening can be described as a five-stage process which begins with 'receiving' and
ends with 'responding'.
What do you think the other stages could be? Have a think, then continue to compare your
ideas.
Stage 1
Receiving
In the first stage, the listener gets information.
Stage 2
Understanding
In the next stage, the receiver tries to make sense of the information received.
Stage 3
Remembering
This is an important stage as the receiver tries to retain the message or
 information received.
Stage 4
Analysing
The fourth stage of the listening process involves evaluating what you have
heard.
Stage 5
Responding
The fifth and final stage of the listening process deals with the response to
what you have heard.

Types of listening
In this section you'll look at three types of listening:
 informational listening
This is listening to learn.
It involves listening to understand new knowledge and get new information.
Examples of this type of listening are:
 attending lectures
 watching the news
 being in class.
 critical listening
This is listening to evaluate.
The goal here is to understand the message and how it is conveyed, to decide how
you feel about what you're listening to. It involves analysis, critical thinking and
making judgements. Examples of this type of listening are:
 listening to a political debate
 hearing a new piece of music
 grading learners in a speaking test.
 empathic listening.
This is listening to understand feelings or emotions.
It involves listening patiently and trying to understand the speaker's emotions. The
main purpose is to give support and encouragement and show acceptance.

Which type of listening do the five following scenarios require?

This is informational, as you’ll be listening to understand new
knowledge from the workshop.

This is critical, because you need to decide how you feel about this
so that you know how to resolve the matter.

This is informational, because the doctor will give you new

information which is important for you to understand.
This is empathic, as you’ll be listening to understand your
neighbour's feelings or emotion.

You'll need to evaluate the speeches, so this is an example of

critical listening.

So how does this relate to the use of literature in classes? Which of the three types of
listening that you've just looked at – informational listening, critical listening and empathic
listening – do learners need to use when listening to literary texts?

Have a think and then continue to read the suggestion and compare it with your own ideas.

Literature is unique as you need to use all three types of listening for it.
Informational listening
You'll get new information about the characters and the plot that you quickly
need to understand.
Critical listening
You need to understand the various messages in the text. These might be
conveyed differently by the different characters and/or the narrator, adding an
extra level for you to evaluate.
Often, literary works show, through description, rather than tell you exactly
what is happening. This means that the listener (or reader) needs to infer the
 messages of the text.

Empathic listening
Most literary pieces aim to cause a reaction in the listener or reader. You need
to identify with the characters and then you'll have your own personal feelings
or emotions about the text.

Listening lesson stages

There are usually three stages over which a framework for a listening lesson are built:
 pre-listening
 while-listening
 post-listening.
What do you already know about each of these stages? Have a think and then continue to
read more about each stage.
Pre-listening
Pre-listening is the preparatory stage before the start of the task that prepares the learners
for what they are going to hear. It's an important stage because learners need a purpose to
listen, and once the topic has caught their interest, learners are usually more attentive!
It's also an effective way to start a lesson as it helps the teacher to get a fair idea of
learners' previous knowledge on the topic.
Moreover, it serves as an incentive to generate class participation. This stage is often short
and fast-paced.

While-listening
In this stage, learners actively participate while listening to the text being read by the
teacher or while listening to an audio of the text. The purpose of the while-listening stage
is to help learners to develop the skill of interpreting messages from spoken language.

While-listening activities aim to focus on two aspects:

 listening to get a gist of the text
 listening for details that have been given in the text.

Post-listening
At this stage, the learners use the information and knowledge gained from the literary text.
They integrate it with other skills, like speaking or writing, to enhance their language.
This last part of teaching a literary text helps to consolidate what has been learned by the
learners and to check if they can use the new information and language gained from their
listening tasks in a different context and connect it with the language they already have.
There are two main forms that post-listening activities can focus on:
 responses to the text
 analysing the text.
(You'll look at these two types of responses a little later on.)

 Teaching tip
The pre-listening and while-listening stages provide the most opportunity to develop
receptive skills, while the post-listening stage lends itself more to productive skills
(speaking and writing).

Although gap-fill or multiple choice could work as part of a prediction activity, they aren't
generally considered pre-listening activities.

While-listening
What kinds of activities are good for the while-listening stage? Once you have a few ideas,
continue to compare the suggestions with your own ideas.
Activities
Activities that can be used for the while-listening stage include:
 multiple choice
 true or false
 prediction (teacher stops the listening text to elicit predictions)
 note-taking activities such as listen and describe
  listen and draw
 listen and add text to a diagram.

Complete the five statements to make guidelines for the while-listening stage.
Post-listening
An essential part of using literature is encouraging learner response and personalisation, so
the post-listening stage is very important.

It's a good idea to have a bank of post-listening activities that you can use with any literary
text. Are you familiar with any of these activities?
3,2,1
Write down and then tell your partner 'three things I learned, two interesting
things I read and one question I have'.
Questions
In pairs write three questions to ask another pair about the story.
Dialogue writing
Write a short dialogue between two or more characters.
Letter
Write a note or letter to a friend as if you were one of the characters.
Timeline
Draw a timeline of the story and be ready to tell it.

Questions for listening stages

In this section you'll watch Sangeeta, the teacher you met at the start of this unit, reading
an extract of a poem called 'Rain in Summer' by HW Longfellow. You'll be looking at
questions you can ask learners at each of the listening lesson stages.
Reflection
First, think about the last time it rained. Where were you and how did you feel?

Now watch the clip and think about how the author feels about rain. Is it similar to any of
the feelings you have?
[ON SCREEN: Rain in Summer, H.W. Longfellow]
SANGEETA [reading a poem to the camera]: Rain in Summer by HW Longfellow.
How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How it clatters along the roofs,
Like the tramp of hoofs
How beautiful is the rain!
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!
Across the window-pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!

 Reflection
Before you listened to the poem, you answered the question 'Where were you and how did
you feel the last time it rained?'
How did the question prepare you for the while-listening stage?

Hopefully the pre-listening question got you thinking about the

context, and perhaps it activated some of the vocabulary you have
for rainy days.
 Reflection
If you were using this poem with your learners as a listening, what questions would you
ask at each stage?
Try to think of at least one question for each stage: pre-listening, while-listening, post-
listening. Then continue to read some example questions and categorise them.

Decide if these questions related to the poem would work best in the pre-listening, while-
listening or post-listening stage.
These two questions are suitable pre-listening questions as they prepare learners for what
they are about to hear.

This is a post-listening question because it asks learners their opinion of the poem.

This is a while-listening question as learners can form their answer as they listen to the
poem being read.
This is a post-listening question as learners need to analyse the poet's feelings and consider
their own.

This is a while-listening question as learners need to react to what they hear.

This is a post-listening question as learners need to consider the poem as a whole in order
to summarise it.
Activities for listening stages
You'll now use another poem to look at some example activities for the different stages of
a listening lesson.
First listen to the poem, read by Sangeeta, and decide what the main theme is.
[ON SCREEN: News Flash, @stephaniejohnsonpoetry]
[Sangeeta Sathe, Teacher and ELT materials writer]
SANGEETA [reading a poem to the camera]: News Flash, Stephanie Johnson
News flash
Bodies change
They age
They gain
 They lose
Strengthen and weaken
Humans lose their faculties
And gain wisdom
Sometimes
at the same time
Or not
Perfection is
Where you are now
Not in the lithesome
Yet vapid public eye

You might have decided the theme is 'growing older' or 'ageing'. Perhaps you think the
theme is more about 'being in the moment'.

It's important to let your learners decide for themselves what meaning they take from a
poem like this. Your role is to facilitate discussion and help them to think more deeply
about it.

Now read the poem aloud, as you might do in class. Think about how you could use it with
your learners. Try to think of at least one activity you could use for each stage:

 pre-listening
 while-listening
 post-listening.
When you have some ideas, continue to read through some notes for a lesson with this
poem.

Check the Resources for a link to this poem by Stephanie Lynn Johnson, originally
published on Instagram, 13 April 2022.

 Stage 1
Pre-listening
Before the class, read through the poem and select four or five items of vocabulary that
you want your learners to learn. In class, set up a discussion on stereotypes related to
different age groups. Introduce the vocabulary you selected into the conversation.
 Stage 2
First listening
Ask learners to identify the poet's attitude towards ageing.
 Stage 3
Second listening
Learners make a note of any keywords that helped them reach their conclusion in stage 2.
  Stage 4
Post-listening
Discussion about how learners feel about getting old.
Teaching tip
In this plan the teacher reads the poem more than once to give learners time to
understand the poem and the language.

It's a good idea to do this; you can read the poem multiple times, as the teacher
in the example did, or record yourself the first time and play it again as many
times as your learners need.

Reflection
Now it's your turn. Select a poem to use in a class.
1. What questions will you ask at each of the lesson stages?
2. What activities can you use?
Remember to think about how learners will listen to the poem – is it freely available online
or will you read it aloud?

Unit 2 review

There are three types of listening.

Literature is unique as you need to use empathic, informational and critical listening.
Pre-listening and while-listening lend themselves to developing receptive skills and sub-
skills such as prediction, listening for gist and listening for detail.

Predicting the content prepares learners for what they are going to hear. It can also help to
activate relevant vocabulary.

While listening you can check understanding, make predictions or ask learners' opinions.
Prediction is a good pre-listening task, but if breaks are taken during the listening task, it
can be used throughout the while-listening section.
For example, 'The bear goes into the woods and he sees…', 'What does he see?'

UNIT 3 - Literature for reading

Foundations of reading
It's not enough to teach children to read; we have to give them something
worth reading.

Katherine Paterson (US National Ambassador for Young People's Literature,

2010–2011)

In this unit you'll focus on reading skills. Many of the features of listening skills classes
that you saw in the previous unit also apply to reading, such as having a pre-, while- and
post-text stage.

You'll experience these stages yourself as you work through an example literature lesson.
You'll also watch part of a reading lesson and learn about specific strategies for teaching
reading through literature.

The next three questions are based on a text about reading. Read each one and select the
best option to complete the gaps.

Reading is a process which involves recognising symbols in order to comprehend them.

Decoding is an important skill that allows learners to recognise familiar words quickly and
to identify or pronounce words they haven't seen before.

Comprehension involves processing the text and using background knowledge to

understand the meaning.

Now you'll look at teaching reading.

Choose the best endings to make a set of five useful tips for common problems teachers
have when teaching reading.
Modelling and drilling pronunciation is a good way to help learners with unfamiliar
pronunciation.
Use a variety of methods such as whole class, group, individual and even silent to keep it
interesting.

Try to anticipate any areas where learners might have difficulty with meaning and plan the
questions you'll use to guide them towards understanding.

You can vary comprehension-style questions by using a quiz format, making it more
collaborative and competitive.

Plan how you'll guide learners through the text using pre-, while- and post-reading tasks.
Make sure that these tasks are not too difficult or too monotonous.

Learners can manage, and benefit from, some challenging language in a text. However, if
there is too much, this will distract from their overall understanding and could be
demotivating.
 Read the complete set of six tips and think about which ones will be most
useful in your teaching context.
1. If the learners can't say some words, model the pronunciation and drill
them.
2. If learners don't understand what the poet means, ask leading questions to
elicit meaning.
3. If learners hate answering comprehension questions, make this into a quiz.
4. To structure how you help learners deal with a text, use pre-, while- and
post-reading tasks.
5. If a lot of the grammar or lexis is too difficult for the learners, choose a
different text.
6. If the text is too long, use a jigsaw reading to divide it up. (You'll be
looking at jigsaw reading later in this unit.)

Example literature lesson – Part 1

Now you'll look at a literature-based lesson plan through the eyes of a learner, with a fairly
long extract from a story.

It's quite an emotive story, which has been chosen to get you fully immersed in the text.
You'd need to decide whether or not it's appropriate to use this kind of story with your own
learners, and in many cases it won't be.
Teaching tip
As you work through the activities, make notes. You'll need to answer questions both as a
learner and as a teacher, so it's a good idea to distinguish between the two sets of notes.
For example, you could write the answers to the learner questions in one colour and the
teaching questions in another. Alternatively, you could use different pieces of paper for
each.

Pre-reading task 1
The title of the story is Whose face do you see?
Under which circumstances would this question be asked? Choose the best options.
Talking about a dream or a nightmare
Looking at a photograph
Looking in the mirror
Looking through a pair of binoculars
Trying to recall a memory
Pre-reading task 2
Read the extract from the story and then answer the learner and teacher questions.
I don't know what I am. Not a person. Not a picture, although a lot of people look at
me. Perhaps I am a window, or a decoration, or even a mirror.
 People come in and out of the room where I lay. I can't move so I don't see them
very well but sometimes, someone comes up close in front of me and then I can see
them properly.

Learner questions
a. Who or what do you think is speaking?
b. What do you think has happened?
c. Where is the narrator?

You'll find the answers to the questions when you read the next part of the story.

Reflection
Teaching question: What's the purpose of this activity?
Teaching question answer
Using a short extract as a pre-reading task with comprehension questions can create
a curiosity about the text.

This is also a way to make the text more accessible, as reading a few short extracts
and building up the story before reading can help learners who have difficulties
reading longer texts.

Pre-reading task 3
Read the next extract from the story and answer the questions.
She's always holding things up in front of me – a teddy bear, a CD cover, clothes,
photographs of people. She gets very talkative sitting next to me…
Learner questions
a. Suggest why the woman ('she') does all these things?
b. Who might 'she' be?
c. Which of the senses do you associate this passage with: hearing, sight, feeling, taste,
smell? Justify your choice.
Now try and construct a story by using the information above and answering these
questions:
1. Who or what is lying in a room where people come and stare?
2. Who is the woman who brings a teddy bear, a CD cover, etc.? Why does she bring
them?
3. Who else is with the woman? How often do they come?
4. Why is the narrator puzzled by their presence?

Reflection
Teaching question: What is the purpose of asking your learners to write the story before
they've read it?
Teaching question answer
This is a prediction activity. It encourages learners to be creative and use their higher-
thinking skills. It also gives them a reason to read the text as they can compare their ideas
to the author's.

While-reading task 1
Now read the story Whose face do you see? by Melvin Burgess.
It's been divided into sections. Read each part of the extract and check your ideas from the
pre-reading stage against the story.

Part one
I don't know what I am. Not a person. Not a picture, although a lot of people
look at me. Perhaps I am a window, or a decoration, or even a mirror.
People come in and out of the room where I lay. I can't move so I don't see
them very well but sometimes, someone comes up close in front of me and then
I can see them properly.
There's a woman with a fat little face and short black hair who's always
staring at me.
For a while I thought she was looking at me, but actually she is looking at
herself.
That's why I wonder if maybe I am a mirror. Once, after she'd been looking
very closely at me, she turned round and said to someone else, 'I look and
look at her, but all I ever see is my own face.'
She's always holding things up in front of me – a teddy bear, a CD cover,
clothes, photographs of people. She gets very talkative sitting next to me,
although there's no one here to talk to.
There's someone she's looking for called Marianne. She calls for Marianne
over and over again. I'd like to tell her that Marianne isn't here. There's no
one here.
But I can't speak.
Part two
Hospitals have always made me anxious. All those ill people! Surely if you go
into a hospital you'll fall ill and die yourself.
I remember as a child going with my mother to a hospital – we were visiting
someone, I can't remember who – and we walked past a sign saying infectious
diseases.

I asked Mum what infectious meant and she told me – 'It means an illness
other people catch easily,' she said, and I thought, Oh! If you went down there
you'd be risking your life.
This hospital is different. It's not me that I'm scared for this time.
Now I know that the worse things don't happen to you – they happen to your
children. Ant said to me, 'When the children bury the parents, that's natural.
But when the parents bury the children, that's tragedy.'
Marianne is already buried, deep inside herself where no one can dig her up.

At this point you could stop your learners and check that they have worked out
that there are two narrators: Marianne is the first and she is in a hospital bed.
The second narrator is her mother, who is visiting her.

(Draw learners' attention to the use of italics in the text.)

Before reading the next two parts, you could ask your learners to predict
what's wrong with Marianne.

Part three
The hospital is warm and smells of disinfectant and boiled cabbage – school
meals smell. I trot briskly down the corridor. I've been coming here for so
long now it doesn't feel strange anymore. It's like a second home. Sister
Charlene is on duty. 'Any change today?' I ask.
'Just the same.'
She leads the way briskly to the room where Marianne lies, opens the door
and walks cheerfully up to the bed.
'Good colour today. Rosy cheeks! Nice and healthy,' she says.
It's true. Her cheeks are a bright, pretty red, as if she's been out for a crisp
walk.
'Well, I'll leave you to it. Cup of tea? Yes? I'll get one sent in. Good luck.
Goodbye, Marianne,' says Sister Charlene.

She always says goodbye to Marianne like that. It's good manners. For a long
time the doctors told us it was possible that Marianne could hear every word.
I don't think anyone believes that anymore – not even me and Ant. But we
have to be careful, just in case.

Part four
I put the Spice Girls on the CD player. I'm teasing, really. Marianne always
loved to be teased, it used to make her shriek. If she were here now she'd
shriek like a kettle and say, 'No Mum, not them, they're for babies, I never
listen to them anymore, you know that!'
Yes, but you used to, Marianne. Do you remember? You used to know every
song backwards. You and Jill and Zoë used to do the dance routines. It was
only three years ago, and already you think you were a baby then.
I hold up the CD cover.
'Remember?' I ask her.
Marianne lies with her head pushed a little back into the pillow, her eyes half
open, her mouth ajar like a door. Tubes go into her mouth and up her nose.
She never even flinches.
'Remember?' I ask again. I hold her hand. 'Give a little squeeze if you can
hear me,' I say. I wait.
Maybe it'll take a long time for the muscles to move. She has to find them
again. The doctors have said that if she ever comes back to us, it will start in a
tiny way, so little you might almost not notice it.
So I wait. I close my eyes. I try to feel the slightest, tiny pressure on my
fingers, but there's never any response.
'Remember?' I beg. 'Please, Marianne. Can you hear me?' Nothing. I bend
and kiss her.
I would give everything I have for her to kiss me back.
I sit waiting for my tea, stroking her face, her arm, her hands.

While-reading task 2
You're now going to read more of the story, again divided into sections of fairly long
extracts of text.

Reflection
Teaching question: As you read, think about the device you are reading on and how it
affects your experience. You could compare reading on two different devices, if available
to you.
How would you advise your learners to read the text?

Learner question
What do you think will happen next? Continue reading the story and check if you guessed
correctly.
Part five
Something happened today. I had a memory. I never had one of those before.
It began with the woman, the sad one who comes in every day to stare at her
reflection in my eyes.
'Marianne, Marianne, can you hear me? Can you hear me? Marianne,
Marianne...'
What do you want? Why can't you leave me alone? I don't know who this
Marianne person is – why does she keep calling me by her name? Perhaps
she's teasing me. If I could, I'd block her out altogether. But it's nice to feel
her warm breath on my face.
She touches me with her cold hand. Sometimes she remembers to warm her
hands on her breath before she touches my cheek.
Then one time, she put her head close to mine so our cheeks were touching,
and she lay like that, gently against me, for so long that I think I fell asleep,
and that's when I had my memory.
Part six
This is my memory. I was lost. I can't remember how I got lost, I think I'd just
wandered away too far. I remember tall houses behind the hedgerow. I
remember the road, which was dark and speckled with little white and brown
stones, and I had no idea how to get home.
Then I was in a house with some people who must have taken me in. One of
them asked me if I wanted something to eat, and although I was hungry I was
too shy to accept, so I said no.
Then, my mum came to fetch me, and I was so happy, so happy to see her. I
ran to her when she came into the room and flung my arms around her, and I
can remember smiling and smiling and smiling at her, endlessly smiling, I was
so happy to have her back.
She was trying to be cross but she was smiling too, because I was so happy,
and all the people in the room at the table were smiling at me, because I was
so, so happy to have my mum back ….
Then I realised what all this is about. Once upon a time, you see, I was a
person, too. I was a girl called Marianne.
I had a mother. The woman with the black hair – you see? A father – the small
man she calls Ant who smells of cigarettes who comes in with her sometimes.
And who knows? Brothers and sisters and friends.
It was long ago. Then something happened. The woman, the mother, thinks
that I'm still Marianne. Poor woman! I wish I could tell her that Marianne is
gone. Once I was, but then something happened and I got turned into this
instead.

At this point you could check your learners' predictions and again ask them to
predict what will happen next.
Part seven
'I don't believe she's in any pain,' says Dr Morris patiently.
I nod, but I can't get it out of my mind. What if she's lying there in agony, day
after day, week after week, month after month? And she can't say a word.
'The real question is not if she's in any pain, but whether or not she's ever
going to wake up. It's been eight months now,' says Dr Morris. 'Physically
she's perfectly healthy, but we have no evidence of any personality at all.'
My Marianne. She's perfectly healthy but she has no personality. And now the
hospital has had enough. There are so many patients and not enough staff, not
enough beds, not enough doctors. Of course, she has a right to life, but there
is an alternative. We can simply withdraw support.
No drugs to kill her, but no medicines to fight off infection, and no food and
drink to sustain her. She would be heavily sedated, there would be no
discomfort – assuming she is capable of discomfort, which none of us believe
any more anyway. She would pass quietly away without any fuss or distress
within a week.
Ant squeezes my hand. We've talked about this before. We knew it was
coming. Probably it's the right thing to do.
Probably is a big word.
Part eight
Ant clears his throat. The doctor looks up.
'What are the chances that she might come round after so long?' he wants to
know.
'Very small.' The doctor shakes his head. 'Brain activity is very low. I would
be most surprised if there was ever any improvement. In our opinion...'
'In your opinion, she should die.' My voice jars in the little consultation office.
Doctor Morris purses his lips.
'In my opinion, Marianne is already dead, Mrs Sams. At this stage we're just
making a recommendation. The decision is yours. I understand how painful
this must be.'
Ant nods. 'While there's life, there's hope,' he says.
The doctor bows his head. 'In this case very little hope, I'm afraid.'
'But there is some,' I insist.
'Very little,' he repeats.
Ant and I nod, like dogs in the back of a car.
Part nine
We go into her room and watch her. Is that my daughter? Is there anyone here
apart from us? While there's life there's hope, but hope can be cruel.
What about the rest of us? Our son, Simon. Poor child, he's had little enough
of my attention this past year. The strain is crushing us. Marianne is silently
ruining our lives. The coma goes on and on and on. She is not my daughter
any more. She is, to put it bluntly, a vegetable.
I sit on the bed and hold up her things. Her little tank top. Do you remember,
Marianne? Nana bought you this, you wore it until it got so tight it looked
ridiculous and I had to hide it from you. Her necklace of wild pearls. Do you
remember this Marianne? Marianne? Marianne? Please wake up darling...
'Marianne, wake up, Marianne, wake up! You have to wake up, darling,
please, it's getting very late. Marianne!'
Ant takes my arm. I'm shouting.
'She can't hear you, Julie.' I stand up. I take a breath. 'We can't be sure.' 'We
can never be sure. But.'
'Give her another week. One week.' He smiles. 'A bit longer than that,
perhaps. There's no hurry.'
'We've waited this long.'
'It's her birthday next month. Let's wait for that.'
 Example literature lesson – Part 2
You'll now read the final section of the story.
Learner question
What is going to happen to Marianne? Check in the next part of the story.
Part 10
Why one month? Why not two or three? Why not forever?
It's all so far, far away. Mum? Are you still there? You see, I'd like to come
back, even if it was just to say goodbye. But I can't quite make it.
I can remember a lot now. I can remember her, my mother. I can remember
my father and Simon, and my friends. I remember the music she plays and the
things she shows to me, over and over again. They used to belong to
Marianne.
What I can't remember is myself. It's just like the doctor says – I'm not here.
I'm like a mirror. I reflect things – my mother, my teddy bear, my CDs, my
clothes. But I'm gone. I can't remember who Marianne was.
I can't remember who she used to be, what she used to do, or feel or think. I
can't remember her face. I can't remember anything about her.
Marianne's body is here – her memories are here – but she has gone forever.
I have no present. I have no future. I only have a past.
I'd like to tell them that it's right. Marianne would agree if she were here. She
wouldn't want everyone to keep coming into the hospital, year after year,
watch her get older and older.
So yes, please. Turn me off, pull out my tubes. I've done nothing but lie here
for all this time and I'm still so, so tired. I just want it to stop.
Another month. It's more than enough for me.

Reflection
Teaching question: What would you need to consider if using this text with your
learners?
Think about appropriacy, language level, interest, curriculum, literary strengths and
reading style.

Teaching question answer

Appropriacy
As this story deals with issues related to illness, end-of-life care and death,
you'd need to consider if these topics are suitable for your learners. If you
teach children, you'd need to consider the learners' developmental stage.
Language level
Will your learners know the majority of the language used in the story? Is
there any vocabulary you'd need to gloss before they read the story? Do your
learners have the language needed to discuss the topic?
Interest
Will your learners be interested in the story and be keen to talk about the
topic?
Curriculum
Does the story review, or expand on, language or topics they are covering
during the term? When is the best time to use this resource (start, middle, end
of the year)?
Literary strengths
Are there any parts of language that could be exemplified in the story?
Reading style
Will it be read in one lesson? Or over several lessons with a range of different
tasks? Will the learners read in class or at home? Will they read aloud (as a
drama) or silently? Will they read individually? Or as a group (jigsaw
reading)?

Post-reading task
Now you'll think about the feelings and behaviours the people involved in the decision
have.

Read what Marianne's mother said:

My Marianne. She's perfectly healthy but she has no personality. And now the hospital has
had enough. There are so many patients and not enough staff, not enough beds, not
enough doctors.
Marianne's mother

Read each list of feelings and behaviour and decide whether they refer to the doctor, the
mother or the father.
Objectivity The doctor
Persuasiveness
Insistence
Self-conviction
Mercy
Pain The mother
Fatigue
Desperation
Guilt
Solace The father
Doubt
Hope
You might feel that some of the feelings refer to other characters or more than one
character.

With your learners, this could be the starting point of discussion. You could ask your
learners to find evidence in the text to justify why they think a particular character feels
like that.

You might also take each feeling or behaviour in turn to look at, rather than the list
relating to each character in the story.

Reflection
This is almost the end of the example literature lesson section. Before you finish, look
back through all of the notes you've made, both the learner notes and the answers to the
teaching questions.
What learning can you take away to use with your own classes?
Note taking
Now find a short story or extract you'd like to use with your own learners. List the factors
that influence your choice. Remember to consider the factors mentioned in this section –
appropriacy, language level, interest, curriculum, literary strengths and reading style –
make some note
Teaching tip
Once you've considered all the factors, make a plan to use your chosen text in a
forthcoming class (or wherever it fits best in the curriculum).
Writing the date you'll use a text can help to make sure it happens!

Remember, you can find a link to all of the resources used in this example literature
lesson in the Resources, so you can also use the example story – as long as it's
appropriate for your learners.

Reading skills
In this next section you're going to think about using texts in general and you'll visit part of
a reading class.
First look at some tips for teaching reading using stories.
Writing can be done as a prediction task if learners are given some clues about a story.
Stories can be used over several lessons and turned into a project

Any text can be structured with pre-, while- and post-reading tasks. You're going to watch
examples of two while-reading tasks.

The class
After establishing the context of tourist locations in a pre-reading stage, Lalith Prabha asks
her learners to match pictures to different paragraphs of the text as they read.

What the learners do

Lalith puts the learners into small groups to discuss and agree their answers, and then the
whole class checks together.
The learners may need to scan the text for specific information or lexis that is linked to the
pictures, or skim the text for the general idea of the paragraph to link it to a picture.
After this, Lalith asks her learners to complete some gapped sentences in a task which
requires more detailed reading.
Join the class after the pre-reading stage of the lesson and answer the question that
follows.
Video transcript

[A secondary classroom in Rajkiya Zila School, Ramna, Muzaffarpur. The

teacher, Lalith Prabha, is standing at the front of the classroom
addressing the learners, who are sitting at benches.]

LALITH: So please read it, OK? And give a quick reading. Not a detailed
reading, give it quick reading. OK, so read.

[Learners are quietly reading out loud the text in their coursebooks.
Lalith is monitoring their work. Lalith then sticks three drawings on the
blackboard of a stupa, a temple and a bedroom.]

LALITH: You all can see three pictures on the board?

LEARNERS: Yes!

LALITH: So, I'm going to name this picture one, two and three [she puts
numbers under the pictures]. All right? Now. Now, talk in your groups, in
your benches, OK, four of you together, four of you together, in your own
bench, and try to match the picture with the paragraph.

For example, if this picture, picture one, matches with paragraph two,
you should say 'Picture one, paragraph two', OK? Like that. You have to
match these three pictures with the paragraphs. OK, now you talk with
your friends and try to match this.

[Learners working in groups, matching the pictures to the paragraphs.]

LALITH [to one of the learners]: Can you say picture one matches with
which paragraph?

LEARNER [standing up]: Paragraph three.

LALITH: Is that right?

LEARNERS: Yes, ma'am!

LALITH: All right. So what is this picture showing?

LEARNER: A stupa.

LALITH: Third paragraph is about some stupa?

LEARNERS: Yes, ma'am!

LALITH: Very good, sit down [learner sits down]. Three... Can you tell me,
picture three is about which paragraph?

LEARNER [standing up]: Paragraph one.

LALITH: Is that right?

LEARNERS: Yes, ma'am!

LALITH: Very good.

[Lalith takes the pictures down from the blackboard.]

LALITH: I'm going to write some fill-in-the-blanks sentences on the wall,

OK? And you also take it down in your notebook.

[Lalith writes on the board and the learners copy down in their
notebooks.]

LALITH: I would like you to now sit in bigger groups, OK? So, bench one,
please turn around. So, bench one and two are one group. Third bench
please turn around. Third and fourth becomes one group. [Learners
move into groups.]

Now, read the lesson one and try to find answers to these blanks.

[Learners work in groups, reading and finding the answers.]

LALITH: Are you finished?

LEARNERS: Yes, ma'am!

LALITH [pointing at the board]: Now, first sentence was 'I get a...'. Come
and write it on the board.

[A learner writes the answer on the board.]

LALITH: Is that right?

LEARNERS: Yes, ma'am!

[A learner writes an answer on the board while another stands up and

reads it.]

LEARNER: A princess of the Nepalese royal house appears.

LALITH: Very good. Is that right?

LEARNERS: Yes, ma'am!

LALITH: Very good, Saboor. Please, sit down [learner sits down]. A big
hand for…

[The teacher and the learners clap.]

The teacher used pair and group work to make the lesson learner-centred. Plus, there were
distinct pre-, while- and post-reading stages. This ensured the learners were engaged
throughout.

Skimming and scanning

In the lesson you saw in the video, the tasks encourage learners to use the reading sub-
skills of both skimming and scanning.

What do you know about these terms? Decide if the following activities or definitions
involve skimming or scanning. Flip the cards to compare your answers.
Reading a text quickly to get the gist  SKIMMING
Used to encourage speed  SKIMMING
Reading a text quickly to find specific  SCANING
words
There's no need to read each word.  SKIMMING
Searching for keywords  SCANING

Skimming
Skimming is concerned with finding the main ideas in a text. Looking at a book and
deciding if you want to buy it uses skimming skills.

Scanning
Scanning involves looking for specific information, such as names and dates. This is
commonly used when using a dictionary.
You'll now look at three activities. Decide if they use mainly skimming or scanning skills.

This is a scanning activity as you need to find a specific piece of information in the text.

This is a skimming activity as you need to understand the main idea of the text in order to
choose a suitable title.

This uses scanning skills as you are looking for specific information to identify which of
the search results is suitable.

Strategies for teaching reading

through literature
Look at the example lesson procedure for a jigsaw reading activity.
Set-up
1. Divide a short story into four parts.
2. Put learners into groups of four.

Reading
3. Give each learner in a group a part of the story on a worksheet. They must read their
part of the story silently. They can make a note of ten keywords.
4. They turn their worksheet over and take turns to tell their group what they've read, using
the keywords for reference.

Reconstructing
5. As a group, they then decide on the order of the story.
6. Next, they collaborate to write the whole story as a group.

Checking
7. Give a copy of the whole story to each group.
8. Finally, they check their version against the original story and assess their strengths and
weaknesses..

Reflection
This is one version of a jigsaw reading activity. As well as reading, what other language
skills do learners use? Continue to check your ideas.

Feedback
This activity uses multiple skills. Apart from reading, learners practise listening, writing
and speaking by collaborating in groups.

Check your understanding of jigsaw reading. Decide if the following

five statements are true or false.

This is true. Learners need to use the keywords they have written to orally summarise their
text for their group.
This is true. It's a way to introduce interaction into a reading skills lesson.

This is true. Learners read their section of the text. They use speaking and listening skills
when summarising the texts for their group.
They can also make a written summary or reconstruction of the text.

This is false. The activity relies on learners working together to share different parts of a
text.
This is true. The example uses a group of four but it can also be done in pairs, with each
learner having half of the text.

Teaching tip
It's also possible to turn this activity into a listening – a jigsaw listening – if you have the
resources and space to organise learners so that they can each listen to different parts of a
text.

Jigsaw reading can be used with a range of texts from newspaper articles to short
stories. As it's common to share information you've read, this is an activity that mimics
real-life reading.
The reading texts can be two or more separate texts or one longer text divided into
separate parts.
Once learners have shared their information, they can read their partner's text and give
them feedback on their summary or accuracy.

Reflection
How could you use jigsaw reading with your learners? What text or texts could you use?

Look at the instructions for a pair jigsaw reading task using a poem with four stanzas and
think about what the missing instructions could be.
Step Instructions
Step 1 Divide learners into pairs.
Give each partner two stanzas of a poem, for example A has one
Step 2
and four, and B has two and three.
Step 3 ??
Step 4 Learners summarise what they've read to their partner.
Step 5 Each pair works out the order of the four stanzas.
The pair look at the original texts to see if they have missed
Step 6
anything.

Focusing on keywords is a more suitable strategy to help learners summarise a text.

Jigsaw reading activities can be adapted in a number of ways. The reading texts can be
different texts or parts of the same text. In this example the teacher used a poem with
four paragraphs, but you could use any number, to make it more or less complex.

Learners can also be asked to memorise or to summarise the text. Try a few different
adaptations with your learners to discover which works best.

UNIT 3 REVIEW

This activity uses skimming skills to read the text quickly and get a general idea
before deciding whether to read the full article or not.

When thinking about the appropriacy of a text, you need to consider the topic or
subject matter as well as the age of your learners.
These questions refer to language level.
When considering interest you should ask: What is your text about, what are the
central themes? Will your learners want to read (or listen to) the story and be keen to
talk about the topic?

These questions refer to how the text fits into the curriculum.
When considering the text's literary strengths, ask yourself:
Are there any parts of language that could be exemplified in the story?

There's a little more to think about when setting up a jigsaw listening, such as how the
learners will listen to the text. Will they have access to recordings they can listen to
individually, for example?
It's important to plan your receptive skills lessons carefully, including pre-, while and
post tasks. This applies to both reading and listening skills classes.

Remember, you can integrate other skills such as speaking and writing by setting up
group-work tasks.

Don't forget to choose the texts you're going to use keeping the selection factors in
mind; every group of learners is unique, and you'll want to make sure that the texts
you use are appropriate for all.

Have you planned when to use the literary text you've selected yet?

MODULE 3 - DEVELOPING PRODUCTIVE SKILLS

THROUGH LITERATURE
Unit 1 – Literature for speaking

Productive skills
Writing and speaking involve learners producing language.
Productive skills can improve use of grammar, vocabulary and discourse, which
contributes to learners' receptive skills.

These activities tend to best suit developing speaking and listening skills, which together
are called oracy.
They are co-dependent skills, meaning that conversation, for example, needs both.
Performing a play and reading a poem involve speaking, while writing the end to a story
and writing a poem involve writing.

Choose the best words to complete the three texts to find out more about productive
skills.

The objective of teaching productive skills is to enable learners to communicate freely in

the language.

Productive skills are as important in the real world as they are in the classroom.
Learners need to use a mixture of receptive and productive skills.

Using literature to teach productive skills

Look at the statements about literature and language and decide if they are true or false.

Using literature can help to develop all four skills depending on how you exploit texts and
activities. Stories can help learners develop both receptive and productive skills.
Reading could help learners find their own style by allowing them to explore a range of
possibilities.

You'll find out more about the productive skill of speaking in this unit.
Read the following text about the importance of literature for teaching productive skills,
then answer the three questions.
The power of literature
Literature is a powerful tool for teaching the productive skills of writing and speaking. It
 provides many opportunities for teachers to teach less-common aspects of grammar,
vocabulary and pronunciation while teaching productive skills.

Authentic language use

Most works of literature are authentic samples that are not created with the purpose of
teaching a language. So, learners are exposed to actual language based on real-life
contexts.
Through the imaginary world of a novel, play or short story, a learner is exposed to
colourful settings in which there are characters from many social or regional
backgrounds.
Through such literary works, the learner gets a view of the world and how the language
is used by different characters.

An aid to production
Literature helps learners become familiar with many features of the written language,
which helps them to use the language expertly.
They learn about the syntax and the variety of possible structures of sentences, the
different ways of connecting ideas, which develops and enriches their writing skills.
Real-life contexts are useful for helping develop speaking skills.

Teaching tip
Literature can also encourage creativity and higher-order thinking skills, which both
improve learners' productive skills.

Reflection
1. When you are working on productive skills with your learners, what kinds of activities
do you use?
2. What are the features of an effective productive skills activity?

Imagine a teacher is using a literary text about wild elephants with their learners. Three of
these statements about activities the teacher can use are true.
Information gaps, discussions and creative responses to the text help develop higher-order
thinking as well as productive skills.
Writing a summary is a useful way to consolidate understanding and develop writing
skills, but it won't practise pronunciation.

Speaking skills
Read the text about speaking skills, thinking about how it relates to using literature in the
classroom. Then answer the questions that follow.
 Speaking skills are defined as the skills which allow you to communicate
effectively. They give the ability to convey information verbally and in a way that
the listener can understand.
 Speaking is an interactive process where information is shared and, if necessary,
acted upon by the listener. This skill enables a person to orally express ideas and
thought processes accurately and coherently.
 In other words, speaking is described as the activity or the ability to express a
sequence of ideas fluently.

Reflection
How does speaking support the understanding of literature, and how does literature
support the development of speaking skills?

Have a think and then continue to read the suggestions and compare them with your own
ideas.
Speaking skills and literature
An essential part of using literature in the classroom is encouraging learner response and
personalisation. It's important to give plenty of opportunities for learners to discuss and
make sense of the ideas in texts by speaking with others who have read them.

They should be encouraged to develop their own ideas and reactions as this will hopefully
instil passion for literature even beyond the classroom. In this way, speaking activities
support both learners' speaking and listening skills.

Extended and creative speaking

Literature also provides countless opportunities for extended and creative speaking.
Stories can be discussed and themes debated.

New endings can be created and acted out, incorporating drama skills and pronunciation
work. In this way literature supports the development of speaking skills.

Next, you'll learn more about using literature to develop speaking skills and how to
overcome common teaching problems.
Choose the best options to complete the sentences.

Gestures can be particularly developed through drama, which is a natural genre to use
when developing activities for literature lessons.

Fluency involves aspects such as pace, rhythm and pausing. Accuracy involves correct use
of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation.
These are important aspects of ensuring that learners get the most out of literary texts.

Speaking also involves processes, such as cognitive and socio-cultural processes.

Activities around literary texts can be tailored to develop these processes.
Do you use a mixture of accuracy and fluency activities with your learners? These skills
need to be treated differently. You can read more about this in the Resources for this
module.

Learners need enough language competency to both produce and comprehend the
vocabulary and grammar appropriate for the topic or the context.

Here are five more aspects of language which learners need to become proficient in. Do
you know what they are?

Have a think, then select the headings to read a description of each aspect.
Accuracy
Speaking with grammatically correct structures, correct pronunciation, appropriate
language for the context, as well as distinguishing when these are not correct.

Fluency
The ability to produce and understand a continuous stream of language at an appropriate
pace. The focus is not on accuracy.
Discourse markers
The use of words or phrases which organise ideas, for example first, second, on the other
hand, to summarise, etc.
Phonology
This involves being able to identify and use sounds, to recognise and produce
phonological aspects of speech such as contractions.
Pragmatics
This is an appropriate use of language in social situations, such as turn-taking,
paraphrasing, asking questions, responding, etc.

Both pragmatics and discourse markers are connected to the performance of speaking.
Discourse markers allow learners to talk in a coherent and organised way. Pragmatics
allows learners to talk in an appropriate way, such as not interrupting. The social rules that
define pragmatics vary according to culture.

Next, you'll read about activities that develop each of the speaking sub-skills you've
looked at here. Before moving on, think about any activities you currently use.

Read about five activities that you can use with many literary texts, and decide which
aspect of speaking each one mainly develops from the list:
 accuracy
 fluency
 discourse markers
 phonology
 pragmatics.

Flip each card to check your answer.

Learners work together to record a poem to a specific rhythm.  Phonology

Learners summarise the plots of a literary text they've chosen from a  Fluency
selection; their partner guesses which text they're talking about.
Learners create a conversation between two characters from a text,  Accuracy
with a particular focus on reported speech.
After reading just one section of a story each, learners work in  Discourse
groups to piece together the text and put it into the correct order markers
Learners imagine they are at the first meeting of a book club. They  Pragmatics
persuade each other that their favourite book is the next one they
read.
Reflection
1. Which of these activities could you use with your learners?
2. Are there any that you can adapt for different types of learners?

Challenges with speaking activities

Teachers often have concerns about speaking skills activities and what may go wrong.
Read the teaching worries and match them with a possible solution.
You can monitor and collect learners' mistakes, then write them on the board and ask
learners to correct them in pairs.

Make sure tasks have a clear objective, such as finding something in common, coming to
an agreement or completing information.

Elicit useful language onto the board in the form of sentence stems, useful phrases or
topic-related vocabulary.

Give learners a chance to brainstorm ideas in L1 or L2 as appropriate, in pairs or small

groups.

Teaching tip
Sharing your worries with other teachers will help you to come up with solutions to
common teaching problems.
Joining online support groups such as the TeachingEnglish Facebook page will give you
easy access to a lot of teaching experience.
Vocabulary for speaking
Building up your learners' vocabulary is essential for improving their speaking skills.
Read the text about vocabulary development, then answer the two questions that follow.
Vocabulary development begins from infancy, when children pick up words to describe
things around them or communicate their needs. This progresses from single words to
phrases to meaningful sentences.

The vocabulary builds up even more substantially when they enter school and start
interacting with their teachers and classmates.

Literary texts play a significant role by way of developing the vocabulary of the learner.
Short stories, poems and dramas expose the learners to a variety of vocabulary, for
example figures of speech, proverbs and idiomatic phrases.

As they come across unfamiliar words, phrases and expressions, teachers can help by
giving the learners opportunities to use them in meaningful contexts.

Vocabulary games and activities can be an interesting way of developing your learners'
productive skills.

One idea is to keep a 'vocabulary bank' that you add to as you encounter new vocabulary
when using literary texts. Read about this idea and, as you do, think about activities you
could use with it.
Vocabulary bank
After using a text, ask learners to work in groups to decide on five main words. These
could be words that are used a lot in the text, new words for this group of learners or
central themes from the text (depending on the age and level of the learners).

Ask groups to write each word on a separate piece of paper. Collect these in and create a
physical word bank, with all of the words in an envelope or box that you keep
somewhere near the front of the class that learners can see.

Add to the word bank as you find new and interesting vocabulary in future texts you use.
Word association
Select a word from your word bank and write it on the board. Ask the learners to write
down or say the words that they can associate with it. For example, the word sun will
generate words like circle, warm, bright, day, hot, golden, etc.

Guess the word

Select a word from the word bank and give clues for learners to guess what it is.
For example (word = water):
 I am a noun and a verb.
 I am very important to living things.
 I begin with the letter 'w'.
 People cannot live without me.
Backs to the board
This is similar to the 'Guess the word' activity, but with learners describing.

Put learners into groups, and each group chooses a player. The player stands facing
their group, with their back to the board. Select a word from the word bank and write it
on the board, so that groups can see it, but the players from each group cannot.

The groups need to describe the word so that the player correctly guesses what it is.
Players can also ask questions about the word.

Reflection
1. Have you tried any of the activities already?
2. How could you adapt them to use with your learners?

Applying speaking skills in the classroom

Reflection
Think of a successful speaking activity, one where your learners spoke a lot and enjoyed
the activity.
1. Why do you think it worked well?
2. How did you set it up?

If the teacher is organised, they will be more relaxed, and that helps learners to relax too.

In a warmer the focus is on fluency and encouraging learners to use English in a way
which isn't too challenging. This helps them to relax and switch into English.

Once learners are warmed up, keep the momentum going and keep them engaged.

Let learners know that there is an instruction coming and check that everyone is listening.
Check learners have understood by noticing their actions. If they do what you asked,
they've understood. If they don't, repeat the instructions and try again.

Can you say, 'What's this?' rather than 'Can anybody tell me what this is?'
It's difficult to take in more than two instructions, so give one instruction, let the learners
move, then give another instruction.
 Activities to develop speaking skills
What techniques do you normally use to introduce a literary text while improving the
speaking skills of your learners? Here are some ideas.

Picture description
This is an effective way of initiating speaking in both young learner and adult classes. It
can be done as pair work or as a group activity. The teacher can give keywords if needed.

For example, from the picture the teacher shows, the teacher could give or elicit the related
vocabulary. In this example, below, that could be: tree, cow, countryside, mother, son.

A boy and mother outside their home

Image description
A cartoon of a boy and his mother standing outside their home.
There is a cow and a big tree outside.

Learners could be asked to create a story by:

 speaking about the characters
 developing the plot
 describing the background
 initiating an imaginary dialogue between the boy and his mother or the cow
and the boy.
Look at the image, taken from the lesson activity pack for the story Whose face do you
see? by Melvin Burgess.
How could you use this picture to develop the speaking skills of your learners?
It's a good idea to use the same resource in multiple ways, to fully exploit it. Try to think
of an idea for using this image as:
 a simple warmer to set the context
 a prediction activity before reading a text
 as a post-reading activity
 as an extension activity for future texts.

A face made of four different faces

Image description
A collage image with four part-faces joined to make one complete face.
The top-left part of the face is from a person with black hair, brown eyes and wearing glasses.
The top-right part of the face is from a person with blonde hair, green eyes and wearing glasses.
The bottom-left part of the face is from a person with a red T-shirt and no make-up.
The bottom-right part of the face is from a person with brown, curly hair, wearing red lipstick.
The skin tones are different in all four quadrants.

Once you have some ideas, continue to read through the suggestions for each type of
activity and compare them with your own ideas.

Context-setting warmer 1
Display the image. Describe one of the four face parts and ask learners to point to
the correct square. For example: This is an upper part of the face. The eye is green
and the hair is blonde. (Answer: top-right quadrant)
Ask learners to do the same in pairs.
Context-setting warmer 2
 You could also use this activity in the same way the teachers in Thailand started
their classes, by giving learners an image and asking them to find others with the
same picture to form groups.
You could give them different parts of the face in the picture to different learners.
Either they find a learner with the same part of the face, or they find three other
learners to make up the full face in the picture.
Prediction activity
Show the picture and tell learners that there are four main characters in the story
they are going to read.
Learners work in pairs to predict who each of the four characters are and how they
relate to one another. While they read the story, they check their predictions and
then they discuss their predictions in a post-reading activity.

Post-reading activity
After reading the story, learners look at the image. They suggest reasons why this
particular image (a collage of four faces represented as one face) is used. (Suggested
answer: Because the four characters in the story are so closely linked.)

For both the post-reading and the prediction activities, learners will likely benefit from
some controlled practice of the language before starting the task. You could use any of the
methods you saw in the video, from straightforward repetition to visual prompts.
Extension activity for future texts
Ask learners to collect and bring in images of faces from newspapers and
magazines. Cut them up and distribute the pieces to different groups. (Alternatively
each learner can draw a face, then cut it into pieces.)
Ask learners to use different pieces to create a new face and explain how it
represents a character from a story. It doesn't matter if the parts are not to scale – in
fact, the more abstract the better. Learners can then attach meaning to the faces from
information in the text.
For example: This represents the character of Rebecca. The mouth is very
prominent as she has a lot of dialogue in the story.

Focus on the author

Another way you can develop speaking skills through literary texts is by focusing
on the author. This works particularly well with classic literature, like Shakespeare,
and with any authors that are particularly well known to your learners.
First, you'll need to ask learners to do some research into the writer's life. This could
be done in class or at home in preparation for the lesson. Then you can use the
research as the basis for the speaking element.
Two ideas for this are 'Interview an author' and 'Ask an expert'.

Reflection
1. What do you think the two activities involve?
2. What will learners have to do?

Have a think and then continue to read explanations of the two activities. Would you like
to try them out in your classroom?
Interview an author
Put the learners into two groups: journalists and writers.
The journalist group brainstorms interview questions together. The writer group
brainstorms all they can remember about the writer's life (this is the writer they are
studying). Have an extra journalist if there is an odd number.
When they are finished, make pairs of one journalist and one writer. The journalists
conduct the interview.
After they finish the interviews, change writers so that they have a new partner and
another opportunity to practise the role play.
Ask a few pairs to demonstrate their interview. The other learners give feedback on their
performance.

Ask an expert
Put learners into pairs: one learner is the expert and the other a reporter. Give the expert an
information sheet about the author.
Give each pair the prompt sheet (see below). The reporter asks questions around each
prompt, and the expert gives answers.
When they finish, they swap roles and practise again.

Reflection
What kinds of thinking skills do learners need to use in these activities?
How do the activities help develop learners' productive skills?

Feedback
'Interview an author' and 'Ask an expert' both encourage learners to use higher-order
thinking skills as they imagine the answers an author or expert would give.

This improves the learners' ability to communicate verbally in different situations. The
teacher can monitor the learners and decide which aspects of speaking to focus on,
depending on the needs of the learners and the curriculum.

Now, thinking about the two speaking activities you just looked at, decide which
statements refer to 'Ask an expert'.

The other two statements refer to 'Interview an author

Reflection
1. Could you use either of these ideas with your classes?
2. How could you adapt them to better suit your learners?

Have a think, then continue to read some possible adaptations.

These are very general activity ideas designed to work with the authors of almost any text
you select. Of course, you can set them up in different ways depending on your learners'
needs.

For example, you could give example questions in the 'Ask an expert' activity, rather than
prompts, for more support.

To make 'Interview an author' more challenging, you could ask learners to really get into
the character of their author, using drama techniques.

You could also give time in class to research the authors, or set up the task as homework
in a previous lesson as preparation for this task.

REVIEW UNIT 1

Reading a range of texts can also improve learners' creative-writing skills.

English is a rhythmic language, so poetry can help learners to feel this. Poems which
rhyme can help with tricky pronunciation of individual words.
Fluency involves pace, rhythm and pausing. Accuracy involves correct use of grammar,
vocabulary and pronunciation.

Pragmatics includes turn-taking, paraphrasing, asking questions and responding. Learners

need as much guidance with this as with other aspects of speaking, as the rules may be
different in their language or culture.
A warmer activity should focus on fluency, not accuracy, to relax learners at the start of
the lesson.
Do repeat instructions if learners haven't understood. You can check by observing what
they do and, if necessary, explain again.

Unit 2 - Literature for writing

Writing skills
Reflection
How do you teach writing? Think about your answers to the following questions.
1. How do you give your learners a model of what to write?
2. What language support do you give your learners before they start writing?
3. What do your learners find most difficult about planning their writing task?
4. Do your learners write in class or for homework?
5. What criteria do you use when you are marking a writing task?

Here are a teacher's answers about their experience of teaching writing.

How do you give your learners a model of what to write?
I ask them to do a reading task, either straight from a literary text or an adaptation. Then
I ask them to write their own version.
What language support do you give your learners before they start writing?
I focus them on some useful language in the model before they start writing.

What do your learners find most difficult about planning their writing task?
They often don't have many ideas about what to write.

Do your learners write in class or for homework?

They usually prepare in class but write at home.

What criteria do you use when you are marking a writing task?
It depends on the task! But usually task achievement, coherence and cohesion, grammar
and vocabulary, and punctuation.

How similar were your answers to this teacher's answers? You'll look at some of these
areas in this unit.

Before you continue, think about how you would describe 'writing skills'. Have a think and
then continue to compare a description with your own ideas.

Description of writing skills

Writing skills are the skills that enable anyone to put thoughts into meaningful words in
written text.

These skills involve developing and acquiring skills for complex linguistic processes
such as ideas generation, selection, development of the text, organisation and revision.

They also involve critical-thinking skills, where learners learn to analyse and present
their thoughts in written form.
What are good writing skills?
Teachers often use marking criteria when reviewing learners' written work.

Read the following four statements about elements of good writing. Choose the most
appropriate description for each aspect.
 Good writing demonstrates appropriate use of sentence structure, punctuation,
spelling, and grammar.

 In a good piece of writing, the type of writing (or genre) is clear. It is clear who the
audience is and why the writer is writing it.

 Coherent writing has a clear flow of ideas and thoughts.

  This is achieved through use of linking devices and the logical organisation of ideas.

Stages of writing
What do you know about the stages of writing? Choose the most appropriate order for the
stages of a writing lesson, option 1 or option 2.
Option 1 Option 2
Pre-writing Pre-writing
Revising Drafting
Editing Revising
Drafting Editing
Publishing Publishing

 Option 2 is the best order for the stages of writing.

Do you follow all of these stages with your learners? You'll look at each stage in more
detail next.

Pre-writing
Before beginning to write, learners need time to plan what they're going to write and how
to present it. It's a common problem for learners to say they don't know what to write.
Learners can plan a piece of writing by:
 working on an outline
 brainstorming the topic
 creating a graphical presentation of the sub-topics, such as with a graphic organiser,
example below.

Story elements graphic organiser

Title of story:
Author:
setting characters problem solution

beginning middle end

Message or lesson:

Note taking
In this section you'll use a graphic organiser to plan a summary text about the story Whose
Face Do You See? by Melvin Burgess.
Copy the story elements graphic organiser into a notebook or digital document so that you
can complete it as you read the text which follows.

You'll now complete your graphic organiser about the story Whose Face Do You See? by
Melvin Burgess.

Key information about the story

 Marianne is in a coma and has forgotten who she is.
 The story is written in the form of a monologue. The italicised parts are Marianne's
inner speech, and the normal text gives the narrative.
 The ending scene of the story begins just as Marianne's parents are preparing to say
a final goodbye to her.

Read the end of the story and, as you do, complete the graphic organiser you copied out.
Final part of the story
'We'd better go.'

Yes, Mum, go. It's all for the best.

But although my dad is saying let's go, he isn't going himself. He has something in his
hand. 'Worth a try. We haven't tried this for a while.'

And my dad moves something in front of me. It's a mirror. At least, I think it's a mirror,
but perhaps it's not. Because in the mirror is a picture of Marianne.

'Darling, look. It's you.'

It's Marianne.

'It's you, darling. Marianne, can you see?'

No, it's not me. It's Marianne.

'Can you see, Marianne?'

Is it? Is it me? Am I... ?

'She moved, Julie, look, she moved! Her mouth moved!'

I never move.

'Are you sure? It's your imagination.'

I can't blink, I can't move. I'm not here...

'She moved, I saw her! God! Marianne, do it again — look. Oh, Lord, do it again for your
mother, darling. See, that's you, that's you there in the mirror. Just smile, darling, just do
it again — oh, please, please, I know I saw you... just try to smile, Marianne.'

Like this...

'Oh my God, she moved. She tried to smile. Oh, God! God God God!'
'Marianne! It's really you...'

Is that really me? Was that me all the time? Really? I never dreamt that was me…

Now Mum grabs hold of my hand. 'Squeeze Marianne, squeeze hard if you can hear me.'
And Dad's shouting and jumping around the room, and I want to cry too, because it really
is me, you know. I saw it – I moved my mouth!

The door opens and the doctor comes in.

'What is it?'
'She moved. She tried to smile. She moved!'
'That's not possible.'

The doctor comes to the bed and leans over into my face. MY face. There is a long pause
while I look around for the muscles. Where have they gone?
'Take her hand. Take her hand. Marianne, squeeze. Squeeze for the doctor. Marianne,
please?'

I can feel his hand resting in mine. I squeeze.

Hello doctor. I'm Marianne. I just found out.

Note that you may need to read the whole story to complete the organiser; you can find it
in the Resources for this module.

When you've finished, continue to see an example of a completed story graphic organiser.

Now read through the example of a completed story elements graphic organiser and
answer the reflection questions that follow.

Story elements graphic organiser

Title of story: Whose Face Do You See?
Author: Melvin Burgess
setting characters problem solution
Marianne can't
Marianne remember who she is. Marianne's father uses
A hospital Her mum a mirror to finally
Her dad Her parents are make Marianne see
Her doctor desperately trying to who she is.
wake her up.
beginning middle end
Marianne's parents
The context of the
A decision has to throw a sort of party in
hospital is set and it
be made; will the the hospital room to say
takes a while for the
life support be goodbye to her. The
reader to understand
turned off? father uses a mirror to
the different voices
make Marianne finally
that are narrating.
remember who she is.

Message or lesson: The mirror could be a metaphor for life. People see things without
understanding them fully. It takes time to realise who you and others actually are.
Reflection
 How does this complete graphic organiser compare with the one you completed?
 It can be a good idea to complete at least two boxes as a class to give learners an
idea of how much you want them to write.
 Many teachers say that having a completed graphic organiser helps learners to
remain focused to the end of the writing task: they have the information and ideas
that they need to write. Do you think that it would help your learners? Why?
  Learners will have different ideas about what the message or lesson of a story is.
How can you use this as an opportunity for more speaking practice?

Drafting and revising

Drafting
The next stage is drafting. Read about the process, then answer the question that follows.

 Encourage learners to make a draft before finalising any piece of writing.

 During the process of making a draft, learners organise their ideas into sentences
and paragraphs and connect their ideas.
 At this stage, the main focus is on overall meaning, not so much on punctuation and
task format, though learners will correct elements of these if they see errors in this
stage.

At the drafting stage, learners focus on organising and connecting their ideas, with a focus
on overall meaning. After drafting, they can move on to revising the text.

Revising
In the revision stage, learners revise their work to check it fulfils task requirements
and communicates clearly and accurately. It's a good idea to give learners a short list of
specific criteria to focus on when revising their writing.
Think about the kinds of writing tasks you give your learners and select the criteria
you would give them to help them revise their writing.
The task has been achieved.
Sentences are well structured.
The overall meaning is clear.
There is a good range of vocabulary.
Paragraphs are well connected.
Spelling is accurate.

There are no correct answers here. The criteria you choose will change depending on the
task, the learners' level and the learning aims of your course.
You can also use language to make the criteria more specific and/or learner-friendly. For
example: I have connected my paragraphs using words such as ...

Editing and publishing

Editing
During this stage, the main focus is on the grammar and the components of language like
syntax and usage. The process of editing focuses on checking if the writing is accurate and
appropriate for the task.

Peer editing can be useful. What questions could you give your learners to help them with
editing their work? Have a think and then continue to read some suggestions.

Editing questions
The learner can keep the following points in mind while editing their (or their partner's)
written work:
Is the grammar correct?
Is the vocabulary the most appropriate?
Have the correct punctuation and capitalisation been used?
Does the text follow format conventions (e.g. letter, report)?

Learners should learn to check the format and structure of the whole document.

Publishing
The final stage is publishing. Read the text to find out about publishing.
Writing is a very important means of communication. People usually write so that
others can read. When a document is published, the writer is allowing it to be read by
others.

Where they read it (e.g. on a webpage, in a magazine or in an email) will change some
things about how the text is presented.

Think about some different ways that you could publish learner writing, for example by
putting it in a school magazine.

Have a think and then continue to read some suggestions.

There are many ways learners' work can be 'published', such as:
•in a school magazine
•on a classroom or online poster (such as Padlet)
•on a wall display in the classroom
•in a writing competition
•on an online review or story app (such as Goodreads)
•on a social media site (which needs to be age-appropriate)
•in a research paper (which could be shared in paper form or online)
•in a letter or email to a newspaper or magazine
•creating a booklet for classmates to read.

Have you published any of your learners' work in these ways?

Publishing their work can help learners become more confident and motivated to write.

Writing styles
There are different styles, or genres, of writing, depending on the reason for writing.
Choose the correct style for each of the five definitions.

In narrative writing, stories generally have a beginning, middle and end.

Recount is often written in the first person.

Procedural writing includes a set of instructions providing step-by-step guidance to the

reader.
Persuasive writing is often used in advertising.

Reports include a systematic presentation of observed facts and findings that have already
taken place.

Reflection
Which of these styles do you think are most relevant for teaching English through
literature?

Narrative, recount and persuasive writing are perhaps most relevant for teaching
English through literature. Read more about them now.

Narratives
First you'll think about narratives. What's your own experience of teaching your learners to
write in this style?
Every narrative typically has three parts: a beginning, a middle and an end.

Read the three descriptions and decide which part of a narrative they describe. Flip the
cards to find out.
Recount
This style involves narration on a first-person basis as the writer is recalling their own
experience, such as in an autobiography. In literature, this style is sometimes used to
recount someone else's experience, which can add more drama to the story.

Can you think of a book you've read that uses this style? Here are a few popular ones that
you may have come across:
 The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
 Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

(Note that the titles of some of these books may be slightly different in different
languages.)

Reflection
1. Do you think it's important to introduce this writing style to your learners?
2. What do you think the main features are of a recount style? Think about language, order
of events and point of view.

Language and style

The recount style is a good model for learners as it shows that they can write from their
own perspective. Learners can use simple grammar to recount experiences, for example
past simple, present perfect and adverbs of time.
Order of events
Recount texts are usually in chronological order as they discuss events that have already
happened. This can make them easier to follow and a good model for learners.

Perspective
Also, as these texts are written in the first person, this makes them easily relatable.
Reading about other people's experiences through a first-person perspective can help
learners to discover other viewpoints.

Persuasive writing
Now read the text about persuasive writing and answer the question which follows.
Persuasive writing
The purpose of a persuasive writing style is to persuade your audience to believe you or
follow your opinion.
Copy writers who write advertisements will use a persuasive style to convince potential
customers that their product is the best. Political figures also use a persuasive style in their
speeches.

This style is sometimes used in literature for young learners, for example:

– I Wanna Iguana by Karen Kaufman and David Catrow, in which a boy and his mother
write each other notes explaining why it is/isn't a good idea to have a pet iguana.

– Be a Friend to Trees by Patricia Lauber, which discusses the importance of trees for the
environment.

Learners of all ages could use persuasive writing to write a review of a book, play, film or
event to convince other learners to read or see it.

Check your understanding of the writing styles you've looked at by matching the activity
(purpose) with the writing style.
These are all activities you could try with the story Whose Face Do You See? by Melvin
Burgess.
A procedural style is used while giving instructions to follow a certain procedure.

Writing about an experience in the first person is an example of recount writing.

Writing the story in your own way is an example of narrative.

Both report and procedural styles are less commonly used in literature. However,
they can be used in responding to literature by using imagined scenarios or doing research
on the themes of a text.
A report includes an account of something that has happened or been investigated.

Unit 2 review
At the editing stage, learners focus on language.
The pre-writing stage gets learners interested in the text, and the publishing stage gives the
text an audience and a reason to communicate.

The main focus in the revision stage is on overall meaning.

To explain and justify what should happen in the story requires persuasive writing skills.
Both of these styles are less commonly used in literature. However, they can be used in
responding to literature by using imagined scenarios or doing research on the themes of a
text.

Many teachers report that they are very useful in class.

Unit 3 – Planning a literature lesson

Integrated skills
You've looked at how to develop the skills of speaking and writing when using literature
in the classroom. In reality, you'll want to develop all four main skills, as well as the
various sub-skills, at the same time.

An integrated-skills approach allows for realistic learning, making it more meaningful and
motivating for the learners.

To begin this unit, read through the following two scenarios and decide which skills are
being used.
Scenario one
A teacher dictates six sentences taken from a story the class is working on. The learners
write them down. They're asked to think about their meaning in relation to the story and
decide whether they are:
 important
 not very important
 unimportant.
Then they rank the sentences in order of significance. The teacher allows ten minutes for
this activity.
Which skills are the learners using in this activity? How could you add another skill?

Feedback
The learners use:
 listening: they listen to the sentences being read out by the teacher
 writing: they write down the sentences being dictated to them
 reading: they read the sentences before doing the activity.
Speaking could be added by using pair or group work.

For example:
The dictation could be changed to an information exchange.
One learner takes the role of teacher and does the dictation to their group.
The pair or group does the ranking exercise collaboratively.
Pairs or groups are joined to make a larger group (pyramid discussion). They check their
rankings and feed back to the whole class.

Scenario two
A teacher gives learners a paragraph from a story with gaps. They skim-read the
paragraph. Then they work in pairs to guess the missing words. The teacher plays a
recording of the paragraph. The learners listen and check their answers.

In this activity the learners read the paragraph and write the missing words.
Feedback
More speaking could be added if pairs of learners with the correct answers are asked to
read them out.
A pyramid discussion could also be used here, where two groups join to make a larger
group, to discuss or check answers before listening to the recording.
Asking follow-up questions would give another opportunity for discussion.

Putting it all together

This is a paragraph you could use in the second activity idea in the previous section. It's
adapted from a story by Jackie Kay.

Read the text. Does 'her' in the first sentence refer to a human or an animal? Find the clues
in the text. Continue to check your answer.

Text
In the morning I sat her in her wooden high chair and she watched me busy myself around
the kitchen.
I gave her a fresh bowl of water and a raw egg. She cracked the shell herself and slurped
the yellow yolk in one gulp. I could tell she was still a little drowsy. She was breathing
peacefully and slowly, her little... chest rising and falling.
Her eyes literally followed me from counter to counter to cupboard, out into the hall to
pick up the post. I poured her a bowl of muesli and put some fresh blueberries in it. She
enjoys that.
Nobody tells you how flattering it is, how loved you feel, your child following your every
move like that. Her beady eyes watched me open my post as if it was the most interesting
thing anybody could do.
The post was dull as usual, a gas bill and junk. I sighed, went to the kitchen bin and threw
everything in but the bill. When I turned back around, there she still was, smiling at me.
Her eyes lit up, fierce with love.

Answer
The text refers to a fox. There are clues which indicate that the narrator's daughter is not
human: she was given 'a fresh bowl of water and a raw egg. She cracked the shell herself
and slurped the yellow yolk in one gulp.'

The title of this story is My Daughter, The Fox, so it's important to do this activity before
introducing the text, so that you don't give the answer away!

Reflection
The pre-reading activity you just did is aimed at introducing the topic of the story and
building up interest and motivation.
1. Are you now interested in the story?
2. What other pre-reading activities could you do?

Have a think, then continue to see an example.

Example activity
Read through the list of actions to do with youngsters. Which expressions are usually
associated with human babies and which are more commonly used to describe animals?

The purpose of this activity is to build up the vocabulary related to raising humans and
animals.
In this way, the topic of the story is introduced and, at the same time, learners activate the
vocabulary essential for comprehending the text.

Learners can be asked about their personal experiences of caring for babies and animals.

The story can be divided into six more sections.

Which of these strategies would you use to introduce more interaction and skills during the
while- and post-reading parts of this lesson?

 Put learners in pairs or groups to discuss and collaborate.

 Ask learners to predict what happens next after each section.
 Give learners each a different summary sentence of each section of the story. They
work together to put them in the correct order.
 Get learners to discuss their reactions to the story.
 Ask learners to work together to underline certain language in the text, for example
adjectives usually used to describe animals.

There are no correct answers here. You can try all of these activities when using literature
to practise the four skills.
You can also pick out language used in the text as a post-reading activity. This task can be
used with My Daughter, The Fox. You have to choose the best collocations.

'Bushy tail' and 'overnight bag' are stronger collocations.

You can select simpler example collocations for your learners.
Picking out vocabulary that's used in a story can be a good way to get learners to retell the
story (for speaking practice) or write the story in their words (for writing practice).

You can use word clouds or word tables to help them. This is an example of a word table
with key vocabulary for the first section of My Daughter, The Fox.

crack an eggshell fresh bowl of water high chair

raw egg open the post flattering
well-fed bowl of muesli beady eyes

Learners retell or write the story using these words and phrases. You could publish your
learners' stories on an app or record them telling their stories.

The learners could also come up with their own ideas of what happens next in the story.

Reflection
What other post-reading activities could you use with the text My Daughter, The Fox?

Plot and character development

Ask learners to create a character map of the mother and her child.
Show and tell
Ask learners to bring in a photo of their pet or favourite animal and describe its
personality.
Personal recount activity
Learners talk about a time they met a funny or interesting animal.
 Understanding prepositions
Learners circle and identify use of prepositions in the text.
Group discussion
Learners discuss what it would be like to have a fox in the family.
Vocabulary questions
Learners ask each other questions which contain new expressions from the text. For
example, Why do people usually sneak a look at something?
Note taking
Most of these activities could be easily adapted for different literary texts. Make a note of
any you'd like to try with your learners.

The typical features of post-reading activities.

Learners can review any new language through using it in a different context, such as
writing and answering questions or writing their own story.

Note taking
Make a note of any pre-, while- or post-reading activities that you would like to try with
your learners.

Putting it into practice

In this next section, you'll work through an example integrated skills lesson both as a
learner and reflecting as a teacher.
For each activity, work through the learner questions first and then any teaching questions.
It's a good idea to take notes for both. So that you can easily look back on and identify
them later, you might want to use one colour for learner notes and another for teacher
notes.

As you're working through the activities, think about how you can use more speaking and
writing practice.

Pre-listening task 1
This first pre-listening task is designed to set the context.

Learner questions
What is a fairy tale?
Do you know any?

Feedback
Here is a definition of a fairy tale taken from the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary:

'a story about magic or fairies, usually for children'.

How does this compare with your definition?

Examples of well-known fairy tales are Snow White, The Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and
Gretel, Cinderella, The Wizard of Oz, etc.

Reflection
Teaching question:
1. Would this task be suitable for your learners?
2. How can you add more speaking and/or writing skills practice?

Teaching question answer

You could ask learners to write a longer definition of a fairy tale and work in pairs to edit
each other's work.

You could also display the definitions around the room and ask pairs or groups to decide
on which is the most complete definition.

The second question asks if learners know any fairy tales. After compiling a class list of
all the fairy tales, you could introduce a speaking practice game of 'Backs to the board'.

Write a title on the board, and learners work in groups to describe the fairy tale. The group
member with their back to the board listens to the description and tries to guess.
Pre-listening task 2
Which of these elements can you often find in a fairy tale?

This kind of activity can build up expectations. Your learners will be wondering if they are
going to study a fairy tale.

Pre-listening task 3
For this final pre-text task, you're going to see if you can remember the story of Little Red
Riding Hood.
Teaching tip
Remember, you can use more than one pre-task activity, depending on which skills you're
focusing on. They should all work well before either listening to or reading a text.

Listening
Listen to the short story and answer the questions. The story is called The Wolfs [sic] Tale
and is written by Louise Cooper. (You may not want to mention the title to learners at the
start.)

As you listen, think about these questions:

Do your learners know Little Red Riding Hood?
Would they enjoy this version of the story?

What pre-listening task would you give your learners to prepare them for the story?

The Wolf's Tale

You all know the story of Little Red Riding Hood, right? Well, I'm sure of one thing. You
don't know what really happened. No one does, except me.
I know people don't believe in fairy tales these days, but the Riding Hood story happens
to be true. I should know. You see, I'm the wolf. And the rest of them – the girl, the
woodsman, all the other people – they got it wrong. All wrong.
They think I killed and ate old granny. I didn't. I wouldn't have harmed a hair of her
head, but when I tried to tell them so, of course they couldn't understand me. So the
woodsman cut me open.
Oh, how that hurt. I can remember the pain; it was horrible. Even now I have
nightmares about it, and I shudder and cry out in my sleep, until I wake up screaming.
They didn't kill me, you see. They thought they did, but they didn't. I can't be killed that
way. It has to be something else. A silver bullet, that's the only thing that will work. A
silver bullet, for a werewolf.
 Because that's what I really am. I was attacked by a werewolf one night, years ago. It bit
me and infected me with its curse. I'd give anything to be free. I'd rather die than live
like this, changing every full moon into a monster that no one can control.
I'd give anything to be what I used to be. A harmless human being. A little old lady, who
was kind to everyone.
Red Riding Hood thought she knew all about her dear granny.
But she didn't. No one does.
Only me… and, now, you.

Reading
You'll now read the same story. As you read, work through the next teaching question.
Reflection
Teaching question:
What could you do for a while-reading task? Some points to consider:
1. Can you divide the story into sections with titles?
2. Is there any language you can highlight?

Teaching question answers

Check these ideas against your own. Did you think of similar while-reading tasks?

While-reading task one

You could give the learners the first section only to read and ask them to make predictions.
For example:
Task one
'You all know the story of Little Red Riding Hood, right? Well, I'm sure of one thing.
You don't know what really happened. No one does, except me. I know people don't
believe in fairy tales these days, but the Riding Hood story happens to be true. I should
know.'

Answer the following questions:

a. What do you think the story is about?

b. Who do you think is going to tell it?

While-reading task two

You can highlight some of the language used and ask learners to explain what it means.
This can also be a prediction task and lead on to a discussion. For example:
Task two
'I should know. You see, I'm the wolf. And the rest of them – the girl, the woodsman, all
the other people – they got it wrong. All wrong.'
Now answer the following questions:
a. In what way do you think they got it wrong?
 b. What do you think is the wolf's version of the story?
Work in groups and write your ideas. Then compare them with the rest of the class.
Now read a few more sentences.
d. Were you right?
e. Do you believe the wolf's story?
Reflection

Teaching question:
Now decide what you could do for a post-reading task.

Post-reading tasks
Read through the list of possible post-reading tasks.

Think about a specific group that you teach and select the activities that would be most
appropriate for them. You'll need to consider their level, their developmental stage and the
skills you need to focus on with them at the moment.
Ask learners to transform another fairy tale or traditional story by writing it from a
different point of view.

Imagine you are Red Riding Hood, the Woodcutter or Grandma. Tell your story to your
partner.
 Learners brainstorm what the wolf's life is like now.
 Learners write a poem about the story.
 Learners write new vocabulary in their notebooks.
 Learners quiz each other in pairs on the story.
 Learners write the story in their own words, using ten keywords from the text.
Reflection
Would you need to adapt any of these activities to use them with your learners? Do you
feel the activities you just did and considered included all four skills in an equal way?
Again, your learners' level and needs are important considerations when you decide on the
balance you have in an 'integrated skills' lesson.
Unit 3 review

This is true. Stories can be discussed and themes debated. New

endings can be written and acted out, incorporating work on
almost all sub-skills.

Pre-reading tasks should aim to encourage interest in the topic and

prediction of topic-related language.

The more confident learners feel with their vocabulary, the more
likely they are to experiment using it.
This could work as a pre-reading task with learners reading to
check if they were correct.

It could also work as a post-reading task to help learners

consolidate their understanding of the story.

Learners could even do this as they read the story.

Integrating skills is more realistic as it is most similar to how

learners will encounter language in the real world. It makes
learning more meaningful and motivating for learners.

Don't forget to check all the links in the Resources. There are useful articles, booklets and
ready-made lesson plans for you to use.

Consider making an action plan to help motivate you to try out literary texts in the
classroom or conduct action research to see what works for your learners. Simple action
research involves trying out new techniques or methodologies in your classroom and
getting feedback from your learners.