Back to Basics

1. Back to Basics REED Study Day June 22, 2010 10 Tammuz 5770 Dr. Debbie Lifschitz

2. Issues with Narrative Language • Students sometimes lack narrative schemata • Students sometimes have difficulty translating the linguistic cues into mental visualizations. • Students sometimes have difficulty remembering and connecting events

3. What are the Basics? I Chunking the text • Why should texts be chunked? • Which texts need to be chunked? • How many chunks?

4. What would you do? In relation to the story “The Countess and the Impossible”: • How many chunks would you make for a good 5-point class? • Where would you put the breaks? • How many chunks would you make for a mixed ability 4-point class? • Where would you put the breaks?

5. What are the Basics II Vocabulary • T or F: An average high school graduate (L2) knows (at least passively) 5000 word families or more. • Israeli high school graduates have on average passive knowledge of 3500 words(Laufer, 1998). L1 Speakers of English know between 18,000and 20,000 word families

6. What are the Basics II Vocabulary • T or F: Learners whose vocabulary size is about 3000 word families can understand a newspaper quite well. • Nation (2001) found that 2000 word families are needed for conversation and about 5000 word families (some suggest as much as 8000) are needed in order to read newspaper texts.

7. What are the Basics II Vocabulary • T or F: If the learner understands about 80% of the text s/he will be able to infer the meaning of unknown words from it. • Even good reading strategies cannot always compensate for lexical deficiencies. In order for meaningful guessing to occur at least 95% (and preferably 98%) of vocabulary in a text has to be known in order to provide clues.

8. What are the Basics II Vocabulary • “I met a blick last night” • “People were drinking, singing, laughing and blicking” • In the first sentence the non-availability of clues makes this sentence ambiguous. • In the second sentence the partial clues are insufficient for accurate comprehension.

9. What are the Basics II Vocabulary • T or F: It is sufficient to spiral vocabulary words 3 times in order for learners to acquire a new word. • There is no definite answer to exactly how many exposures are needed to acquire a new word. However, the common belief among researchers is somewhere between 8-10 times.

10. What are the Basics II Vocabulary • T or F: the amount of time / attention devoted to teaching a word depends on the word’s frequency in a language and its importance to the student. • Rich instruction “involves giving elaborate attention to a word, going beyond the immediate demands of a particular context or occurrence” (Nation, 2001).

11. What are the Basics? II Vocabulary • High frequency words • Words of contextual or personal importance • Low Frequency words • Spiraling vocabulary

12. What would you do? • entertained • inaccessible • precise • indicated • chastising • disciplining • youngster • alert • lecture • evaluation • hedge • trespassing • shortcutting • slouching • determined • exhausted

13. Typology of Questions for Basic Understanding Questions which focus on recall: • Who? • What? • Where? • When? • But not “Why?”

14. Typology of questions for Basic Understanding Sequencing events: Sequence of events are either micro or macro. • Give a random list of events that students have to sequence. Add scaffolding for mixed ability classes. • What happened before/ after ….?

15. What would you do? Write a significant sequencing question for the story “The Countess and the Impossible”.

16. Typology of Questions for Basic Understanding Setting Questions about setting are applicable when the setting is significant, or when there are several settings involved.

17. Typology of Questions for Basic Understanding Characters • Being able to distinguish between primary and secondary characters (which Forster unhelpfully called round and flat characters) . • Being able to explain the social relationship between characters. • Being able to describe characters on the basis of explicit information in the text, called “direct presentation” .

18. What would you do? Write a question about the countess, and another one either about the narrator, or about the connection between the narrator and the countess.

19. Typology of Questions for Basic Understanding Plot Questions about actions and situations. Questions about explicit causality. Questions about explicit motives.

20. What would you do? Write a question on an aspect of plot.

21. Four questions • What do we learn about about the countess in the opening paragraphs? • What does the countess tell the boy about the job he will be doing? How many options are there? • What option does he choose the first time? • When does he change his mind about how to do the job?

22. Scaffolding • Which of the following are true about the countess: Spoke precise English, was American, was not rich, liked having guests, hit the kids with her cane if they didn’t behave • The countess said that there was a ____dollar lawn a _______ dollar lawn and ___________________

23. Other narrative concerns Narrative Voice • Narrators can be covert or overt or any degree in between. • Fairy Tales • “ The Countess and the Impossible”

24. Other narrative concerns The Narratee The narratee is sometimes anonymous/ amorphous/ anyone or a specific person or group of people. The narratee may also be the reader, whether s/he is addressed (explicit) or not (implicit). • “The Arabian Nights” • “ The Countess and the Impossible”

25. Other narrative concerns Narrators and Narratee • Do questions about narrators and narratees belong to Basic Understanding? • In “The Countess and the Impossible” information about the narrator is explicit. • The narratee is not explicit.

26. Typology of questions Sample Questions • Who tells the story about the impossible lawn? • To whom does Sheherezade tell her tales and why?

27. The End (his name was Shahryar) Thank You!