Source: https://slev.

life/celta- CELTA Assignment Cover Sheet

pass-a-examples

To be completed by CELTA candidate

Submitted by: Steven Levithan

Assignment title: Language Skills and Related Tasks (LSRT)

Assignment number: 3

Number of words: 963

Submitted on (date): 2020-11-17

This assignment is my original work and I have acknowledged all sources.

Full name: Steven Levithan

To be completed by CELTA tutor

Overall grade: Pass

General comments:

Steven;
1. You selected an appropriate text (though a bit short) that had good lexis and grammar
for Upper Intermediate.
2. You identified sub skills to work on in relation to the text.
3. You included relevant rationale (quotes) to back up ideas / tasks.

Ricardo Fajardo / Nov 19th, 2020

DMed by Eliberto Salinas

International House London Teacher Training

A MEMBER OF THE INTERNATIONAL HOUSE WORLD ORGANISATION
Language Skills and Related Tasks
Introduction

For this assignment I chose an authentic text from the Time.com website. It’s a human interest
story about a father staging an indoor “quarantine Olympics” for his kids, to keep them
entertained during the coronavirus pandemic. I expect the text to be interesting and engaging for Commented [RF1]: Appropriate choice of text and you
learners due to it touching on numerous topics of broad interest and relevance including included rationale for this.
parenthood, sports, social media, and the coronavirus.

The aim of this receptive skills lesson is to practice and develop learners’ reading skills. The
reading sub-skills I will focus on are skimming for gist and scanning for specific information. Commented [RF2]: You clearly identified sub skills to be
prioritised.
I’ve designed this lesson for upper-intermediate learners, and chose a text with suitable lexis and
structures. Although it includes some advanced vocabulary, it is short enough to enable quickly
getting a general understanding during a gist reading while still having enough material to design
multiple tasks around it.

Lead-In

To set the context, I will show several sports-related pictures and ask learners what sports they
like to play, and whether they’ve been able to continue playing during the coronavirus. I’ll then Commented [RF3]: Appropriate lead in task.
have the learners discuss in pairs, and subsequently nominate several students to share their
answers with the class. By having learners initially talk about their answers in pairs, I hope to
promote learners’ confidence before speaking to the class.

Through this activity, my aims will be to:

• Raise interest in the subsequent text by personalizing the context

• Create a familiar context in which I can introduce new vocabulary
• Activate learners’ top-down processing of the language

“The procedure for teaching receptive skills generally starts with a lead-in. This is where we
engage the students with the topic of the reading and we try to activate their schema [...] The job Commented [RF4]: Relevant quote here.
of the receptive skills teacher, therefore, is to prompt the students to get in touch with that
knowledge or schema” (Harmer, 2015).

Pre-Teaching Vocabulary Commented [RF5]: No need to include this section as part

of this assignment.

Next, I’ll introduce some words that might be new to learners. Harmer writes that, “One way of
helping our students is to pre-teach vocabulary that occurs in a reading or listening text. This
removes at least some of the barriers to understanding which they are likely to encounter”
(Harmer, 2015). I’ll ask learners to match pictures to words for sporting vocabulary (e.g., curling,
bobsledding), and in other cases give simple explanations followed by CCQs. I will limit this to a
small set of words, since I agree with Harmer that, “if we want to give the students practice in
what it is like to tackle authentic reading and listening texts for general understanding, then
getting past words they don’t understand is one of the skills they need to develop. By giving them
some or all of those words, we may be denying them that chance” (Harmer, 2015).

Although there is likely a lot of new lexis in the text, I don’t think learners will have significant
difficulties grasping the general meaning after covering a few words.

Page 2 of 8
Initial Reading Task

Skimming (reading for gist).

I’ll give learners a handout with the selected text and tell them they have 2 minutes to read it
quickly and choose the best title from 3 options given. Scrivener writes that, “a good first strategy Commented [RF6]: Appropriate gist task.
could be to help them learn to read fast; not worrying about understanding every word; not,
perhaps, even understanding most words, but still achieving a specific and useful goal. […] A Commented [RF7]: Relevant quote, well done.
typical skimming task would be a general question from the teacher, such as Is this passage about
Jill’s memories of summer or winter?” (Scrivener, 2011). Through this task, learners will practice
quickly skimming to understand the gist of a text.

Learners will then compare their answers in pairs before open class feedback. Harmer writes,
“When the activity has finished, we give task feedback. This is where we may help the students to
see how well they have done. [...] we will respond not only to the language the students have
used, but also to the content of what they have said” (Harmer, 2015).

Second Reading Task

Scanning (reading for specific information).

I’ll give learners a second handout and ask them to take 5 minutes to read the text again and
answer a series of questions by ticking the true statements and correcting the false statements. Commented [RF8]: Appropriate detail task.
Scrivener writes, “A common scanning activity is searching for information in a leaflet or
directory, and a common scanning task would be What time does the Birmingham train leave?” Commented [RF9]: Appropriate quotes for this section.
(Scrivener, 2011). This task will help learners practice the reading sub-skill of scanning for specific
information. Again from Scrivener: “You probably want tasks that encourage students to search
for specific small sections of text which they can read more carefully to find a required piece of
information. […] Students doing this will be reading the material in a similar way to how people
might read it in everyday life.” (Scrivener, 2011)

Learners will then compare their answers in pairs before open class feedback. During feedback, I’ll
ask students to share results and explain why they gave the answers they chose.

Follow-Up Activity

Productive skill task: speaking.

I’ll then have learners practice their speaking skills in context, capitalizing on interest generated Commented [RF10]: Appropriate productive skill to
during the lesson. Harmer writes that, “Helping students perform competently in spoken English prioritise in the post stage.
is one of our main goals. This will involve helping them to understand how spoken English
functions, and giving them opportunities to acquire conversational strategies” (Harmer, 2015). I’ll
ask the class to split into groups and take 5 minutes to discuss the following questions:

• Do you watch the Olympics?

• Would you be excited to attend the Olympics after coronavirus? Commented [RF11]: Appropriate questions to react and
• What sports events would you most like to see in person? personalise the topic of the text.

I’ll follow this with open class feedback, and finally delayed error correction.

Page 3 of 8
Bibliography

• J. Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching, 5th Edition, Pearson, 2015, pp. 303,
305, 308, 384
• J. Scrivener, Learning Teaching: The Essential Guide to English Language Teaching, 3rd
Edition, Macmillan, 2011, pp. 264, 265
• M. Locker, “Dad Entertains His Kids By Hosting Olympics Extravaganza Indoors”, Time
[website], 2020, <https://time.com/5838258/dad-olympics-coronavirus/>

Page 4 of 8
Authentic Text
Source: <https://time.com/5838258/dad-olympics-coronavirus/>

Dad Entertains His Kids By Hosting Olympics Extravaganza Indoors

By Melissa Locker May 18, 2020 11:29 AM EDT

A dad has come up with a creative solution to keeping his kids entertained and active while
staying indoors—hosting the Olympic Games. When the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games were
delayed due to the coronavirus, the clever father of five, who shares family adventures on
Instagram @dailyparenting, decided to get his kids to the games at home.

He started off the fun with curling, because, as he wrote on Instagram, “All you’ll need is a mop,
something round what can slide on the floor (hover ball, Roomba vacuum, etc.) and good
attitude!” The result is a madcap mopping race and at-home curling extravaganza with a wildly
entertained father and son cheering for the results.

While curling was a relatively easy Olympic sport to re-create at home, this father had bigger
plans for keeping his kids happy while socially distancing. That included an at-home cycling race,
with no outdoors required making it the perfect activity for the moment.

The family’s attempts at indoor bobsledding could lead to a new generation of athletes—or at
least a possible reboot of Cool Runnings, the 1993 film that documented the true story behind a
Jamaican bobsled team’s run for Olympic glory.

This isn’t the only family using this time to create Olympic fun at home. The Presley family in
North Carolina have gone viral on TikTok with their “Quarantine Olympics” which include non-
traditional Olympic sports like toilet paper dodgeball, the sock slide challenge, the straw paper
challenge and more.

Page 5 of 8
Materials
Lead-In Materials

Credit: Depositphotos royalty free stock image

Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Source: <https://www.wjbf.com/news/georgia-news/university-of-georgia-tennis-player-off-
team-after-drug-charges-in-alabama/>

Page 6 of 8
Initial Reading Task Materials

Read the text quickly and choose the best title (2 minutes):

A dad has come up with a creative solution to keeping his kids entertained and active while
staying indoors—hosting the Olympic Games. When the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games were
delayed due to the coronavirus, the clever father of five, who shares family adventures on
Instagram @dailyparenting, decided to get his kids to the games at home.

He started off the fun with curling, because, as he wrote on Instagram, “All you’ll need is a
mop, something round what can slide on the floor (hover ball, Roomba vacuum, etc.) and
good attitude!” The result is a madcap mopping race and at-home curling extravaganza
with a wildly entertained father and son cheering for the results.

While curling was a relatively easy Olympic sport to re-create at home, this father had
bigger plans for keeping his kids happy while socially distancing. That included an at-home
cycling race, with no outdoors required making it the perfect activity for the moment.

The family’s attempts at indoor bobsledding could lead to a new generation of athletes—
or at least a possible reboot of Cool Runnings, the 1993 film that documented the true
story behind a Jamaican bobsled team’s run for Olympic glory.

This isn’t the only family using this time to create Olympic fun at home. The Presley family
in North Carolina have gone viral on TikTok with their “Quarantine Olympics” which
include non-traditional Olympic sports like toilet paper dodgeball, the sock slide challenge,
the straw paper challenge and more.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Titles

1. Where to Watch the Olympics on TV

2. Dad Hosts Indoor Olympics
3. How My Dad Got Coronavirus

Correct Answer:

2. Dad Hosts Indoor Olympics

Page 7 of 8
Second Reading Task Materials

Read the text again. Tick the true sentences (✔). Correct the false sentences.

(5 minutes)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

1. The dad has four kids.

__________________________________________

2. The dad shares stories on Facebook.

__________________________________________

3. Curling was easy to recreate at home.

__________________________________________

4. The movie Cool Runnings was about a Jamaican curling team.

__________________________________________

5. The Presley family went viral on TikTok.

__________________________________________

6. The Olympic games in Tokyo were delayed.

__________________________________________
Answer Key:

1. False, he has five kids

2. False, he shares on Instagram
3. ✔
4. False, it was a Jamaican bobsled team
5. ✔
6. ✔

Page 8 of 8