OEKS Upgraded » EAP

EAP-Supporting Opinions

Peter — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 09:10:16 +0000

Goals of the Activity

This is a consciousness raising activity to raise students awareness of how to support paragraphs. It has four parts.
Part one, Reading- here students read examples from authentic texts of the four common ways to support opinions in paragraphs; 1) an example 2) an explanation 3) an expert opinion 4) a statistic.
Part Two Reading and Labeling – here students read four more examples from authentic texts and try to label them under the four supports 1) an example 2) an explanation 3) an expert opinion 4) a statistic.
Part Three Reading and Analyzing- here students read an example paragraph and discourse analyze it for the four supports 1) an example 2) an explanation 3) an expert opinion 4) a statistic.
Part Four Read and Compare – here students compare the paragraphs they have written, based around the same topic, with the example paragraph in three. How can they improve their paragraphs based around the four supports and the patterns offered in the example paragraphs?

Potential Problems with the Activity

It is important to point out to students that the distinction between the different types of supports can be blurred, (e.g. statistic can easily be used to give an example). The activity is just designed to raise awareness of the need to support opinions and offer some tools for doing so.

student pages

teachers pages

Chindogu Reading and Task

Jim Sick — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 06:19:27 +0000

If you are extending the Chindogu (new product) activity, these handouts might help. One is a general reading passage about the Chindogu phenomonon. The second handout incorporates the pictures that are already available but provides a set pallette for creating a product name and description of 5 of the pictures.

Chindogu Reading Passage (adapted from Wikipedia)

Chindogu Reading Task Sheet

EAP. Reading Mind Map

Richard Hawking — Tue, 16 May 2006 08:48:17 +0000

Some teachers are asking their students to generate mind maps based on the readings we are covering in the Spring semester.

I made this mind map based on the reading ‘Reconsider the purpose of study’. Though not a wonderful example, it does get the idea across!

Reading Mind Map

Letter: ‘Reconsider the purpose of study”

Changes in your hometown

Simon Hunter — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 07:06:35 +0000

These files are to be used as preparation for the EAP timed writing activity “Changes in your hometown”. There are 2 files to download here:

1. A sample student essay with 2 outlining activities.

2. Hometown Changes Mind Map

Chindogu reading activity: EAP Reading

Daniel Jackson — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 09:32:12 +0000

…in which students practice their reading comprehension by matching the texts to the correct picture while learning about some ever-popular inventions that never made it to mass production.

chindogu matching

EAP. Orientation. Bare bones structure of an essay

Richard Hawking — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 08:28:39 +0000

This is a very bare bones way of explaining the structure of an essay. There are many ways to use these materials, but a suggested plan is:

1 Hand out this worksheet and quickly go over it. (This is the corrected version!)
structure of an essay v2.pdf
2 Hand out this model ‘New Product’ essay, and get the students to identify the various ‘parts’ of the essay.

New Product Model Essay.pdf

3 Hand out these worksheets to help the students plan their own new product essay.

Planning your essay.pdf

The Structure of an Essay – Reading

Jim Sick — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 08:41:02 +0000

This is a re-written and simplified version of the Structure of an Essay reading passage used for the 2004 and 2005 EAP course. I’ve simplified the language, but also made it a bit more prescriptive, focusing exclusively on how to write in the five-paragraph essay format. I’ve included a separate worksheet to supplement the reading, and a quiz to be given a week later. I plan to make a Moodle-based practice quiz to supplement it.

The Structure of an Essay – Reading

Structure of Essay Activity Worksheet (JS).doc

Structure of an Essay – Quiz

EAP. New Product. Chindogu web resources.

Richard Hawking — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 07:49:32 +0000

These web resources may vanish by this time next year, but in the meantime it might be fun to link to them from your Moodle course.

history of useless inventions
http://www.designboom.com/history/useless.html

Video
Chindogu Celebrating Weird Inventions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-0Xgx7GiYs

Interactive Flash movie
Chindogu
http://website.lineone.net/~sobriety/

I know the Chindogu cards are fun, but perhaps they could be combined with this ‘reading’ activity? A possible lesson plan might be:1 Divide class into 5 groups, and assign a category of Chindogu to each group.

2 Within each group, each student chooses one invention.

3 Quickly read about the invention, and remember as much as they can.

4 Mixed-groups: exchanging information about the inventions they just read about.

Early days with Moodle, but this shows how I how wrote a lesson plan above the web page link. Click on this image to see how I included this resource into my Moodle course.

EAP Orientation. New Product – umbrella holder

Richard Hawking — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 04:36:10 +0000

In the first class you may experience problems getting the ‘umbrella holder’ text to your students, in order for them to paste it into Criterion.

To streamline this process I have put the relevant document online in a way that allows for direct copying and pasting from the document online. There is no need to download it first.

Just direct your students to this site:

http://randomhawk.com/eap/

EAP Get to know your classmates

simon c — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 07:22:07 +0000

Something for the first EAP lesson – here is the original “Get to know” sheet that Jim made with questions in the 3rd-person (eg: Does he/she?) …

Get to know (3rd person)

And here’s the same sheet slightly modified so that the questions are in the 2nd-person (eg: Do you? Are you?)…

Get to know (2nd person)