Pedagogic Portfolio TEAP Assignment 2

1. There are two parts to this assignment. You must complete both.
2. Begin by reading very carefully through these detailed notes.
3. You will be given additional support in lectures and in readings.

PART 1: Lesson preparation for a reading-to-learn lesson

Prepare for a Reading- to-Learn lesson relevant to a chosen context in which you are teaching English for specific academic purposes.

a) Choosing a text

What kind of text should I choose?

Your chosen text has to be one that addresses some important content (knowledge) that the students have to understand and be able to write about.

And your chosen text has to one that your students will find challenging. In other words it has to be a text that the majority of students cannot read independently with full comprehension.

How long should this text be? 

You can choose a text of any size to begin with – BUT – then you will need to choose a segment of a longer text to be the passage you will focus on for the detailed reading – note-making  – and rewriting from notes activities.

This segment will be one or two paragraphs (about 150 to 200 words roughly – but make sure it is either one or two complete paragraphs; don’t break a paragraph in half).

b) Preparing for teaching

Read the whole text yourself so you know what it is about, and how your segment fits into the whole.

Read the chose segment of the text carefully yourself. Identify the main ideas and how the segment unfolds – how it is organized.

Prepare a spoken summary of the text in readiness for preparing your students for what they will be reading in detail.  Do this by recording yourself while you explain this to an imagined group of the target students.  Then transcribe what you said.  You may need several practice goes at this.

Then do the same step as above for each sentence – sentence by sentence through the chosen segment of text.

Make sure you keep your final transcribed spoken summaries to include in your assignment

Your next step in preparation is to work out what meanings you are going to ask the students to underline as you work through the detailed reading stage of the lesson.

For each underlined wording in the text you will need to provide your students with a spoken version of the meanings of the wordings and some clue to locate the correct wordings. 

Write yourself notes on what you will say at each point as you guide the students to find the wordings in the text that correspond to your clues.

Keep all these notes as they'll be part of your assignment.

c) What do I need to include in PART 1 of my pedagogic portfolio?

You have now completed your preparation for the detailed reading stage of a Reading-to-Learn lesson

This part of your portfolio will need to contain:

1. The chosen text together with at least 100 words of explanation of why you chose the text, and the segment for use in detailed reading.
2. A transcript of what you will say to students to prepare them for reading the chosen segment of text. 
3. A transcript of what you will say as you introduce the meaning of each sentence in the text.
4. A copy of the text on which you have highlighted the wordings you are going to ask your students to highlight as you work through the detailed reading with them.
5. Note of what clues you will give students in preparation for identifying the wordings in the text that they will then highlight.
6. A VERY IMPORTANT principle of this approach to teaching reading is to prepare all students for success! And then to praise them when they succeed.  Write a paragraph (about 150 words) explaining why this principle is seen as so important.

PART 2: Online teaching and learning of EAP

• Search the internet for online resources for teaching EAP. 

Choose one site that you find interesting or useful. 

• Write a short text (about 1000 words) to discuss your choice. 
• Introduce and provide a summary description of your choice, including whether it takes a general or specific approach to EAP. (Include the URL of the site, and some captures of pages)
• Explains why you have chosen this text, and what you see as potential strengths and weaknesses in the design in relation to a) your target students and b) the online mode of interaction. 
• Briefly summarise (in 2 or 3 paragraphs) what the literature has to say about advantages and disadvantages of online teaching and learning in relation to face-to-face teaching and learning EAP.  (Refer to at least 4 source texts).

Conclude with commentary on how your chosen site sits in relation to the advantages and disadvantages discussed in the literature.

PART 1

Actual Text:

Abstract

Asynchronous online discussions, commonly used in higher education contexts, are predicated on the collaborative construction of knowledge in a supportive community of learners. Despite early positive evaluations, researchers have more recently identified amongst students a failure to learn and dissatisfaction with participation in these environments. To better understand and address these failures, this study explores the linguistic enactment of community in online interaction, specifically moderator strategies, using a discourse analytical approach informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics. The analysis identifies a range of strategies which confirm, bring into question, and go beyond those commonly described in the literature. Significantly, the much attitudinal meaning is invoked (implicit) rather than inscribed (explicit), the interpersonal grammatical metaphor is widely used and ENGAGEMENT: expand is common, opening the discussion to other views and voices. This raises issues of clarity and certainty, suggesting there may be an inherent contradiction between community maintenance and the development of ideational meaning.

Purpose of Choice

This text would be difficult for learners who are just entering the world of higher studies. This paragraph entails a few concepts of linguistic communication, used in online education processes, which, to be understood by students, require the help of a teacher. The concepts like the implicit and explicit meaning of a sentence also include metaphorical descriptions which students might not be able to comprehend. Also, this paragraph contains vital knowledge about a very big reason for failure in students, which happens due to the lack of understanding of the language. Hence this approach needs teachers and students to use the communicative approach to teaching language by making use of the pragmatic meanings of sentences or implicit meanings rather than using the explicit or overall meaning of sentences. 

Preparing the Students (for the students)

An excerpt of text from, 'Building community in an online discussion: a case study of moderator strategies', by Lander will be studying today. It will help us understand the reason for the failures in the process we study English in online methods. Researchers had previously thought that studying English by online methods, including video-based tuitions, online media classes and so on are creating positive reinforcements in the process of learning English but later it was found out that some basic portions of learning English were lacking from such procedures and the students who were enrolled in such procedures are slowly losing patience and dropping out. Hence, to make the processes full proof, the participation of the linguistic community will be looked into. It will also help us focus on a method to design a better approach towards studying English. We make the mistake of studying English according to the meaning we see on the surface of sentences, considering that we are new learners, but the fact that we have chosen English as the language for an academic purpose needs further understanding of the language. We need to understand the situational meanings of statements and how to frame certain sentences depending on situations. A conversation can have different social values in different social contexts. This excerpt describes an approach in which the participation of the linguistic community is studied in academics to understand the most used methods in coping with academics and English. The linguistic community uses English in various methods and these methods have been systematically studied to understand the efficacy of these methods. The best methods will be later decided and handpicked so that we can have an insight into where we are wrong and may change our strategies to reach our goal.