Chapter 10: Taken as Read: Teaching Reading Lessons 153
- Pre-reading task (15 minutes): Ask each student to find ten words asso-
ciated with TV shows from their notes or general knowledge and then
ask them to write the vocabulary on the board, trying not to duplicate
any of the words.
Have extra board markers ready for this.
Have the whole class examine the board and identify any words they’re
unfamiliar with. As the words came from the students themselves, if any
problems arise they can ask each other for explanations.
Get suggestions from the class on how to organise the words into cat-
egories. Make sure that the students are able to pronounce the words
by drilling them thoroughly. You can also indicate which part of speech
(noun, verb, preposition and so on) each word is.
Add any necessary words that haven’t come up but that you want to
pre-teach.
Figure 10-1 shows one category on the board.
Figure 10-1:
Sample
vocabulary
words.TV VocabularyTV Peopleactor/ækt
cast/ka:st/, (collective noun for actors) ‘a star-studded cast of actors’contestant/k n
tries to wina show where other people are guests. ‘Jonathan Ross is the host of the chat
show and his guest is Clint Eastwood’.host/h st/(male) (n+v), hostess/h 'stes/(female) (n) a person who presents'testnt/(n), a person who takes part in a quiz/game show andpresenter/pr
and he is good at explaining the election’‘zent/(n), ‘John smith is the presenter of that political programme/, (n)eeea ee eWhen the students have built up the vocabulary and copied it into their
notebooks, give each one a copy of the TV schedule.- Skim (8 minutes): Ask the students to look at the text quickly on their
own and answer three questions. Make sure that the students are aware of
the time limit though (2 minutes perhaps), so they don’t get sidetracked.
- How many TV channels are there?
- Does each channel broadcast 24 hours a day? If not, when are they
off air? - Does each channel broadcast the news? How often?