Cambridge DELTA

Module Two: Developing Professional Practice

Language System Assignment (LSA)

Part II: The Lesson Plan
Focus: Reading

Title
Helping Pre-intermediate level learners develop skimming and scanning
in the context of renting accommodation and booking flights

Candidate name Elsaid Rashad Elsaid Awad

Candidate number
Centre name The ITI Delta
Centre number TR154
Date of submission 11th July, 2019
Number of Students 11
Length of lesson 50 minutes

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Group Profile

The students enrolled in the course are attending free English lessons in American
English language school in Istanbul, Turkey. The classes are given by the Delta
course teachers. There are around 12 teachers involved in teaching this pre-
intermediate group. The course started on June 24th and will end up on August
2nd.

They have three lessons every evening from 6:30 to 9:20. Our first class with them
was a ‘getting to know you’ as it was our first time to see them. It was on Friday,
July 5th. They come to school five times a week during weekdays. Teachers decide
the lessons’ focuses according to the students’ needs information and records on
the course Moodle, students’ strengths and weaknesses, their interests, and why
they need to learn English.

It is almost a monolingual pre- intermediate group of 17 adult students whose

ages are between 20 and 50. All of them speak Turkish except Agahan who is
Russian and his mother tongue is Russian, he also can speak German, Turkish and
Turkmen .Simside as well is from Serbia and her native language is Serbian.

Some of the students have been studying English since they were children. Most
of them have difficulty in speaking and would like to improve it. Some others
want to improve writing and reading depending on the purpose why they want to
learn English; for travel, job, study or other purposes like communicating with
people all over the world. Very few of them have problems in listening.

Learners’ Individual Profiles

Name, Age, Needs, interests Other details

nationality gender, job
1. Ahmet, Male, Sociable and likes He has been learning
Turkish Technician interacting with English for 5 years now.
people. He finds He sometimes uses
vocabulary, English in everyday life.
speaking and
writing more
challenging than
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 listening, reading
and spelling. Among
his hobbies are:
surfing the internet,
watching movies
and listening to
music.
2. Dogan, Female, Bank Outgoing, but her She started learning
Turkish Management limited knowledge English 3 years ago for
Assistant of English words some purposes like
makes her find travelling and work. She
some difficulties in uses English for writing
speaking. She has messages daily.
no problem with
reading or writing.
The most
interesting topics
for her talking about
health and
ketogenic diet.
Yoga, dance and
riding bicycles are
some of her
hobbies.
3. Sinan, Turkish Male, Diver Fast-learner as he He has started studying
likes to practise English since 1992; he
newly-learnt never practiced speaking
vocabulary and English outside classes.
structures. He
reveals higher level
of vocabulary than
other students.
Some of his hobbies
are swimming,
running and
listening to music.
4. Simside, Female, Hard working and She has learned English

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 Serbian works in real diligent with all her for a year for work and
estate tasks and travel purposes.
assignments.
Grammar, writing
and pronunciation
are her obstacles in
English. Her
speaking is more
fluent than others in
the group. Her
interests are:
movies, sports and
politics.
5. Agahan, Male, 24, Sociable, tries hard Has studied English since
Russian Mechatronic to broaden his 2011 for Academic
Engineer English skills. Speaks purposes. He hopes to
student at a confidently yet study overseas.
Technical slowly. Finds Sometimes he speaks
Service grammar and English in everyday life.
spelling a bit harder He is multi lingual; he
than listening, speaks Russian, German,
reading, writing and Turkish and Turkmen.
pronunciation.
Interested in
jogging, swimming,
reading, drawing,
and aerospace.
6. Necla Female Needs to be
encouraged to
speak. Shy but feels
more confident
within pair work.
Not ready to attend
all classes within the
week
7. Ezgi Female Not very talkative;
feels shy to interact

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 and needs to be
urged to speak and
participate
8. Buse, Female, Writing, speaking Has studied English since
Turkish 26, and pronunciation 2007 for work and
Teacher are difficult for her. purposes as she often
likes movie uses English in daily life.
magazines, Studying Italian.
travelling and
dancing
9. Seyma Nur, Female, 22, Active and Has been learning English
Turkish Student communicative, but for 16 years now.
sometimes needs She has a previous
some motivation background bout
and encouragement Japanese but didn’t
to do better. He practise it for ages. A
interests are friend of Beyza, they like
movies, TV series, sitting together.
dancing and playing
video games.
10. Beyza, Female, 22, Thinks before A friend of Seyma and sit
Turkish Student speaking as she together in classes.
finds difficulty in
expressing herself in
English. Sometimes
uses L1 while
speaking. She likes
listening to English
songs.
11. Ismail, Male 21, Finds writing and Interested in learning
Turkish Economy speaking English for work and
student on challenging. Likes travelling purposes. He
an internship listening and has learned English for
in a bank speaking. One of his 12 years. Rarely practises
interests is reading English outside the class.
economy and sci-fi
books.

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12. Pinar
13. Nese
14. Birivan
15. Gulay
16. Huseyin
17. Elif
Note: I haven’t met those students yet.

Lesson Aims

Main aim(s):
By the end of this lesson, learners will have:
- Practised and developed their skimming skill by reading to get a general
idea on renting accommodation and booking flights.
- Practised and developed their scanning skill by reading to get specific
information in the same context.

Subsidiary aim(s):
By the end of the lesson, they will have:
- Recognized and used some vocabulary and expressions related to the topic.
- Discussed and expressed their opinions towards their booking choices.

Skill Analysis

Skimming is when we read for gist to get the general or overall idea of a
paragraph or a text. This happens by looking at the context words in the text
which can help get the main idea. Scanning is when we are trying to look for a
specific piece of information in a text, and eventually we do not need to read the
whole text to get what we want.

We usually do reading on websites like Airbnb and Trip.com to rent

accommodation or book a flight without clicking on any one of them at first. This
is skimming. Once we find the suitable accommodation or flight, we click and visit
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the offer page and start doing scanning to get specific information and details on
them, without necessarily reading everything.

Nuttall (1996:49) clearly defined that, “By scanning we mean glancing rapidly
through a text either to search for a specific piece of information (e.g. a name, a
date or to get an initial impression of whether the text is suitable for a given
purpose.” As for skimming, “We mean glancing rapidly through a text to
determine its gist, for example in order to decide whether a research paper is
relevant to our own work (not just to determine its field, which we can find out by
scanning.)”

Timetable fit

The learners of this pre-intermediate group have previously practiced reading

lessons with other teachers. Rubina gave them a lesson on skimming and
scanning in the un assessed with a secondary aim of speaking. The topic was what
your room says about your personality. Mark gave them a reading lesson on
understanding an article about economics. Ildi as well taught them how to use
top-down reading in the context of holidays. Babak lesson was reading
comprehension using top-down approach in the context of successful brands.
Nada’s lesson was developing skimming and scanning skills in the context of
news.

For the subsequent lessons, it is not yet certain what other teachers will decide to
build on that focus of scanning and skimming. However we can build on what
students have learnt in this lesson by training them on other reading skills or by
giving them other opportunity to consolidate what they have learnt.

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Assumptions/ Assumed knowledge

My lesson is based on the following assumptions:

- Students are assumed to be familiar with skimming and scanning.
- Students are assumed to know how to book flights and accommodation in their
native language.
- Students are assumed to feel motivated as the topic is familiar and reflects real-
life.
- Students are assumed to be engaged to explore different culture of booking
accommodation somewhere in the world.
- Students are assumed to be aware of some vocabulary used in the area of
booking online.

Anticipated problems and possible solutions

Category One: Lesson Content

Problem 1: Students may struggle with difficult or unfamiliar words while trying to
apply skimming or scanning.
Solution: I will tell them that they can get the overall meaning or the required
answer without knowing the meaning of all words.
Problem 2: Some students may have lack of previous knowledge on how to read
in L2 on a website.
Solution: I will encourage them to try and I will raise their awareness of the task
beforehand.
Problem 3: Students may feel demotivated to read longer texts or detailed web
pages.
Solution: I will tend to make it like competitions between two or three teams to
motivate them and make them interested in the topic.

Category Two: Classroom Management

Problem 4: The projector may not work, or electricity may go off.
Solution: I will have copies of the materials I will use in class in case of not being
able to project on the board.
Problem 5: Some students may not have connection to the internet, and
eventually will not be able to access the website.

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Solution: I will make them work in groups and use one cell phone/device for each
group. Or I will give them the task printed.
Problem 6: Classroom size and capacity to carry out activities for two or three
groups of adult students could be a problem.
Solution: I will try to stick the task papers on different places in the classroom to
avoid accidents or inconvenience.

Resources, aids and materials

Visual Aids: Projector, handouts, PowerPoint presentations, white board, images.

Real objects: Things around in the classroom like: door, walls, chairs, desks, etc.
Resources: - Taken from Airbnb website and application. Edited and modified by
the teacher. See Appendices/ handouts 1 to 7.
PowerPoint Presentation attached below. Click to open:
Orientation and Lead-in:
[6 min]

Commentary

One of the reasons why I have chosen to teach my pre-intermediate level

students scanning and skimming sub-skills in reading is that learners expressed
their wishes to be taught during the course how to read effectively using the
reading strategies and sub-skills. Most of them are good at listening and writing,
but they do need to work on their reading and speaking.

Most of the students told us about their purposes of learning English. Most of
them would like to go abroad for holiday, business or to join a university. They
would like also to communicate in English with people from all over the world.
One of the students, whose name is Ahmet, has a hobby of surfing the internet
and this lesson is going to help him do that in L2.

Another reason why I decided to help my students develop their scanning and
skimming sub-skills in reading is that we need these skills in our daily life not only
to rent accommodation, but also to register in a website or book a flight to a
place somewhere in the world. In order for them to do that effectively in real-life

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and use English, students need to be trained on using the sub-skills, strategies and
techniques to achieve what they are aiming at in familiar contexts in the
classroom. Teachers should encourage autonomy so that they can be responsible
for their learning outside the classroom.

Students need to learn how to read fast in real-life and avoid reading word by
word. They need to know 1) when they should be looking only for specific
information from a text and 2) when to aim at getting a general idea or overall
meaning of the text. That’s why I aimed at training them on these two skills. They
can carry on doing that outside the classroom for any other purposes; booking an
apartment for holiday, renting a place for a business event.

As for renting accommodation via Airbnb website, students need to be familiar

with some of the features of the genre of real estate websites and applications.
Learners’ awareness of the genre and layout of websites will help them in the
process of scanning and skimming. Brown and Yule (1983:1) suggested, “That
function which language serves in the expression of ‘content’ we will describe as
transactional, and that function involved in expressing social relations and
personal attitudes we will describe as interactional.”

The genre features of real estate websites like Airbnb is as follows:

 Lexis related to booking accommodation.
 Reference (anaphoric and exophoric).
Example: The house is for families. It is safe for children. (anaphoric)
Example: The apartment is available. (exophoric)
 Ellipsis of some words
Example: Wi-Fi available. (verb -to be- is elliptic)
 Organization and layout. Readers will find pictures of the house/ apartment
and will find contact Host or Message us.

Finally, I hope this lesson will help my students develop their reading sub-skills of
scanning to get specific information and skimming to get the general meaning or
an overview idea of a text. They can build on this learning experience by learning
to practise and develop other reading strategies and sub-skills, like prediction and
inference.

Word Count: 527

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Lesson Procedure

Time Stage(s) and Procedure Interaction Materials

Aim(s) Patterns
19:30 - Lead-in: -Ask the learners to have a look at the image Pair Work PowerPoint
19:36 -To generate displayed on the board and on the handout they will and a
(6 min) interest in the be given. Handout
topic. -Ask them to discuss the questions with a partner.
[See Appendix 1]
-To activate their
schemata. [Top- Feedback:
down -Monitor their discussions and guide them if they
processing]. need help.
19:36 - Presentation of Activity: Pick out the best accommodation for you Group Work PowerPoint
19:42 Skimming: -Put the six accommodation offers on the walls in the and a
(6 min) -To prepare the classroom (before the lesson starts). Handout
learners to use -Divide students into three groups.
the skimming and -Give each group a handout with some details for
get the overall them to help them choose the offer that suits them.
idea of a text. -Ask them to move around in the classroom and
check the six offers.
-To raise learners’ -Each group will end up with one offer. [4 min]
awareness of [See Appendices 2 A and B]
skimming.
Feedback: -Ask them some CCQs like:
Why did you choose this one and not the other
one(s)?, Did you read everything? Did you read the

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 whole text carefully? Did you read them quickly or
slowly? [2 min]
19:42 - Presentation of Activity: Are you going to rent it? Pair Work PowerPoint,
19:50 Scanning: -Tell students first that they are going to get a handout,
(8 min) -To prepare the detailed offer about an apartment and that you whiteboard
learners to use prepared some questions for them. and markers
the scanning and -Ask them to read the questions and predict some
look for specific answers before they read the text.
information in -Put the apartment offer details on the walls and let
the text. them work in pairs (running dictation); one goes and
finds an answer for the first question and comes back
to the other one and dictates it. Let them change
roles after the first five questions so that all of
students practise the sub-skill.
ICQs: Are you going to read the whole text carefully?
(No.) Are you going to look for specific information?
(Yes.) [See Appendices 3 A and B]
[5 min, including giving instructions]

Feedback: -Give them a worksheet with the right

answers and ask them to compare their answers to it.
Or you can show the answers on the board. [3 min]
19:50 - Following up with Competition: Group Work PowerPoint,
19:56 skimming: -Divide students into three different groups. handout,
(6 min) -To encourage -Tell them that they are going to book a flight now. whiteboard
the learners to -Give each group a handout with some details about and markers
practise using the flight they need to book.
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 skimming for the -Give them the leaflet for the three flight offers.
general idea. -Ask them to choose one out of them. [4 min]
[See Appendices 4 A and B]

Feedback: -Ask them CCQs, like: Why did you choose

B? Why not A or C? Did you read the whole leaflet or
only the title? [2 min]
19:56 - Following up with Competition: Pair Work PowerPoint,
20:04 scanning: -Keep the groups as they are. handout,
(8 min) -To encourage -Tell them that they will be given a list of questions whiteboard
the learners to and they need to go over the (B) flight offer to get and markers
practise using answers for these questions. Exploit the questions
scanning for and make them predict the types of answers needed.
specific details. -Put copies of the flight offer on the walls and let
them do the running dictation to get the answers.
ICQs: -Are you going to read word by word? (No.) Are
you going to read everything? (No.) Are you going to
read the whole text carefully? (No.) So, what are you
going to do? [5 min, including giving instructions]
[See Appendix 5]

Feedback: -Give them a worksheet with the right

answers and ask them to compare their answers to it.
Or you can show the answers on the board. [3 min]
20:04 - Flexi-stage: Activity: Can you help me? Group Work Cellphones,
20:09 [Freer Practice] -Ask student to work in groups of three or four using Internet
(5 min) -To give students their cellphones to visit a website to help rent Connection
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 a freer accommodation and book a flight for you.
opportunity to -Tell them you want to stay for a week in Paris with
practice what your family of 4 people from August 3rd to 10th. Your
they have learnt. budget is 9,000 Turkish liras.

Feedback:
-Let them show you the best results that they will
come up with. [See Appendix 6]
20:09 - Reflection: -Ask student to stand and find a classmate to talk to Pair Work Handout
20:15 -To make sure about the lesson and what they have learnt and how
(6 min) students have they can use that in their real-life.
achieved the -Give them a discussion task with some questions.
lesson outcomes.
Feedback:
- To practise -Monitor and listen to their answers.
speaking. -Do not interrupt unless they need help.
-End the class with some advice to keep practising.
[See Appendix 7]

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Appendices (From Airbnb and Trip.com; modified by the teacher)

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Bibliography

Nuttall, C. (1996) Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language. Oxford:

Macmillan.

Brown, G. & Yule, G. (1983) Discourse Analysis: Cambridge University press.

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