READING COMPREHENSION

CLASS #1

TASK #1: GETTING TO KNOW YOU

 20 minutes. Open the FORUM section TASK #1: Getting to know you. There you’ll read our introduction and
you will have to write a paragraph about you to the class.

Include the following information:

1) Personal information:
Full name, age, where you live, family, job, hobbies, likes and dislikes, curious facts
2) Expectations about this subject
3) Connectivity at home: access to internet, devices to keep in touch

 10 minutes. Read your classmates’ paragraphs one by one.

TASK # 2:

Reading: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING AND ONLINE LEARNING. PART
#1

1) PRE reading activities (CHAT SESSION). Questions will be posted and answers will be shared one by
one.
a. ( 30 minutes). Personal opinion: How do you learn best? What kind of teaching does learning a foreign
language need?

b. ( 30 minutes). Read ONLY the title of this article and in your own words define REMOTE TEACHING
and ONINE LEARNING. You can make a list of the differences you think they can have.

2) While reading (FORUM)

( 60 minutes) Do each activity and post your answers on the FORUM under the correct heading.

a. QUICK READING:

I. Read the first part of the article from page 1 to page 4 (ONLY the text below the heading The
difference between Emergency Remote Teaching UP TO AND NOT INCLUSING online Learning and
Effective Online learning)

II. In no more than 4 sentences summarize what you remember from the text you’ve just read.

b. CLOSE READING:

I. Read the text again and explain with your own words the following quotes.

1. “Moving instruction online can enable the flexibility of teaching and learning anywhere, anytime, but the
speed with which this move to online instruction is expected to happen is unprecedented and staggering.”
2.”…many instructors will understandably find this process stressful.”
3. “Online learning carries a stigma of being lower quality than face-to-face learning…”
 4. “Nobody making the transition to online teaching under these circumstances will truly be designing to take
full advantage of the affordances and possibilities of the online format.”

II. Vocabulary

Without using the dictionary and by inferring meaning from context explain the meaning of the words IN
UPPERCASE.

 Bryan Alexander has CURATED the status of hundreds of institutions.

 These teams typically support a small POOL of faculty.
 In the present situation, these individuals and teams will not be able to offer the same level of support to all
faculty in such a narrow PREPARATION WINDOW.
 In fact, an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education has already called for a "GRAND EXPERIMENT"
doing exactly that.
 "Online learning" will become a POLITICIZED term that can take on any number of meanings depending
on the argument someone wants to advance.
 ..talking about lessons learned when institutions moved classes online during a shutdown in South Africa,
Laura Czerniewicz starts with this very lesson and what happened around the construct of "BLENDED
LEARNING" at the time.
 With some of that HINDSIGHT AS WISDOM, we seek to advance some careful distinctions that we hope
can inform the evaluations and reflections that will surely result from this MASS move by colleges and
universities.
 These hurried moves online by so many institutions at once could SEAL the perception of online learning
as a WEAK option.
 …when in truth nobody making the transition to online teaching under these circumstances will truly be
designing to take full advantage of the AFFORDANCES and possibilities of the online format.
 Many active members of the academic community, including some of us, have been HOTLY debating the
terminology in social media.

TASK #3

CHAT SESSION

1. Share with your classmates your feelings about this emergency ay of learning and teaching.
2. Further questions