(Academic skills, Advanced) Unit 1: Language

SPEAKING

Discuss the questions in pairs.

1. When did you learn to read in your first language?

2. What do you remember about the process of learning?

Think about:

•who taught you

•the kinds of material they used

•reading silently or aloud

•special techniques to get you reading

Have you ever helped a little person learn how to read? What do they struggle to do?

3. What kind of free time reading do you currently do?

•online

•print newspapers / magazines

•fiction / non-fiction

4. Do you personally give more value to fiction or non-fiction?

5. What do you get from reading fiction, as opposed to non-fiction?

VOCABULARY

In tandem

A predictor

Function words

Mental lexicon

An entry (in a dictionary)

READING



What's the difference:

recognise / comprehend

What’s the difference between word recognition and word comprehension?

Can you describe exactly what goes on in your mind when you’re reading? How does it differ from what goes on in your mind when you’re…

1. listening

2. writing

Do you think these sentences about reading are true or false?

1 The ability to recognise words is a core reading skill.

2 It is extremely difficult to understand language if you can’t read it.

3 It can take a reader about one tenth of a second to recognise a word.

4 Fluent readers can read an average of 350 words per minute.

5 Recognising a word is a simple, one-step reading skill.

The text adapted:

cloze

How do we read?

Reading and understanding a text involves a series of complex cognitive skills that ___ in tandem. In order to understand the nature of reading, it is useful to ______ these skills and look at them individually. To _____ with, we will consider some of the lower level processes where our brain tracks individual words or phrases in order to build up the overall meaning of a text.

Word recognition

Word recognition is ___ widely accepted by researchers as one of the most important lower level processes that contributes to reading comprehension. Many studies over the past 20 years have demonstrated that effective word recognition skills are a major predictor of well-developed reading ability ____ on. This suggests that developing good word recognition skills is an important first ___ in becoming a fluent reader. Because so much research has been dedicated to word recognition, it is possible to hear critics of cognitive research sometimes say that word recognition is not, in fact, reading comprehension. However, we will ___ find any researchers who have said that reading comprehension is word recognition. What most researchers __ say is that fluent reading comprehension is not possible without rapid and automatic recognition of a large vocabulary. They ____ say that word recognition represents that part of comprehension that is unique __ reading. In ____ words, many non-readers have listening comprehension abilities associated with language more generally; what they are _____ is the capability to activate comprehension specifically from graphic symbols and their combinations.

Use the parts I have underlined and bolded, to write a summary of paragraphs 3 and 4.

The importance of word recognition for reading is hard to overestimate. When we read, we actually focus on almost all (about 80%) of the content words that we read and about 50 percent of the small function words (Adams, 1990; Perfetti, 1999; Pressley, 2006). We are able to do this because we are such extraordinary word recognizers. We can often recognize a word in well less than 100 milliseconds (Ashby & Rayner, 2006; Breznitz, 2006), and we tend to maintain our focal vision on words for an average time of 200–500 milliseconds (Perfetti 1999). Keeping these numbers in mind, it is not hard to see how a fluent reader can read a text comfortably at 250–300 wpm. It should also be evident that inefficient word-recognition processes are a major obstacle for learners.

In order for fluent recognition to occur, a reader must be able to do the following: recognize the actual words on the page very rapidly, activate links between the way the word is written (the graphic form) and the way it sounds (the phonological information), then access resources associated with the meaning of the word and where it appears in a phrase, while also recognizing features such as prefixes and suffixes in more complex word forms, and then finally access her or his mental lexicon. These subskills represent a standard way to describe word recognition skills. Perfetti & Hart (2001) have described these processes as ‘constituents’ of word recognition; that is, word recognition involves the interaction of different activated processes associated with writing, pronunciation, meaning and grammar. Fast and automatic word recognition occurs when visual input from the word on the page activates lexical entries in the reader’s lexicon that have well-represented information of all these four processes. In cases of word recognition difficulty or encounters with unknown words, the impact of contextual information plays an important role in word recognition. 



Listening and speaking

Can plants talk to each other? It certainly doesn’t seem that way: They don’t have complex sensory or nervous systems, like animals do, and they look pretty passive. But odd as it sounds, plants can communicate with each other — especially when they’re under attack. 

Vocab

To beef up

Scarce (adj.)

The make-up (n.) of sth

To eavesdrop

A chemical fingerprint

To emit

Airborne (adj.)

To decipher

A symbiotic relationship

Filaments (n.)

Blight (n.)

To prompt / trigger

To ramp up 

 Ted Lesson:

Can plants talk to each other?  

 Gap fill for second listening:

Basking in the ___

Odd as it _______

Under _________

Plumes of ____________ chemicals

Increase the _____________ of

________ sb of danger

A self-__________ mechanism

__________ on signals

C________ warnings

_______ types

Airborne b__________

Ramp up p____________

Speaking questions based on vocab:


Do you sometimes eavesdrop on other people's conversations?

What prompted you to study in New Zealand instead of another country?










Can you decipher these Chinese characters using the helpful prompts?













Here's the answers:











Combine the mouth and person pictograms to convey "prisoner"








Expand the "person" character to convey...



follow

crowd

big















Check:










Name five things that emit heat.









Name two things that emit steam.












Do they emit sounds?

Trees
Fish
Spiders
Lightbulbs
Grass





Name some living things that can emit light?







What do these things have in common?

Shoes
Cheese
Vinegar
Arm pits
Feet
Rubbish bins