CLASSE 45/A LINGUA INGLESE

ABILITA' ORALI E SCRITTE :

FORMAZIONE, SVILUPPO, VERIFICA

LESSON PLAN

Cosenza 16.12.2003

Prof.

P. Gentile

specializzanda

Mariagiovanna Chirillo

A LEVEL (BASIC USERS) OF THE COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK:

A2 (WAYSTAGE)

Third year of ‘Scuola Media’.

· Can use basic patterns with memorised phrases, groups of a few words and formulae in order to communicate limited information in simple everyday situations.

· Can use some simple structures correctly, but still systematically make basic mistakes

· Can make him/herself understood in very short utterances, even though pauses, false starts and reformulation are very evident

· Can answer questions and respond to simple statements. Can indicate when he/she is following but is rarely able to understand enough to keep conversation going of his/her own accord

· Can link groups of words with simple connectors like “and”, “but”, and “because”.

- Past tense of regular and some irregular verbs.

- Knowledge of the period: The Middle Age.

- Receptive (listening, reading)

- Productive (writing, speaking)

- to develop reading skills (skimming, scanning)

- to revise and to improve vocabulary.

- to listen to and read about past events

- to answer, by writing and by speaking, questions of a short text.

- to write a short text using the past tense.

- Vocabulary

- Past tense of some irregular verbs

Linguistic competence

- Broadening active reading vocabulary

- Using the Past Simple in past events narration

Communicative competence (also includes pragmatic)

- Grasping global and detailed information from an audio or written text

- Simple oral reporting of a written text within the given field

- Writing short text on subjects within a given field structuring them as linear sequences of points

- Identifying the main features of the text

It will be preferred an integrated approach.

Students must be guided to develop strategies of reading-comprehension, oral and written summary of texts (speaking, writing), listening.

The material selected will be at the basis of tasks, visual and listening activities, written, guided exercises (matching, filling in the blanks, completing grids) and freer ones (make your own summary), pair work and group work (discussions and exchanging opinions).

Students’ attention will be caught using pictures, schemes and grids with different colours (stimulating visual intelligences).

It will be also important to start from what students already know.

- Photocopies

- Blackboard

- Tape recorder

Lexical and structural aspects are suitable for the third year of “Scuola Media”

The text is related to the Middle Age, a topic that students, presumably, already know from an historical even a literary point of view. It should be interesting to revise it from another point of view (that the foreign language).

The text let’s:

- to revise grammatical structures (simple past of regular and irregular verbs, interrogative adjectives and pronouns, linkers)

- to ask and give information

- to express relations of time, cause/effect using connective devices

PRE-READING ACTIVITY

· Warm up

AIM The teacher tries to motivate his/her students before reading the text in order to understand what they already know (and remember) about Middle Age and life at that period.

PRODUCTION/ SPEAKING

Work in pairs

The teacher asks simple questions:

- What do you know about medieval times?

- Do you know what “The sword in the stone means?”

- Who are the main characters of the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table?

Discuss with the class

Then she/he builds up a spidergram on the blackboard, using students suggestions and the most common words related to the topic.

Courtly love

Holy Grail quest

Ovale: MIDDLE AGE
And
MEDIEVAL LIFE

chivalry fight

tournament

realm King

Queen

sword

castle

reign knights squire

throne

PRODUCTION/SPEAKING

PRODUCTION/WRITING

In pairs

Ø Look at the picture. What do you think the text is about? Take notes about your partner suggestions.

Discuss with the class

RECEPTION/READING

PRODUCTION/WRITING

· Extensive reading and skimming

AIM Glancing rapidly though the text for its gist and reading for pleasure.

TIME 10 minutes

Ø Read the following text individually.

The legend of King Arthur dates back to the 5^th century. It refers to a timeless world where the Knights of the Round Table fought for the love of virtuous girls who were exalted as ideal love objects. The keys themes of these stories are courtly love and the Quest of the Holy Grail, the cup which once contained the blood of Christ.

Writers from England, Germany and France wrote stories of different Knights of the Round Table, Lancelot, Perceval, Tristan, Gawain. The most famous English version is “Le mort d’ Arthur” by Thomas Malory, published in 1485. Malory translated, arranged and rewrote the adventures of King Arthur and The Knights of the Round Table from the original Latin, French and English sources.

The knights assembled in Camelot, a caste which is supposed to be in Cornwall, at Tintagel. Arthur’s Knights sat with him at a Round Table, the symbol of their equality: no knight was superior to any other.

These legends were easily adapted to the big screen and many different films have been published.

“The Sword in the stone” is an excellent animated film by Walt Disney. It’s a version of the story about how Arthur became king in a period when England was without a proper ruler. The main character is an orphan squire-in-training called Wart. When he meets the extraordinary wizard Merlin he learns to use intellect, wisdom and love. When it was time to decide who would be wing, Wart pulled a sword from stone when his brother needed one for a tournament. He did not realize that none of the other knights could do this, and that he who succeeded was the rightful king.

· Intensive reading

AIMS:

- to read for accuracy

- to have detailed understanding of the text.

TIME: 15 minutes

Ø Read again and divide the text into four paragraphs and match each of them with a title choosing from the following:

1. Film link

2. Historical background

3. The quest for the Holy Grail

4. English version of the legend

5. Description of the setting

6. Queen Guinevere and Lancelot

· Scanning

AIM: to catch specific information

Ø Answer the following questions

1. When does the legend of King Arthur date back?

2. What were the key themes of the Arthurian Romance?

3. What is the most famous English version of the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table?

4. What is “The sword in the stone”?

5. How was the young Wart recognized as the rightful king?

AIM: to focus on different kinds of text

Ø What kind of text is it? Why? Which are their main features?

Descriptive Argumentative Narrative

AIM: to work on vocabulary

Ø Underline in the text, the words used in the spidergram.

Do you know the meaning of all these words? If not could you guess the meaning from the context? Otherwise find synonymous in the dictionary.

AIM: to work on grammar structures

Ø Word game. Find out 7 (regular and irregular) past in this word square

Ø Circle in the text all the verbs in the simple past and complete, filling in, the grid. Complete the paradigms of the irregular ones.




	BE

			REWRITTEN


	CAN

PRODUCTION/WRITING

AIM: to guide a written summary.

Ø Read the text. When you find a blank space look at

the words that precede or follow it, and try to predict if the missing words are nouns, verbs or adjectives. Insert the right words.

Everybody knows the famous legend of King Arthur and the……….of the Round Table. Arthur became king when he pulled a ……….out of a stone. He lived in a ………..at Camelot where his knights sat at a table which had a special…………: it was round so that…………..was respected and there weren’t any privileged seats. The knights…………..for the love of virtuous…………..and went to………..the Holy Grail. The favourite knight of King Arthur was Lancelot.

RECEPTION/LISTENING

Ø Now listen to the cassette and check.

PRODUCTION/WRITING

AIM: to use language in a freer way, to develop abilities of synthesis and to point on the use of linkers (cohesive devices).

Ø Now write down your own summary.

PRODUCTION/SPEAKING

Refer orally your own summary.

TESTING AND EVALUATION

The learning process will be monitored and tested during the development of the lesson.

The check will be individual and choral.

The teacher will test students learning step by step, in progress, checking if the aim of all the activities has been achieved. She/he also will check the overall understanding through the following test, checking also the correct use of linkers:

Ø Match each sentence with the correct ending:

1. The Holy Grail is…..

2. At medieval times women were….

3. The famous realm of Camelot…..

4. The Round Table had that shape….

5. The wizard Merlin teaches Wart…..

6. Wart proved that he was the rightful king…..

A) …..to use intellect, wisdom and love.

B) …..so that there was no grade of importance among the knights

C) ….. by pulling the sword out of a stone.

D) ……the cup that contained the blood of Christ.

E) ……is supposed to be in Cornwall.

F) ……exalted as ideal love objects

The teacher could also choose to give only the first part of the exercise and to make students to complete in a freer way.

Example of a

From 1 to 4

	MARKS
Communicative effectiveness	3
Grammatical propriety	3
Content/understanding	4
Fluency	3
Use of lexis	3
Pronunciation	3
Appropriate use of connectors	2

Students will be assessed according to:

· Involvement

· Commitment

· Knowledge of the content

· Appropriate use of structures and functions

As it comes to the evaluation, three different grades are provided, corresponding to following descriptions of competence levels:

GRADE DESCRIPTION

VERY GOOD

Can express him/herself accurately and fluently, also in an interactive context; has a good command of all levels of linguistic competence

GOOD

Communicates with reasonable accuracy and fluency, even if with some hesitation, imprecision and errors on some linguistic levels

NOT SUFFICIENT

Communication process (production/interaction) impeded/ seriously obstructed because of insufficient level of language competence

Time: 3/4 hours approximately