Explain your opinion of the text. Would it be an appropriate text for your students at the upper-intermediate/pre-intermediate level?

Written Assignment 3 – Skills Related Task

I confirm that this submission is all my own work.

Signed: ________________________ (Trainee)              

Taken from Syllabus and Assessment Guidelines for Course Tutors and Assessors

Assignment 3: Skills-Related Task

Aims

This assignment aims to develop your ability to design appropriate skills related tasks (receptive and productive) using the authentic text provided for you.

Upper Intermediate: (Four Things Every Human Should* Experience Before They Die by Sean Kernan) https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/story/four-things-every-human-should-experience-before-they-die-223001642.html

Pre-Intermediate: https://www.skyscanner.fr/?previousCultureSource=COOKIE&redirectedFrom=www.skyscanner.net

Procedure:

You need to write the assignment in continuous prose and ensure that your assignment covers all of the points listed below.

A. Appropriateness of the text: Explain your opinion of the text.  Would it be an appropriate text for your students at the upper-intermediate/pre-intermediate level? Refer to your students’ interests and language proficiency level.

B. Receptive Skills Tasks: Design two receptive skills tasks to help students practice reading subskills. Each task must practise a different subskill (reading for the gist, reading for specific information, reading for details, reading for inference, etc) and follow a logical sequence (gist reading before reading for detail, for example). Describe the procedure briefly and explain how these tasks help students improve the subskills and include rationale.

C. Productive Skills Task: Design a productive skills (speaking or writing) task that would exploit the interest and knowledge generated by the text. The task should have a clear communicative goal. Include your rationale.

Background Reading: You must include evidence of your background reading (one methodology text would be enough) about language skills. The quotes from your reading should directly relate to the design of your receptive or productive skills tasks. The quotations should be in the text to support your point.

References: Include the details of your background reading in the bibliography.

Materials: Materials should be included in the Appendix. These should include the following:

1.         i.  The tasks you have designed as they would be distributed or explained to your students.
2.       ii.  The answer keys.
3.      iii.  Any and all lesson materials (such as pictures) you would need for the receptive and productive tasks you have designed

Common Pitfalls

Some common pitfalls that can lead to a resubmission

• Making the tasks too easy, or too challenging for your learners.
• Not including the answers you would expect students to give to your tasks.
• Creating productive skills tasks that don’t relate sufficiently to the content of the selected reading text or are not authentic/meaningful real-life tasks.
• A lack of procedural detail when focusing on the productive skills tasks.
• Not mentioning your background reading in the assignment.
  • Failing to provide a bibliography at the end of the assignment.

To Succeed:

• Specify which level the text is for in your assignment.
• Do not edit the text for the purposes of this assignment. You may, however, decide to use only a part of the text (though it should be sufficiently long to practice two different reading subskills).
• Design a total of three tasks—two for receptive skills and one for productive skills.
• The two receptive skills must help ss practice two different subskills.
• Grade the tasks to the level of your learners. They should neither be too easy, nor too difficult.
• Describe the tasks that you have designed briefly.
• Specify which sub-skills students will be working on through these tasks.
• Explain how each of the tasks you’ve designed helps students to develop the target skills/ subskills.
• Specify the productive skill students will be working on.
• Proofread.

 

Assessment Criteria

The assignment should be written in continuous prose, with clear headings and paragraphing.

Cambridge ESOL specifies that for the Language Skills-Related tasks assignment, successful candidates can demonstrate their learning by:

• correctly using terminology that relates to skills and sub-skills
• relating task design to language skills practice
• finding, selecting and referencing information from one or more sources using written language that is clear, accurate and appropriate to the task.

Word count: 750 – 1000 words