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ESOL Online. Every child literate - a shared responsibility.
Ministry of Education.

Learning task 3

Expected time frame: 2-3 lessons

These learning activities are designed to raise student understanding of the function of a range of cohesive devices e.g. repetition of key nouns, pronoun reference and conjunctions in information texts. It is important to share this language learning outcome and to be explicit in the use of relevant terminology with your students.

ESOL US 2986 v7 performance criterion addressed:

1.3 The effect on meaning of cohesive devices in the text is identified.

  • Ask students in pairs to complete the Cohesion Cloze (Word 78KB) . This can be done with or without the words provided for differentiation purposes. Students can check their choices using the full text. This will also provide an opportunity for discussion and reflection upon the differences.
  • Use the first two sentences in the text to demonstrate to students how pronouns refer back to nouns so that the nouns do not have to be repeated in every sentence. Show them also how use of the demonstrative adjective ‘this’ makes a clear connection between Antarctica in the alternative noun phrase ‘this great southern land’. Repetition of the keyword ‘Antarctica’ can also be pointed out to students as another method for cohesion. Note frequent references to ‘Antarctica’ in the text.
  • Ask students to find other noun phrases used to refer to Antarctica throughout the text viz. the Antarctic continent, the continent, this hostile land, the land.
  • Ask students to read about Scott's expedition (Word 24KB) in the Antarctic and the challenges he and his men faced. This could be done as co-operative reading or as a jigsaw reading exercise.
  • Differences between this text, which is a historical recount, and information report genre should be pointed out to students e.g. use of past tense verbs, chronological order.
  • Ask students to complete the Cohesion Task (Word 33KB) .
  • Ask students to identify the three different groups which the pronoun ‘they’ refers to in paragraph 3 of this text.

Antarctica is the most inhospitable continent in the world. It is a desert of ice and snow with the coldest, windiest and driest climate in the world. For millions of years time stood still on this great southern land. Living in Antarctica is very difficult because of short cold summers, long dark winter nights and wind blowing all of the time.

Published on: 09 Jan 2018

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