Learning task 2
Language features of a report
- See English Online Features of text forms, Reports, to teach the language features and text structure typical of a report. Read through with students. Students should highlight unfamiliar text.
- Make a list of new vocabulary and pre-teach some of it using teaching strategies outlined in the guidelines above.
- Teachers could get them to copy out the list of language features and the typical structural features.
- Teachers could distribute copies of the
text (Word 28KB)
and students could look for the structural and language features mentioned and highlight and label any that they can find. This could be done as group work and an annotated copy of the text submitted for the teacher to check.
- Teachers will then need to give feedback once these have been marked. Alternatively students could relay answers to the whole class and receive feedback as a group.
Identifying the language features and text structure
The objective of this task is to give students practice at identifying the language features and text structure typical of a report. This exercise involves predicting, learning vocabulary, reading and scanning also.
Divide the class into groups. Each group should do
AnalysingAReport (Word 30KB)
based on the Reuters article "Getting your fill of fibre cuts cancer risk, say scientists".
Give each student his/her own copy of the task. See
answers (Word 54KB)
.
A group report should be submitted to the teacher by each group. After marking the group report the teacher could issue copies of the answers and go through these with students. Alternatively students could relay answers to the whole class and receive feedback as a group.
The same sort of exercise should be done several times with different texts if time allows. Other texts are given separately as possible texts:
- The Gene Seekers by Bill O'Brien, published 2001 for the Ministry of Education by Learning Media. This is a small booklet in the Applications series which gives information about a Māori family in which large numbers of people have had stomach cancer. They discuss this with genetic scientists to try to find the gene responsible. This text helps to fulfil the 'inclusiveness' requirement mentioned in special note number five in the Unit Standard.
In each case get students to look for the main idea and analyse the significance of it. Identify the language features and structure of the text and say why these techniques have been used.
Published on: 24 Jun 2009
