Women of Achievement

   Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My topic is Women of Achievement, that is, unit 1, in module 4. The reading passage “A Student of African Wildlife” is talked later and my talk consists of 4 parts. Part 1, my understanding of the material. Part 2, teaching approaches. Part 3, preparations before class. Part 4, teaching procedure.

  First, let me introduce the reading passage. It is the center of this unit’s teaching and learning. It is made up of 4 paragraphs, that is, one day’s observing chimps with Jane in the forest; how Jane did her research and her achievements; Jane’s love towards animals and her contributions to animal protection; and a short summary to her. By learning this lesson, the students can not only understand women’s status in society and everyday life, their values and contributions, their difficulties and achievements, but also learn how to use some words, phrases and sentence patterns. Of course, the students can practise their reading skills, such as skimming, scanning and careful reading.

   Second, I want to tell something about the students. Although the students have the basic abilities of listening, speaking, reading and writing, they still need many opportunities to explore and convey meanings; to classify and reflect on their thoughts, feelings and experiences; to experiment and use their imaginations, and also to develop their autonomous learning ability, cooperative learning ability and investigative learning ability.

   Third, about teaching aims

   Knowledge aims: To learn how to use the mastery words, phrases and sentence patterns;

To learn sth about Jane’s research.

   Ability aims: To cultivate the students’ autonomous learning ability, cooperative learning ability and investigative learning ability;

              To develop students’ reading skills, such as making prediction and drawing inferences from the context.

   Emotional aims: To encourage the students to participate in the class activities and cultivate their teamwork spirit;

                 To learn Jane’s bravery and perseverance in achieving her goals;

                 To reinforce the sense of wildlife protection.

    Fourth, about key points and difficult points

   I think they are to develop the students’ reading skills, such as making prediction and drawing inferences from the context; and to learn how to use the mastery words, phrases and sentence patterns.

Part 2  Teaching approaches

    According to the analysis above, I’ll try to use the following theories: to make students the real master of the class while the teacher myself the director; to inspire the students, especially girl students to chase their dreams with great determinations.

    Therefore, task—based teaching method, students—centered teaching method and CAI will be used.

Part 3   Preparations before class

I will ask the students to surf the Internet or go to the library to find some information about great women that they are interested in.

And in class, they will give reports of the information they have obtained. By doing this activity, I can train their autonomous learning ability and investigative learning ability, and their abilities of collecting and dealing with information.

Part 4   Teaching procedure

I designed 6 steps to deal with this reading passage.

Step 1 lead—in

   Activity: picture appreciation and question answering

   I’ll show them some beautiful pictures of wild animals, such as lions, Tibetan antelopes, monkeys and chimps. Then one question will be asked: which animal has the closest connection with human beings? It’s not so difficult. Of course, chimps. Then the students can find more about chimps from the reading passage.

The purpose of this activity is to stimulate the students’ interest and naturally lead to the reading passage.

Step 2  pre—reading

Activity: look and guess

The students will be asked to just glance at the title and the two pictures in the book, and then guess what they will read in the text. And they’ll be divided into groups of four to have a discussion.

This activity is to inspire the students to read actively, not passively. Surveys show that active reading can raise the readers’ interest and reading efficiency. Other purposes are to develop the students’ reading skill—making prediction and to encourage the students to think in English, express their thoughts in English and cooperate with each other.

Step 3  reading

Activity 1  scanning

The students are required to scan the text quickly and find out specific information of the following questions.

1 who is the student?

2 what animals are observed?

3 when did Jane Goodall arrive at Gombe? How old was she?

4 what was the purpose of her study?

By doing this activity, the students can improve their reading skill—scanning. And they can get the two lines of the whole passage, the main line—student, and the hidden line—wildlife. It builds a solid base for the latter reading comprehension.

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