Warming up、Pre-reading、Reading、Comprehending课堂实录及点评

Unit 3 Australia Teaching Design

Period 1 Analysis of the Teaching Material:

The central topic of this unit is "Australia". The main content covers Australia's geography, history, major cities, natural scenery, wildlife, customs, habits and so on. In the warming up part, some pictures about big cities and famous scenic spots in Australia are used as a transition to the topic of this unit. The pre-reading section is designed to train students' reading skills. Students are asked to quickly scan through five passages and then answer three designed questions. The reading section contains five short articles with the same theme but different styles, including encyclopedia excerpts, news reports, advertisements, postcards and travel brochure articles, which provide a comprehensive overview of Australia from multiple perspectives. The comprehension section consists of three exercises, exercise 1 corresponds to the Pre-reading section, which also requires you to learn to read the text quickly, in order to train your skimming skills. Exercise 2 ask the students to answer the questions carefully and read the text carefully. At the same time, mark some information about Australia that they didn't know before. Make a list of the five most interesting items and discuss them with a partner. This exercise is relatively simple in form, but it enables students to actively process the information in the text and upgrade it from the cognitive level to the thinking level, so that the book knowledge is incorporated into their own knowledge system. Exercise 3 is to expand the content of the text and train students' logical thinking ability and expression ability. Since most of the five essays are declarative and descriptive language, and there are no sentences to express personal opinions, this exercise uses some facts mentioned in the passage to stimulate students to think deeply about the content of the passage.The answer to the question can't be found directly in the passage, and students are asked to express their opinions with good reasons.

Teaching Aims:

1. Enable students to be familiar with the topic of this unit: Australia. 2. Practise students’

fast reading ability by scanning and skimming the text for several general questions about Australia. 3. Train students to distinguish different styles of articles.

Teaching Focus:

Enable students to be familiar with Australia, including its geography, history, major cities, natural scenery, wildlife, customs, habits and so on.

Teaching Difficulties: Train students to distinguish different styles of articles (encyclopedia excerpts, news reports, advertisements, postcards and travel brochure articles).

Teaching Approaches:

Tasked-based Approach; Communicative Teaching Approach

Teaching Procedures:

Step 1: Lead-in 1.

Greetings 2.

Ask students to guess which country we are going to talk about. Offer them some clues (It is surrounded by oceans; It is a country and also a continent; It’s home to kangroo, koala bear and so on). The whole class answer together. 3.

(Individual work) Ask students to match the pictures with the places in Australia and list them on the map (P21) . Check answers. 4.

(pair work) Ask students to discuss with their partner what they know about these places. Invite a pair to share. Teacher add some information about the places if needed.

Step 2: Fast reading (scanning and skimming) 1.

Ask students to glance quickly at the five texts and then answer the following 2 questions.

What topic is common to all five texts?

What aspect of the topics is discussed in each text (eg scenery, animals, politics) Remind students to read very fast for relevant clues and ignore details. Point out the key information that students should pay attention to when checking answers.

2.

Ask students to skim the text and answer the following questions in the shortest possible time. Remind students that they don’t need to read every word of the five reading passages in order to answer them.

Where do most Australians live? In what city do federal politicians work? How many people live in Australia? When is Australia Day? How far is it from Perth to Sydney? How many world Heritage Sites are there in Australia? Which part of Australia gets the most Rainfall? Why do most people choose not to climb Uluru? What two World Heritage Sites are named in these texts? Check answers.

Step 3: Discuss to distinguish different styles of articles. 1.

Ask students to match the reading passage with a description below: (A postcard from someone on holiday; part of a text in an encyclopedia; part of a tourist brochure; a newspaper article; an advertisement). Check answers.

2.

Ask students to discuss in a small group about the characteristics of encyclopedia excerpts, news reports, advertisements, postcards and travel brochure articles by referring to this text.

Invite several groups to share and the teacher makes supplements.

Conclusion: A brief conclusion about some basic information of Australia covered in this class. Stress the teaching focus and point out the difficult points.

Homework: Suppose you are a tourist guide, introduce Australia to your classmates.