Assignment 1: Language Skills Related Task

For this skills related assignment, my choice of authentic reading material is “curiosity shop”. It is the story about one women randomly walking into an indiscreet shop and trying to open a leather cover book. I decided to use this fictional story as I think it is appropriate for English language learners at the upper-intermediate level. The article deals with shop which is a quite universal appeal topic for many adult leaners and hence they are easy to be involved immediately in lead-in stage. It is also a fictional story with an unusual ending, which brings the readers surprise. They will encounter several new words in the text and I will pre-teach some, but not all of these, as this would deny them the chance to understand natural written English for themselves (Harmer 203, 2001). The lesson aims to develop students’ reading comprehension skills, in that it will enable them to make sense of an authentic text as independently as possible, without attempting to understand every single word, not, perhaps, even understanding most words, but still achieving a specific and useful goal. (Scrivener 264). But, most of all, this article is perfect for a reading activity, as the story is really attractive for students and readers would be eager to know what is going on next. As Jim Scrivener mentioned The main aim of readers is to provide opportunities for extensive reading for pleasure. (Scrivener 269)


I think a good starting point for this lesson would be showing students a picture of bookstore and asking the students what they have ever seen in a bookstore and if they have ever seen any interesting or special book in a bookstore. The students would be familiar with the venue and the picture will help to set the context and situation. Students could first discuss with partners how they feel about the bookstore. After eliciting some opinions and feelings, ask some additional, personalized questions like: “Is there anything interesting in bookstore?” “Have you seen...