challenging , and it develops the students ’ creativity and confidence . All the students ’ answers should we valorised somehow , and students have to know that they all contributed to the drawing of the conclusions . The lead- in step or the introduction of the new content were the main stages in which brainstorming was used . Some examples in the culture teaching classes could be : Task : Tell me words or phrases that come into your mind when you hear the words ' customs and traditions ' of a country . Task : What does ' culture ' mean to you ? How can you explain this concept ? Task : Together with your desk mate , make a list of everything you know about London . ( This was a lead-in activity of a lesson about London ).
KWL Chart It is a three-rubric table , one containing information the students Know , the other , information the students Want to Know , the third being completed after the accomplishment of the task with pieces of information students have Learned .
Within the lesson about London sights , before the reading activity , the teacher draws on the board the following table . Students are asked if they know something about famous places in London that are visited by tourists . After completing this section , teacher asks students what they would like to know about famous places or landmarks of London and encourages them to use question words ( what , where , why , how many , how much , when , who , how ) in order to express their curiosity . The questions are written in the right column . After reading the informative text about the London landmarks and doing some while-reading and post-reading activities , the last column is filled-in with information the students have learnt , and the second column is compared with the last one so as to see if all the questions were answered .
LONDON LANDMARKS I KNOW I WANT TO KNOW I HAVE LEARNT
The culture capsule ( or comparing and contrasting ) The culture capsule was suggested by Chastain ( 1988 ) in his book Developing Second Language Skills : Theory and Practice and involves discussing in class or even writing in a table / chart an aspect of the target culture from the point of view of similarities and differences with the students ’ cultures .
After a reading activity on ' School in England ' and after some class discussions about the Romanian and English Educational system , the students had to fill in a table with the differences and similarities between school in Romania and school in England .
School in Romania vs School in England Similarities
Differences
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