檳城留臺同學會 會訊 2011 | Page 11

Students will then be asked who condemned the Israelis and support their answers with some evidence: a) The Palestinians b) The United Nations c) The Organization of Islamic Conference d) Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi e) The US President If teachers supply newspaper articles to students with the headlines removed, the students will then be asked to come out with their own headlines using a passive structure. According to O’Sullivan (1999), the use of the passive structure is to create a sense of distance, formality and to make the meaning of an utterance more impersonal. This enables learners to understand the context much better. 4) Learning of Verb Tenses Articles extracted from newspapers can be used for exercises of verb tenses. It is important for the teacher/lecturer to select the correct passage to suit the interest and need of the students. The articles selected for the students should have a short amusing account of an incident or be an anecdote that can make the student enjoy reading it. This helps students understand the passage faster and learn tenses more effectively as shown in the following example: The students are divided into small groups with a leader appointed in each group. They study the comics or cartoons closely and then invent their own stories and give their own names to the characters in the stories. The stories are then read in the classroom. Later on, the teacher /lecturer in the classroom will ask the students to paste comics or cartoons in the exercise books and write out their stories. In addition, teachers or lecturers can choose some cartoon pictures and put them in disarranged order. Students are then asked to put them back into its correct sequence based on their understanding of the cartoon pictures. This can be fun and interesting to challenge the students' interpretation of the cartoon pictures. 6) Tour Advertisement Guide Using information from a tour advertisement to plan a holiday may be interesting. Each student has the tour advertisement taken from his/her newspaper. The teacher in the classroom asks the students some general questions about the advertisement. After this, the students are given the opportunity to explain why they prefer such a particular tour. This activity will help students elicit a lot of expressions and information. In addition, they may gain knowledge about the culture or custom about the particular country that they are keen on. A tour advertisement can also be used in a dialogue in which one student plays the role of a tourist-to-be and the other plays the role of a clerk who works in a travel agency 7) The TV Guide Possibly the world’s least successful tourist is Mr Nicholas Scotti, an Italian living in San Francisco. Some years ago, he (1) _________ (decide) to fly back to Italy to visit relatives. During the journey, the plane (2) ________ (make) a one-hour stop at Kennedy Airport. Thinking he (3) __________ (arrive) in Italy, Mr Scotti (4) __________ (get) out of the plane and (5) ________ (spend) the whole day in New York thinking he was in Rome. The great traveller (6) ________ (notice) that modernization (7) ___________ (destroy) many of Rome’s ancient buildings and he later (8) ________ (tell) friends that he (9) __________ (be) surprised so many people (10) __________ (speak) English. In fact, Mr Scotti‘s English is rather limited but when he (11) _________ (ask) a police officer for direction, he (12) ________ (manage) to choose an officer who (13) ________ (emigrate) from Italy several years before, and so (14) ___________ (be) able to answer in fluent Italian. By reinforcing students to do this type of exercise will help sustain their interest in learning tenses and they can comprehend better and use the tenses correctly. 5) Cartoon /Comics Some interesting cartoons or comics that appear in the newspaper can be used to elicit students’ responses to telling stories. The conversation in the cartoons or comics is deleted. Photocopies of