Subiectul III (2011)

Based on subject 1, devise a pre-reading activity

1. Objectives
Students will develop their communicative competence;
Students will be able to make predictions about the reading text;
Students will be able to differentiate the main ideas of a reading text from elements that
illustrate and support it;
Students feel free to express their opinions during the English class however different from
their classmates;
2. Estimated time : 10 minutes
3. Level and age of the students : Upper-intermediate, Xth grade.
4. Stages of the activity :
Brainstorming - The teacher tells students they are gooing to read an an extract from
''Hearth of darkness'', a novel written by Joseph Conrad. Starting from the title (written by
the teacher on the board at the beginning of the activity) the students are asked to tell the
teacher what they think they are going to read about and make a list of elements they expect
to find in it : subject,characters, the plot, etc. (3 minutes)
Group-work The teacher gives students words/phrases from the text e.g. ''sea'', ''stream'',
''Thames'', ''waterway'', ''tidal current'', ''river'', ''seaman'', ''ship'', ''shores'' etc. and asks
students to work in small groups and try to predict its content. (2 minutes)
Pair-work The teacher gives students a short text about the author and the novel and asks
students to work in pairs and write down 3 questions they have about the text. Tells students
to skim the text to see if their questions were answered and catch the overall meaning of the
extract. They may also underline words/phrases related to the title and content of the novel.
(5 minutes)