1. Reading: Digital aids to develop and improve reading skills

 


Dear students,

Welcome to your first workshop of our course. Today, we will learn how you can use digital aids to develop and improve reading skills. After you complete all the tasks below, you will be able to:
  - name different levels of understanding a text;
  - see the difference between 7 (!) reading subskills;
  - analyze the potential of modern reading apps.


LET'S ANALYZE DIGITAL AIDS FOR READING, SHALL WE?




TASK 1. Click the image above to watch a short 18-min video about the peculiarities of a reading lesson.


TASK 2. Have a look at and click through the following online resources that offer reading activities:
















12. SCRIBD


TASK 3. Analyze the above-mentioned applications and complete the table using the five criteria below:
1. Type of texts: authentic or adapted texts of various genres – popular science, journalistic, nonfiction, fiction, as well as texts of a pragmatic nature: instructions, recipes, etc.

2. Level of English: What is the level of English (Starter, Beginner, Elementary, Pre-Intermediate, Intermediate, Upper-Intermediate, Advanced)?

3. Presence of different exercises: Are there exercises corresponding to certain stages of working with the text to develop reading skills?
  • Warm-ups, 
  • pre-reading , 
  • while-reading, 
  • post-reading, 
  • using headlines, 
  • working with words, 
  • moving from text to speech, 
  • role plays, 
  • task-based activities, 
  • discussions and debates. 

4. Presence of visual support: Is there visual support? How attractive is it? Does it not distract from reading? 

5. Assessment: Are correct answers provided to check completed exercises? Are points awarded for correct answers? The first description was done for you.

 Table 1. Analysis of Reading Applications

Rubrics

Application and its link

Type of texts

Level of English

Presence of Different Exercises

Presence of Visual Support

Assessment

1

Example

Breaking News English

Popular science

1,2,3,4, 5,6

lots of different exercises, lesson plans

text

only the correct answers

2

 

 

 

 

 

 

3

 

 

 

 

 

 

4

 

 

 

 

 

 

5

 

 

 

 

 

 

6

 

 

 

 

 

 

7

 

 

 

 

 

 

8

 

 

 

 

 

 

9

 

 

 

 

 

 

10

 

 

 

 

 

 


TASK 4. Find five more applications for developing reading skills online.

TASK 5. Highlight your favourite application for developing reading skills in the list above with the blue colour and be ready to present it during the workshop.

TASK 6. Explain in a couple of sentences which above-mentioned reading applications suit the chosen students best.
1. A group of 10-year-old kids (Beginner level).

2. A 25-year-old journalist (Beginner level) who wants to read international news.

3. A 15-year-old girl (Intermediate level) who is interested in social media.

4. A pair of students in their 40s who love cooking.

5. A 50-year-old lawyer (Pre-Intermediate level) who likes reading detectives.

TASK 7. Theoretical quiz.
Go to Task 1 and watch a video lecture again. Then, click on the image below to go to the test (5 questions!):


PRACTICAL TASKS

TASK 1. Formatting MSW Document.
  1. Copy the text from the Internet and paste it into your MSW Document, align it to the width, make an indentation of the first lines in every paragraph, and an indissoluble space between the names and surnames.
  2. Find the symbols in the band of tasks, insert them into the text, and change the distance between letters and lines
  3. Copy pictures from the Internet and paste them into the MSW Document, change the size and move to the end of the text.
  4. Create a list of literature (5 resources), insert a hyphen, а dash, indissoluble blank, align by the width, number, and make the distance between lines of the same size.
  5. Copy from the text 3 sentences and paste them into the clipboard, move these sentences from the clipboard to a new page, make a screenshot of your clipboard with copied sentences and paste it into your MSW Document.
  6.  Create a table and paste it into the text of your MSW Document.
  7. Upload your MSW Document to your Google Drive, name it with your surname, share your document, create a link and paste it into the table with links.
Example: MSW document

Instructions for creating an answer file and posting it online:

1. Create a MSW Document on your computer like this:


2.     Name the document by your surname, number of your group, and a type of activity (for instance, "Zubenko, reading activity") like this:


3.  Copy the table 1 and paste it into your MSW Document.

4. Fill in the table 1.

5. Compile a list in Task 4 and write your explanation in Task 6. Copy this information to your MSW Document.

6. Upload your MSW Document to your Google Drive like this:


   7.     Share your document.


8. Create a link, make a copy of the link, and paste it into the table with links like this:



Resources

1. https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/short-stories
2. https://www.gutenberg.org/
3. https://breakingnewsenglish.com/index.html
4. https://www.voanews.com/
5. https://americanenglish.state.gov/four-skills-resources
6. https://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/american-teens-talk
7. http://storybird.com
8. https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/read-write
9. https://preply.com/en/learn/english/reading
10. https://linguapress.com/inter.htm
11. https://www.myenglishpages.com/english/reading.php

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