The Man Upstairs

Prepared by LAI Mee Ling

Lesson Summary:
This is a reading lesson. The text is a one-page long story about two neighbours in Moscow, with one living upstairs to the other. The man upstairs always made noises disturbing the one downstairs. One day, the man downstairs talked to his neighbour upstairs and urged him to keep quiet. The man upstairs did try his best to be silent, yet the man downstairs could not sleep when there was no noise!

Total Number of Lessons (40 mins each):
One

Background:
This is a 40-min. lesson of a F.2 class in Shantou. In mainland China, students start learning English from P.4 onward. For junior secondary levels, students usually have 4 English lessons per week. Students of this school study all other subjects in Putonghua and the official language in school is also Putonghua while most of the students and teachers speak the Chiuchow dialect at home. There were about 50 students in this class. For some schools in the mainland, classes can be as large as 80 to 100. The receptive skills of this class were good, but the productive skills were comparatively weaker due to a lack of practice. Generally speaking, students of this class were very hard-working and highly motivated. Classroom routines were well-established so that students were able to carry out instructions without much explanation e.g. jotting down notes, forming groups, carrying out role-plays and holding discussions. This lesson was conducted for demonstration purpose; more than 30 teachers, principals, and education researchers were observing the lesson in the classroom. Class observation of this kind is common in mainland China.

For further interest in the ESL classroom of mainland China, viewers may refer to Cortazzi, M. and Jin, L.X. (2001). Large classes in China: 'Good' teachers and interactions. In D.A. Watkins and J.B. Biggs (eds.) Teaching the Chinese Learner : Cultural, Psychological and Contextual Influences (pp.115-134). Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre.

Lesson Highlights:
Activating learners' schemas
The lesson was developed systematically along the three stages of a reading lesson: Pre-reading, While-reading and Post-reading. In the Pre-reading stage, the teacher prepared the students both for the content of the reading passage and also the necessary vocabulary. The teacher activated the students' schemas (i.e. the reader's concepts, beliefs, past experiences, background knowledge etc.) through different strategies like playing some sounds to students and asking them to identify what her neighbours were doing; highlighting key words on the board e.g. 'upstairs', 'downstairs', 'get on well with' etc. and asking students to pay attention to the total number of paragraphs in the passage. After going through the first 6 paragraphs of the passage, the teacher activated the students' prediction skills by asking them to guess what the ending was.

High-order thinking
In the lesson, high-order questions were often put to students. The four questions suggested by the teacher in the While-reading stage were all interpretative questions (i.e. a. Did the man downstairs like living in a quiet place? b. Was there a problem? c. How did the man downstairs feel? d. How did the man downstairs solve the problem?). In the Post-reading stage, the teacher encouraged further interaction between the readers and the text by inviting students to raise queries about the plot and the characters in the passage. They could also ask anything that they wished to know which was not answered in the text. Through these, students were guided to give interpretative, evaluative and creative responses*.

(*Note: Interpretative questions require readers to use past experience and knowledge to make inferences and to draw conclusion from the facts in the texts. Such questions demand thinking and imagination that go beyond the printed page. Evaluative questions require the readers to judge, evaluate the text, the writer and the topic. Creative questions require readers to provide personal response and to add new information and ask how the text applies to them.)

Developing reading into speaking
Building on the same theme, the teacher further introduced speaking activities in the Post-reading stage such as role-plays and group discussions. By giving students realistic situations, the teacher related the topic to students' daily-life experience. From an understanding of how the neighbours got along with each other in the passage, students started to evaluate their relationship with their own neighbours in realistic life. In such contexts, students were involved in reading and speaking practices.

Developing civic values
The reading lesson was used not only for language teaching purposes, but also to instil civic values. The notion of being a considerate and helpful neighbour underpinned the whole lesson.

A student-centred lesson
There was a good variety of student-centred activities in the lesson which included individual work and group work; reading and speaking activities; learning of vocabulary and language expressions (knowledge) and a practice of language skills (competence); interaction with the teacher (T <-> Ss) and among the students themselves (Ss <-> Ss). In addition, there was also a good variety of teaching aids used e.g. sound effects, IT and worksheets.

Discussion Questions:
1. Do you think the students were well-prepared for the reading of the passage?

2. Do you think the students were well-prepared for the speaking activities?

3. Were the instructions given by the teacher clear?

4. Were the activities meaningful and purposeful?

5. Do you think the three pieces of homework were appropriate ?
a) Write a short story to show how you get on well with your neighbours;
b) Read Lesson 94 aloud and then retell it to others;
c) Finish the consolidation exercises on language structures (Section III of the worksheet).

6. What are your suggestions for improvement in the above areas?

7. Suggest how this lesson can be developed into a task-based unit.

8. Refer to Section 4.5.3 ('Conducting a Reading Task') on p.74-81 of the Hong Kong English Language Syllabus for Secondary Schools, CDC (1999). Evaluate how much the suggested strategies were used in this lesson.

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Prepared by LAI Mee Ling
Lesson Summary: This is a reading lesson. The text is a one-page long story about two neighbours in Moscow, with one living upstairs to the other. The man upstairs always made noises disturbing the one downstairs. One day, the man downstairs talked to his neighbour upstairs and urged him to keep quiet. The man upstairs did try his best to be silent, yet the man downstairs could not sleep when there was no noise!
Total Number of Lessons (40 mins each): One
Background: This is a 40-min. lesson of a F.2 class in Shantou. In mainland China, students start learning English from P.4 onward. For junior secondary levels, students usually have 4 English lessons per week. Students of this school study all other subjects in Putonghua and the official language in school is also Putonghua while most of the students and teachers speak the Chiuchow dialect at home. There were about 50 students in this class. For some schools in the mainland, classes can be as large as 80 to 100. The receptive skills of this class were good, but the productive skills were comparatively weaker due to a lack of practice. Generally speaking, students of this class were very hard-working and highly motivated. Classroom routines were well-established so that students were able to carry out instructions without much explanation e.g. jotting down notes, forming groups, carrying out role-plays and holding discussions. This lesson was conducted for demonstration purpose; more than 30 teachers, principals, and education researchers were observing the lesson in the classroom. Class observation of this kind is common in mainland China. For further interest in the ESL classroom of mainland China, viewers may refer to Cortazzi, M. and Jin, L.X. (2001). Large classes in China: 'Good' teachers and interactions. In D.A. Watkins and J.B. Biggs (eds.) Teaching the Chinese Learner : Cultural, Psychological and Contextual Influences (pp.115-134). Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre.
Lesson Highlights: Activating learners' schemas The lesson was developed systematically along the three stages of a reading lesson: Pre-reading, While-reading and Post-reading. In the Pre-reading stage, the teacher prepared the students both for the content of the reading passage and also the necessary vocabulary. The teacher activated the students' schemas (i.e. the reader's concepts, beliefs, past experiences, background knowledge etc.) through different strategies like playing some sounds to students and asking them to identify what her neighbours were doing; highlighting key words on the board e.g. 'upstairs', 'downstairs', 'get on well with' etc. and asking students to pay attention to the total number of paragraphs in the passage. After going through the first 6 paragraphs of the passage, the teacher activated the students' prediction skills by asking them to guess what the ending was. High-order thinking In the lesson, high-order questions were often put to students. The four questions suggested by the teacher in the While-reading stage were all interpretative questions (i.e. a. Did the man downstairs like living in a quiet place? b. Was there a problem? c. How did the man downstairs feel? d. How did the man downstairs solve the problem?). In the Post-reading stage, the teacher encouraged further interaction between the readers and the text by inviting students to raise queries about the plot and the characters in the passage. They could also ask anything that they wished to know which was not answered in the text. Through these, students were guided to give interpretative, evaluative and creative responses. (Note: Interpretative questions require readers to use past experience and knowledge to make inferences and to draw conclusion from the facts in the texts. Such questions demand thinking and imagination that go beyond the printed page. Evaluative questions require the readers to judge, evaluate the text, the writer and the topic. Creative questions require readers to provide personal response and to add new information and ask how the text applies to them.) Developing reading into speaking Building on the same theme, the teacher further introduced speaking activities in the Post-reading stage such as role-plays and group discussions. By giving students realistic situations, the teacher related the topic to students' daily-life experience. From an understanding of how the neighbours got along with each other in the passage, students started to evaluate their relationship with their own neighbours in realistic life. In such contexts, students were involved in reading and speaking practices. Developing civic values The reading lesson was used not only for language teaching purposes, but also to instil civic values. The notion of being a considerate and helpful neighbour underpinned the whole lesson. A student-centred lesson There was a good variety of student-centred activities in the lesson which included individual work and group work; reading and speaking activities; learning of vocabulary and language expressions (knowledge) and a practice of language skills (competence); interaction with the teacher (T <-> Ss) and among the students themselves (Ss <-> Ss). In addition, there was also a good variety of teaching aids used e.g. sound effects, IT and worksheets.
Discussion Questions: 1. Do you think the students were well-prepared for the reading of the passage? 2. Do you think the students were well-prepared for the speaking activities? 3. Were the instructions given by the teacher clear? 4. Were the activities meaningful and purposeful? 5. Do you think the three pieces of homework were appropriate ? a) Write a short story to show how you get on well with your neighbours; b) Read Lesson 94 aloud and then retell it to others; c) Finish the consolidation exercises on language structures (Section III of the worksheet). 6. What are your suggestions for improvement in the above areas? 7. Suggest how this lesson can be developed into a task-based unit. 8. Refer to Section 4.5.3 ('Conducting a Reading Task') on p.74-81 of the Hong Kong English Language Syllabus for Secondary Schools, CDC (1999). Evaluate how much the suggested strategies were used in this lesson.
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