Bower ReadingGraham Thurgood (ENGL 232) 114 Bower Reading Teaching tips Narrative topics — stories and such — have a natural chronological organization. So, studentsusually do not have much trouble organizing their writing. Thus, it is usually not as important for thestudents to have done a lot of preparation before writing a summary of a story. However, essay topics have no such natural organization. With such topics, students often havea great deal of trouble organizing their writing — especially in a second language. Thus, it is quiteimportant that much of the following reading lesson will also serve to prepare the students to write — ina way, this is a bonus we receive for planning ahead.Today's material has been designed with matriculation students in mind.As part of pre-reading, ask several students to describe their own personality characteristics. Relate their descriptions of themselves to the notion of self-concept. Write the title of the passage on the board and ask the class to predict the contents of the pas-sage.We are now ready for the reading activity itself. Distribute Worksheet 1 which contains thereading passage. Notice that the topic sentences have been removed from three of the paragraphs. Ask the students to read the passage quickly to get a rough idea of its contents. With the stu-dents, discuss the content of each paragraph. Ask them to think of possible topic sentences. Now, distribute Worksheet 2, containing the three missing topic sentences (Activity 1). Theseare not arranged in order (The order of the topic sentences is as follows: paragraph 3, paragraph 4, para-graph 2). Ask the students to read the passage again, and match the appropriate sentences to the para-graphs.Discuss with the students why the topic sentences should be placed where they are. This is agood time to discuss topic sentences and supporting sentences. Tell the students that this knowledge will help them later in the assignment when they write asummary.Now, have the students do Activity 2 of Worksheet 2. This activity focuses them on the organi-zation of the essay. Although the main idea of an essay is usually found in the first paragraph, in thisessay it is actually found in the second paragraph. The authors have used the first paragraph to define the notion of self-concept. Thus, it is notuntil the second paragraph that the reader is presented with the main idea of the whole essay: namely,that your self-concept is a product of your experience. Take the time to make sure that the students seem to understand the main ideas in the essay.In addition to teaching about essay organization, this activity is also helping clarify the mainidea of the essay. This activity thus provides some advance preparation for the writing task at the veryend of the lesson.Graham Thurgood (ENGL 232) 115Hand out Worksheet 3. The first part of this worksheet deals with vocabulary. Notice that the stu-dents are required to find the vocabulary words and decide what they mean as they are used in the essay! The structure of this activity forces the students to pay attention to the words in context — something thatgreatly helps the learning process.The following section, "From general to specific," returns to reading (and writing) again, but thistime, the segment shows how writers start with an abstract, general statement but then clarify it with con-crete, more specific examples. In addition, among other things, this particular segment also shows how ideas can be made clearerthrough contrasts. Finally, the lesson ends with a short writing assignment. Notice that in a way much of the preced-ing lesson has been designed as preparation for this writing assignment. Worksheet 1Your self-concept: a product of experience How you behave depends in part on your ‘self-concept’ — by what you think about your strengths,your weaknesses, your personality. You use your self-concept when you predict to yourself whether you willsucceed or fail at something. Your self-concept influences your hopes, your dreams, your moods and youractions._____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________As we grow up, we develop ideas about what normal behavior is from what our parents, teachers and otheradults tell us and from what we see them do. That is, from teaching and from examples, we learn the values,norms, and other rules of conduct of our culture. The norms tell us what is considered appropriate and normal behavior. For example, eating moder-ately at mealtimes is acceptable; eating non-stop all day long is unacceptable. Resting at the end of a work-day is normal; sleeping all day is laziness. The media also strongly influence what we think is normalbehavior for girls versus boys, for children versus adults, for pupils versus teachers, for husbands versuswives, and for parents versus children._____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________For example, compared to her friends, Joyce may be exceptional in athletics, average in reading, and poor inmaths. Adults constantly make comparisons of different aspects of the way children behave — how intelli-gent they are, how beautiful they are, what kind of manners they have, how hard they work, how well theyget along with other children, and so on. In addition, adults describe children as loving or spiteful, friendlyor mean, reasonable or selfish, cooperative or uncooperative, outgoing or shy. As we grow up, these descrip-tions and comparisons are applied to all of us — first by adults, increasingly by our peers, and eventually byourselves._____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________For instance, we may say to ourselves, ‘I'm a good badminton player, but I'm not too good at playing music.’We judge ourselves not only on our athletic, artistic, and scholastic talents, but also on how well we getGraham Thurgood (ENGL 232) 116along with others.These comparisons by ourselves and others are