Page 160 - Beyond Methods

148 Promoting learner autonomy
6.2.3 Ask a few students to share with the class some of the words that are new to them. As they respond, write the words down on the board, or on a separate transparency.
6.2.4 Call upon a couple of students to explain the strategies they might use to find the meanings of some of the listed words that are new to them.
6.2.5 Then, introduce or elaborate (depending on the level of your students’ awareness) inferencing as a learning strategy. Encourage them to think by asking questions such as: What is inferencing? Do you use it for language learning purposes? What do you actually do when you use it? Do you find it useful? Etc. Lead them to understand that inferenc- ing as a strategy involves the use of textual clues (such as knowledge of their L1 and their still-developing L2) or contextual clues (such as back- ground knowledge), and has been found to be very useful in guessing the meaning of unknown words.
6.2.6 Focusing on the first paragraph, ask the students to guess the meaning of, for example, the word remote. If students give a partially correct answer, ask them questions such as: How do you know? How did you guess? If they don’t do it themselves, draw their attention to two other related words—village life and isolated community—that offer clues to the meaning of remote. Also, ask them to guess the pro- fession of Giddens’ friend. Find out whether they are able to make use of textual information such as studies village life and fieldwork. If nec- essary, draw their attention to the difference between what a sociolo- gist does and what an anthropologist does.
6.2.7 Taking the discussion to a higher level of inferencing, have them read the last sentence again: The film at that point hadn’t even reached the cinemas in London. Zero in on the word even. Concentrate on whether and how they are able to understand the irony of a just- released American movie finding its way to a remote village in central Africa even before it had reached a European Capital city like London. Similarly, ask them to read the sentence, She expected to find out about the traditional pastimes of this isolated community. Ask them to think about what it means when an outsider—whether a tourist or an anthropologist—goes to places like central Africa “expecting” to find something.
6.2.8 Now focus on the second paragraph, which contains some challenging words. Ask your learners, for instance, to guess the mean- ing of vignettes, trivial, and paraphernalia and to tell the rest of the class how they did it. See whether they are able to make use of all