Submitted by Xu Zhang

Objectives:

Content:
Students will:

• Gain some insider's views and feelings of pollution from the angle of a resident in the city;
• Have a knowledge of how various forms, reasons and sources of pollution in the city are scientifically described and classified;
• Understand how the city government tries to minimize pollution.

Cultural:
Students will:

• Understand the cultural reasons for the difficulties in pollution control and environment improvement.

Language: Content Obligatory
Students will:

• Use the following words and phrases (see attachment: Word List Lesson 7, List 1)
• Use the following structures (see Attachments: Grammar List Lesson 7, List 1)

Language: Content Compatible
Students will:

• Raise more awareness in the colloquial and academic language style;
• Use language register appropriate for the press conference and for different roles in the same press conference;
• Use appropriate register to write reports for official report, file-keeping, and newspaper articles.

Learning Strategies / Social and Skills Development:

Time Frame:

1.5 hours

Materials Needed:

• Tape recording
• Copies of a passage
• Copies of a web document
  all can be found in the resources and/or attachment.

Description of Assessment (Performance Project):

Context:
By now the students have had an understanding that all cultures have their own pride and problems and that now it is time to see a bit more about the problematic side while bearing the glories of it in mind.

Pre-task:
Students listen to a resident of Beijing talking about pollution in the city. They are to listen to the recording twice and write down their informal answers on a piece of paper. For the first time listening, the students are to grasp the gist and major points of the monologue. Questions for the first time listening can be found in the attachment, Tasks Lesson 7, Category 1.

The second time listening is for the students to listen for more details. Questions can be found in the attachment, Tasks Lesson 7, category 2.

Post-listening peer review: the students are to mark on their peers' paper with a different color pencil as the teacher discusses the answers with them. Teacher then collects the students' answer sheet for after class evaluation.

Task set-up:
Students are to read a passage written by a geography teacher as part of her lesson plan for her class of Chinese high school students and answer the some questions after reading -- questions can be found in the attachment, Tasks Lesson 7, Category 4.

Students discuss answers in pairs. While the students are discussing, the teacher distributes the transcript of the previous listening activity. The pairs are then to compare the geography teacher's lesson plan to the students' monologue transcript. They are to label on the transcript with the geography teacher's academic terminology on the types, reasons and sources of pollution in the city. As they are labeling the students are asked to compare the daily language for talking about pollution with the academic language. There us also one thing that the student speaker mentioned as a type of pollution that the teacher did not include in her paragraph. What is it? The students are to share their opinions on whether this should be included as pollution and the reasons for or against it. After the activity, the teacher discusses with the whole class and summarizes the differences between the colloquial and academic register for the same topic.

During task:
Step 1: The students read a government issued web document and find out how the city officials set out to deal with this great challenge. After their individual reading, the students are to discuss in pairs and find out (highlight on the copy) the main points together

Step 2: Role play -- Press conference.
(1) Draw lots. Teacher prepares small slips of paper and writes the roles on them. One third of the students are to be the officials related at various levels to environmental issues (a press conference chairperson, one vice mayor, one head of the environmental control department, one head of the sanitation department, etc.). The other two thirds of the students are to be journalists from various newspapers, both domestic and abroad. The students pick up one slip and play the part they are assigned to.

(2) Preparation. The "city officials" get together to prepare the press conference on the possible questions that the journalists are going to ask and how they as city leaders should answer. Since every officer is responsible for answering questions, no one should be a dominant spokesperson. Every one of them must answer at least two questions. They are also to work out how they can cooperate and share answering some questions. The lots have made possible that two journalists are from the same newspaper. They are going to form pairs on the bases of their newspaper. Each pair is to discuss what questions they want to ask. They should also write their questions down as if preparing for the subsequent newspaper article. The conference chair is to prepare with the teacher to think of how to manage the conference well and orderly as well as constructive.

(3) The conference. The students are to move their desks and chairs to form a conference room as if in real settings. They will use what they know and what they have learned to ask and answer questions concerning Beijing's environmental issues with a focus on pollution and its solutions. They should use language registers appropriate to such occasions. The teacher retreats to the back of the classroom and does evaluation. S/he will not interfere unless it is highly necessary to do so. The evaluation sheet is in the attachment, Assessment Lesson 7, List 1.

Post-task: Individual report based on the press conference. (Homework)
(1) The city officials each write a report on the press conference for the purpose of file-keeping. They are to write only about the questions they answered by themselves. The publicity minister will write an official report to the general public on pollution control moves generated from the result of this press conference. If s/he finds it difficult, a secretary may be chosen and the two can do a pair writing.
(2) The journalists are to write a report for their newspaper in pairs in the journalistic writing style.

Assessment:

Embedded in the tasks

References and Resources:

Sit, V. (1995). Beijing. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.: Chichester, NY, Brisbane, Toronto, Singapore.

http://www.hygiene.cn.net/jieshao/homep1.htm

http://www.hygiene.cn.net/jieshao/homep11.htm#work1

http://gbj.grchina.net/gbj/spot/spotlight.htm

Marlene
audio files on polution: in folder "new_bj_polution", including 2 audio files "new_bj_polution" 1-2, and a word doc "Description Polution"

Attachments:

NOTE: some attachments are in PDF form (get Acrobat Reader)

Word List Lesson 7.PDF (List 1)
Grammar List Lesson 7.PDF (List 1)
Tasks Lesson 7.PDF (Categories 1, 2 and 4)
Assessment Lesson 7.PDF (List 1)
Pollution.PDF

A Lesson from the CoBaLTT Project
/cobaltt
Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition
University of Minnesota