Stories in Steps

In reading, vocabulary is key, and in learning vocabulary, repetition and context are the keys! I think we all know that the door to SLA has a whole lot of locks on it!

I really like the reading activities available on the California Distance Learning Project web site and Forrest Lunn's ESL site because they provide a sort of reading skeleton key! (Okay, keys and locks are getting old, I know). Both these sites offer students the option to read a text in a natural version or an easier version.

While the natural version feel authentic in a journalistic sense, the easy versions used simplified grammar and vocabulary and also use a lot of repetition to keep students from becoming confused. The familiarity can also help them figure out other words in the sentence.

In the year 1986 there was a terrible explosion. The explosion was at a nuclear power plant in the another country called Ukraine. The radiation caused a lot of damage. It contaminated the soil and other things. People lived in the area when the explosion happened. Twenty years later those people are still suffering. Effects from the explosion will go on for a long time. -"Children From Russia Spend Summers in California"

Even if students find this version easy to read, it can help them figure out more difficult sections of the authentic text. Or, being a bit of a sadist, I wouldn't mind asking students to practice more complex grammar structures like clauses by rewriting the article without the repetition.

The effects of the April 26, 1986 explosion and meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet-controlled Ukraine persist 20 years later. Contaminated soil and the lingering fallout from the explosion's radioactive cloud continue to spawn serious health concerns across several western former Soviet states like Belarus, where experts estimate more than 60 percent of Chernobyl's nuclear fallout settled. -authentic article

Of course, it also helps that the sites provide vocabulary learning activities, such as matching games with listening components. For the articles, both sites also provide accompanying dictations, which are especially helpful with English's fun orthography. When students learn a new word from the context of the stories, it would make it stick if they can pronounce it and use it in conversation. Too frequently, I've settled on a lesser word even in my L1 because I'm not sure how to pronounce it. (Taciturn-- is it an s or a k? I can never remember!)



Both sites also provide numerous ways for teachers to test comprehension. There are vocabulary quizzes, content quizzes, and even spelling quizzes! On the California site, these exercises smack of rote learning to me, but the aspect of interaction can still make them useful.

Lunn's site provides much more thoughtful activities more appropriate for advanced students. First off, many of the stories are paired with similar ones, which makes them great for comparison discussions or exercises. And while the follow-up activities aren't electronic (aside from the quizzes), they are more integrative of the four skills. I also think his vocabulary exercises are more useful in setting up new words in students' schemata. One has them sort words according to whether they are negative, positive, or neutral.

Either of these sites would be great resources for integrating vocabulary-building with reading and listening.