Part One

Justification of material choice

I have selected a short story entitled ‘The Unicorn in the Garden’, from ‘Fables of
Our Times and famous Poems Illustrated’ by James Thurber (Appendix A). The
fable is about a married couple whose relationship is fraught with an
undercurrent tension. One morning the husband wakes his wife up to tell her
that there was a unicorn in their garden. The wife taunts her husband and
threatens to lock him up in a psychiatric institute. When her husband steps out
of the house, she calls the police and the psychiatrist to the house and tells
them that her husband saw a unicorn in the garden. The psychiatrist and police
think that she is crazy and take her away to a mental institute. I have chosen
this story for the upper-intermediate students, as I believe that they will find the
unexpected turn of events towards the end interesting. The wealth of underlying
meanings in the fable, and its terse, well-knit narrative will compel students to
think beyond the surface level understanding of the story.

Lead in

Since most students are already familiar with mythical creatures, I would ask
them to name some mythical creatures they are familiar with, in order to secure
their interest in the topic. I expect them to come up with answers such as
dragon, mermaid and unicorns. Depending on the level of interest it creates, I
may ask questions such as how a unicorn looks like, and explain to them the
physical features of a unicorn. If time permits, I might go on to talk about
mermaids and dragons. At this juncture, some would like to tell me that they
have seen such and such creature, in such and such film. This would create
interest in the class serve as a meaningful lead in, and a link between the topic
of the text and students’ own lives and experiences (Learning English, Scrivener,
p. 187).

Part Two

There are some difficult words and expressions in the text. The students might
find the words –‘booby’, ‘booby-hatch’ and ‘strait jacket’ and the expression
‘crazy as jaybird’ difficult to understand. I will pre teach the difficult vocabulary
to make the student familiar with the new lexis. To elicit the meaning of the
difficult words I would use gestures and photographs (Appendix B). If they fail to
give me the meaning of the difficult, I will give them the meaning of the words.

Part Three: Receptive Skills

Skill: Reading: Skimming for gist

Reading is a ‘top-down’ process (Learning English, Scrivener, p.178) that uses

what we already know to help us predict the structure and content of the text. I
would give the students few minutes to skim the story quickly (the handout will
not have title of the text). The purpose of giving them a short time span is to
ensure the students ‘only gist read the text and do not read it intensively’
(Learning English, Scrivener, p. 185). This task is used to develop the students’
sub-skills of reading for gist, or skimming. I will ask the students to pick the
most appropriate title for the text (Appendix C).

Scanning

The next step in the reading lesson is to give the students a chance to practice
reading for specific information. The aim of this sub skill is for the students to
get a little bit more information about specific information in the text. As
Scrivener points out, scanning for details involves focusing on smaller sections of
the test and thus helps readers to process the entire text. (Learning English, Jim
Scrivener, p. 185)

I would ask the students to do the scanning task in Appendix D individually and
then apply the method of peer checking for review.

Skill: Reading: Reading for detailed understanding

In order to develop the sub skill of detailed reading, I would set two minimal
response tasks for the students. In the first task, they have to identify mistakes
in the summary of a certain part of the story (Appendix E). The student will find
this task challenging, as the summary seems coherent though it contains certain
inaccurate information. In the minimal response task 2 (Appendix F), they have
to specify who said the following words to whom, when and why.

I would ask the students to answer the questions individually. Then, I would ask
them to peer check their answers and discuss with each other. I will not only
discuss the answers, but also ask the students follow up questions to find out
whether they have understood the text (The Practice of English Language
Teaching, Harmer, p. 286). I would ask them to identify where in the text they
found the answer, since this will prompt students to a detailed study of the text.

Part Four: Productive Skills

In the productive skill session the learners get to use the language and input,
they get in the receptive skill session in an unthreatening manner. (Learning
English, Jim Scrivener, p. 116).

Skill: Speaking

Activity A:

For the speaking activity, I will ask the students to speak to their partner and
find out what their favourite mythical creatures are, and why they are their
favourite. The students need to share their responses with the class. Assuming
that they can get to see/meet mythical creatures in real life, I will ask them
which mythical creature they will be most comfortable with. Students will have
reasons to choose which creature they would like to see in real life. If some of
them say that they will not be comfortable with any of these creatures, they can
be asked to give reasons why. Students can also be asked to share the myths
associated with the creatures they have chosen to talk about.

Activity B:

Depending on the understanding of the story, students can be asked to give an

alternative ending of the story that might have crossed their mind as they were
reading it. The students can be asked to share their responses with the class.

With this done, I strongly believe the students would have practiced the skill of
reading for gist and reading for detailed comprehension in the context of the
fable ‘The Unicorn in the Garden’. They would have also developed oral fluency
in the same context.

References:

1. Thurber, James. Fables for Our Time, and Famous Poems Illustrated. New
York: Harper, 1940. Print.

2. Scrivener, Jim. Learning Teaching: The Essential Guide to English

Language Teaching. 2nd ed. Oxford: Macmillan Education, 2010. Print.

3. Harmer, Jeremy. The Practice of English Language Teaching. Harlow,

England: Pearson Longman, 2007. Print.