English and Communication: Introduction 1

Some information These materials are all about reading different types of text. Not all texts are written down. They might be painted, sung or acted out. A text is anything we can read, watch, look at or listen to which tells a story.

Where are these texts? In what other ways do you experience stories or find out information? On TV On the radio In the cinema In magazines and newspapers On billboards

What are these texts?

What next? You will use the Learner Workbook to complete the tasks. You will use PowerPoint slides to guide you through the Workbook You will take part in individual, paired and group activities You will complete tasks based on different multimodal texts.

Before we start You will need to learn some new words: genre text media.

What is media literacy? There are three main parts to media literacy: understanding enjoying sharing.

In this unit you will study… Films You will: 1. learn to read a film 2. watch a series of short films and discuss them 3. write a script for a silent film.

In this unit you will study… Posters You will: 1. learn to read a poster 2. look at a selection of film posters and discuss what a good film poster needs 3. create a poster for one of the films you have watched.

In this unit you will study… Songs You will: 1. listen to a selection of songs 2. discuss the atmosphere a song creates and talk about the lyrics 3. choose a theme song for one of the films you have watched and discuss why you chose it. This task requires the teacher to source several examples of songs. Owl City – Fireflies Taio Cruz – Dynamite Gary Jules – Mad World

Reading media texts You are going to follow some steps which will teach you how to get the most from different types of text. There are ten steps and you are going to try out four of them. You might already know how to do some of them. With this slide you should revisit the concept of reading media and multimodal texts. This structure has been developed by Bill Boyd and is widely accepted as the most successful method with which to introduce the study of film.

The ten steps 1. Making predictions 2. Listening to sound 3. Freeze frame 4. Shots in sequence 5. Asking questions 6. Making comparisons 7. Looking for patterns 8. Translation 9. Summarising 10. Evaluating Making Predictions Listening To Sound Freeze Frame Shots In Sequence Asking Questions Making Comparisons Looking For Patterns Generic Translation Summarising Evaluating

Plenary question list What new thing did you learn? What helped you learn today? Could you use this in another subject? What do you want to learn more about? Where could you learn more about this?