Making inferences in class: Assignment Instructions and Sample Answer

Assignment # 2. Making inferences in class

Deadline to post your activities: Friday 31st May by midnight.

Deadline to comment on one of your classmates´ entries: Sunday 2nd June by midnight

Instructions

1. The folder “Inferring Strategies and Activities” in Google Drive includes several resources aimed at helping learners make inferences and use context clues effectively. 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jF6KAaEPm9qSG84QylpUmrgdgV3e4stf

Read through the examples provided and plan or adapt 2 possible activities for your current EFL learners. State their age and level of English, and explain why the activity may be useful for them. 

In particular, think of the following:

·What exactly is the purpose of each activity planned?

·What kinds of demands are placed on the learners? What type of knowledge (and/or context clues) will they have to rely on in order to make accurate inferences?

Also, include the answers you expect from your students.

If you take ideas from the Google Drive folder or any other sources, please acknowledge them by writing “TAKEN FROM  . . .  “ Otherwise, it might be considered plagiarism.

Please post your activites in this blog.

2. Respond to one of your classmates´posts and give them overall feedback on the activities proposed. 

Sample Answer

The following activity is aimed at pre-intermediate students, aged around 13.

The purpose of the activity is to revise vocabulary on accidents, but mainly to practise the use of the Present Perfect in a communicative way. Also, the activity intends to teach students to make inferences based on what they see.

Development of the activity:

The teacher pastes some pictures on the board, like the ones below.

Ss have to guess what has happened to these people. 

Teacher writes on the board: “What has happened? How can you tell?” and puts up these pictures.

Sts work in pairs, making inferences, and come up with sentences like these:

Situation 1

What has happened? She has crashed her car.

How do I know?

·        The two cars are dented.

·        She is holding her head, as people do when there is a problem.

Situation 2

What has happened? The boy has hit a rock.

How do I know?

·        There is a rock right before the bike.

·        He is flying in the air.

Situation 3

What has happened? He has slipped over a toy.

How do I know?

·        He is flying in the air.

·        There is a toy truck flying in the air too.

In this activity, students have to resort to visual clues, which gives them some information about the situational context (mostly where and when the action is going on, who is involved, etc.), and to their knowledge of the world. There is no linguistic context to resort to in this case.