Let's Talk About Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Abstract

This Textbook is designed for Korean upper middle school to high school studentswho are at the intermediate-mid level in English proficiency according to the ACTFL scale.The book "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" is used as interesting input to serve as acatalyst to motivate the target students to enjoy practicing productive skills- specificallyspeaking and writing. Most second language learners (English language learners) do not havemany opportunities to practice speaking using the language. Due to this reason, manylanguage learners lack confidence and feel anxious when they speak (Scott, 2005). This isalso the case for the target Korean students. This Portfolio is suitable for small groups of students in afterschool languageacademies or private tutoring lessons. A small group setting not only allows students to feelless anxiety, but also g ives each student more opportunities to use and the language. Althoughthe students already have a basic knowledge of English grammatical rules, due to the testdrivennature of classes in Korea, most learners lack in speaking fluency. To address this need,this Book adopts a Communicative Language Teaching Method, and students will be workingin pairs and groups to support each other in their learning. They will be required tocommunicate with each other to complete tasks for idea sharing, exchanging opinions andpresentations (Jeremy, 2007). Through these meaningful activities and tasks, students will beable to apply what they have learned about the language, in the past, to real situations andhave real reasons to speak up in class. To further support speaking, this Book remindsstudents of which expressions could be used to start discussions and to complete tasks. The chapters in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are quite short with maximum 3-4pages. In each Unit of this Textbook, several chapters from the novel are grouped together toform a Unit. Students will have to read certain assigned chapters at home before each lesson.1The intention is to encourage some short and easy, but interesting, reading at home, to givestudents something to talk and write about in class. Activities are included to guide studentsthrough the reading texts and home, and help them to focus on what is to come in their next class.Students continue reading excerpts of the text in class and activities in the book to checkcomprehension through a variety of engaging questions, speaking/ writing activities/ tasksleading towards presentations and projects related to the plot of the story. Each activity and taskis designed to provide learners with maximum opportunities to use the target language tocomplete the tasks (Kumaravadivelu, 2006). Tasks and activities in this Book require students to not only produce spoken Englishabout the plot in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but also to write their ideas and organizethem to practice various genres. To engage students in meaningful writing tasks, a Process/Genre-based approach has been taken in which students will be shown writing samples, andanalyze them. Mini writing activities are included to support and scaffold more complex writingtasks nearing the end of the Unit. Students will work towards producing polished tasks throughbrainstorming, free-writing activities, drafting and editing. Students will also give and getfeedback from their peers as well as from the teacher (Norhishan&Shahrina, 2017). Through this Textbook, students should have fun sharing their ideas in the fascinatingcontent in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They should improve in their speaking fluency, aswell as develop their writing skills. They should become more confident and communicativelycompetent in English, and perhaps even cultivate a joy for reading.