PP 104 Sample Lesson: The Reading Portion

In starting the Reading portion, I first had to decide on a general content focus. I thought about several possibilities—verb tenses, noun quantifiers, idioms, and phrasal verbs. I finally chose phrasal verbs. I'm not sure why.

As I started the Reading page, I began to see the need to change the basic design. I ended up redoing all the pages that I'd done before, but they're cleaner now, I think. I also remembered that somewhere I have photos of former students working at computers. I found one, but it was too obviously in a classroom and editing out telling portions of the background proved too time-consuming. The other photo that I remember might work better, but I haven't found it yet.

At first, I thought there would be two separate readings, each featuring the same 10 phrasal verbs in a different way. Later I thought that was kind of silly for such a short lesson—so it seemed a good idea to have one reading with no aids to comprehension followed by the same reading with such help. Because I like the online version of the Cambridge International Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs, I thought it might be good to link definitions of the phrasal verbs from the CIDPV.

Now I'm ready to do the exercises. I haven't begun them yet, but I think one might be a multiple choice of meanings—some choices restatements of the Cambridge PV definitions, some far afield from that. However, the first exercise might be simple matching of phrasal verbs with meanings (as shown in the reading).

I also want to include vocabulary and grammar notes. The vocabulary notes won't be extensive, but should include at least two key points: (1) all phrasal verbs are idiomatic—i.e., the meaning is not the meaning of the verb plus the meaning of the particle—and (2) given verb-particle combinations might have several different meanings. The grammar notes need to mention what happens with separable phrasal verbs—i.e., objects may be interposed between the verb and particle(s). They might also mention that "true" phrasal verbs are not the same as verbs + adverbial prepositions.

The beginning of the Reading section is now online. Tomorrow I'll figure out what to do with the exercises. Wednesday and Thursday I'll do the notes. That's the plan, anyway.