2016 Tung Hua Day 精采講座摘要
Topic 4: Bottom-up decoding: Reading and listening for the future
Are you a top-downer or a bottom-upper? The debate as to the relative importance of these two approaches to understanding spoken or written text has been going on for decades. Most current textbooks take a more top-down approach. However, recent research indicates that we are often in situations where we are less able to use top-down skills, for example, in exams, or simply when we turn on the radio at random. At this point, our ability to decode becomes key. This session will show how Navigate, a new course from Oxford University Press, trains students to tackle texts from the bottom up, focusing on linguistic features in order to understand the text rather than use their existing knowledge to predict what the text is about. Students are not just able to understand the one text in front of them, but are able to apply these skills to the next text and every other text they come across. Therefore they are learning to listen and read for tomorrow.
About the presenter: Mark Richard
Mark Richard is a Taiwan-based trainer with fifteen years’ ELT experience in East Asia and Europe. He has taught all age groups in various schools and agencies. As OUP’s Educational Services Manager, he regularly presents at TESOL conferences, and is a certified trainer for the Oxford Teachers’ Academy. He loves to fill his students’ minds with curiosity so that they work hard without realizing it and think for themselves.