Adult Literacy Core Curriculum - Nationally developed Skills for Life ...

Sample activities
• In groups or in a pair, share their own knowledge of technical vocabulary, e.g. in terms of their
area of work, cars, computers, a sport or hobby. Compare other learners' technical vocabulary
and explain the meaning of their own known words.
• Highlight technical vocabulary used in explanatory texts; decide if it is possible to work out
meaning from the word and the context. Check meanings in a dictionary or glossary.
• Choose a new topic of interest, e.g. quilt making, wind surfing, Buddhism. Scan an information
text on the chosen subject; note and remember unfamiliar specialist words.
• Use a web-search engine to find information on a topic of interest (e.g. new-generation mobile
phones) and find definitions of unfamiliar technical vocabulary. Post what you have discovered
on college/work/school bulletin board or conference area.
• Look up words with related roots, and compare information and presentation in an ordinary
dictionary and in an etymological dictionary.
• In pairs, identify unfamiliar words in a specialist newspaper or journal report (e.g. on a current
economic, environmental, scientific or cultural issue). Decide whether it is possible to make a
guess at meanings, looking at the words’ structure and context. Make a note of possible
meanings. Use a dictionary to check these out, selecting meanings that fit best.
• In a group, play Call My Bluff. Each team uses dictionaries to select three or four unfamiliar
words, recording definitions. Using knowledge of word roots and origins, invent two more
plausible fictitious meanings. Try out words and meanings for the other team to select the
most likely.
• When tracing an argument, highlight words or phrases used to link points in the argument,
e.g. certainly, equally, it could be argued, of course, whereas, another possibility, you should, you might.
• When comparing texts of different degrees of familiarity, identify any idiomatic phrases in informal
texts and consider their effects.
• Compare and discuss the use and purpose of similes in a poem and in a promotional text.
• In pairs, explore the use of metaphors in a range of texts, e.g. newspapers, adverts, computer manual,
poems; consider their possible origin and decide which are over-worked metaphors that have become
clichés.
• Make a personal glossary of interesting words encountered in their own reading; look up their
meanings, usage and origins in an appropriate dictionary; use their own glossary for a reference in
reading and writing.
• Extend vocabulary by comparing words with a similar meaning. Hold a ‘synonyms quiz’, where teams
research and set questions to ask each other, using a thesaurus, e.g. How many different words can
the team think of to refer to walking? As a follow-on, each team then has five minutes to plan an
explanation, to present to the other team, of the differences between all the related terms for that
word, and the sorts of context and text where each might occur. This could form part of preparation for
writing pieces at different levels of formality or specialism. The activity brings together word-level
work, reading to research information, giving and listening to explanations, writing using formal and
informal language appropriate to purpose and audience.
Reading
97