Films and embedded texts

Laurie Clarq has developed a technique that she calls « embedded texts » which helps students to develop their reading muscles.  She explains it on the site Hearts for Teaching at http://www.heartsforteaching.com/

 

To make an embedded text you can either start at the bottom and develop more complicated texts, or start at the top with an authentic text and progressively simplify it.  The idea is to give your students a simple text that they have no difficulty reading before giving them a slightly more complicated version that contains everything that was in the first reading.  Then you present a third version that is far more complete, but still contains everything that was in the second reading.  Laurie occasionally uses four or more versions of the same text.

One of the first times that I used her idea, I spent the class hour working on Versions One and Two, and didn’t have time for Three.  So I suggested that the students read it at home in preparation for our next class.  I got a few automatic groans when they saw that Text Three was a full page.  But then one boy glanced over it and saw that he knew almost all the words.  “Hey!  This is easy!” he said and made my day.  

 Embedded texts are like training a horse to jump by raising the bar just a little bit every time.  Each text is just a little more difficult than the one before.  By the time you’ve read and circled the structures and vocabulary in the third version, the students can sight read without any painful decoding. 

It might seem that students would get bored with reading the same thing three times, but this has not been my experience.  Each new version adds new details and new information.  I also believe that the students don’t get bored because they feel successful in being able to read a large amount of text without being stumped every other word.  Success is always motivating. This means that the teacher has to carefully dose the difficulty of each version, but it can be done when you know your students well.

I use embedded texts with films.  They are particularly useful to introduce a scene that has a lot of complex dialog.  I begin with a short summary of the scene and just the essential details.  We read the text in class.  The students translate sentence by sentence and I step in whenever there’s something they don’t know how to translate.  We discuss the summary in the target language and I may digress with some PQA if there are words and structures that make it interesting.

Then I add a few more details and a few more sentences and we read Version 2.  Once again we translate it together.  Working with small groups of weak students, I did this as a whole class activity.  Some teachers might prefer to have the students translate it in groups or even in pairs.  We then discuss the new information.

Finally I use Version 2 as the framework for a fairly complete summary.  When we have read and discussed the last version of the embedded text, most of the structures feel familiar to the students and they are comfortable that they understand it.

We are then ready to watch the scene, which is a kind of Version 4 of the embedded text.  We can discuss it without having to explain vocabulary, so the students are able to concentrate on the deeper meaning and implications of the scene.  Occasionally, with a good class and a film that was taken from a book, we can then move on to the original written passage.  This is a good way to show students that they are capable of reading authentic texts in English – or whatever your target language is.

Here are three embedded texts of a scene from the movie The Mighty:

I

A Doghouse boy put a purse in a sewer grate.  Kevin went to Max’s house and woke him up.  They went out to get the purse back.  Freak opened the sewer grate with a rope tied to a fire escape.  Max climbed down into the sewer. The purse was in the sewer.  He climbed out and gave the purse to Freak.  In the wallet there were a lot of dollars.  Freak and Max were ambushed by the Doghouse boys.  Blade told them to give him the purse.  Max told Freak to give the purse to Blade.  But Freak refused and climbed up the fire escape.  Blade was going to hit Freak with chains.  Max lifted up the sewer grate and ran at Blade and his gang.  The Doghouse boys ran away.  Freak wanted to give the purse back to its owner. 

II

Kevin saw one of the Doghouse boys put a woman’s purse in a sewer grate.  At night he went to Max’s house and woke him up.  He told Max to get dressed.  They went out to get the purse back.  Freak was able to open the sewer grate with a rope tied to a fire escape.  Max climbed down into the sewer where there were rats. The purse was covered in slime.  He climbed out and gave the purse to Freak.  In the wallet there were a lot of dollars and a woman’s driver’s license.  Suddenly  Freak and Max were ambushed by the Doghouse boys.  Blade told them to give him the purse.  Max told Freak to give the purse to Blade.  But Freak refused and climbed up the fire escape.  Blade was going to hit Freak with chains in order to get back the purse.  Max lifted up the sewer grate and ran at Blade and his gang.  The Doghouse boys ran away.  Freak wanted to give the purse back to its rightful owner. 

III

 

Kevin was in his mother’s car when he saw one of the Doghouse boys steal a woman’s purse and put it in a sewer grate.  That night he went to Max’s house and woke him up.  He told Max to get dressed like a knight.  Their quest was to get the purse and give it back to the woman, its rightful owner.  Freak was able to open the sewer grate with a rope tied to a fire escape.  Max climbed down into the sewer where there were rats. He said that he didn’t like rats.  Freak told him that rats don’t like Max.  The purse was covered in slime.  Max climbed out and gave the purse to Freak.  In the wallet there were four hundred dollars and a woman’s driver’s license.  Her name was Loretta Lee.  Suddenly  Freak and Max were ambushed by the Doghouse boys.  Blade told them to give him the purse.  Max told Freak to give the purse to Blade.  But Freak said, “No.”  He climbed up the fire escape.  Blade was going to hit Freak with chains in order to get back the purse.  To protect Freak Max lifted up the sewer grate and ran at Blade and his gang.  The Doghouse boys were frightened.  They were afraid of Max.  They ran away.  Freak said that Max was awesome!