Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

Answers to Box 6.1
Student responses to the shapes in the test of communication strategies in Box 6.1 (see
page 109).
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Looks like arrow
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Left-hand to show letter c
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7 angles, rectangular top left and bottom right some parts eliminated; looks like
an ox
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Kidney shape
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Looks like a seal without eyes
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7 lines
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Nine angles; bottom looks like a foot.
Strategies for communicating and learning
120

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7
Listening and reading 
processes
7.1 Meaning and reading
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What do you think are the typical elements involved in going to a restaurant?
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What do you think are the main aims of an academic essay?
Focusing question
schema (pl. schemas or schemata): the background knowledge on which the
interpretation of a text depends
script: ‘a predetermined stereotyped sequence of actions that defines a well-
known situation’ (Schank and Abelson, 1977)
Keywords
Reading, like speaking, occurs in a context rather than in isolation. The meaning
of a text is not found just in the sentences themselves, but is derived from the pre-
vious knowledge stored in the reader’s mind and the processes through which the
reader tackles it. ‘We do not find meaning lying in things nor do we put it into
things, but between us and things it can happen’ (Buber, 1947).
I look out of my window and see an empty road, as anybody else would do sitting
in the same position. However, to me the emptiness means my wife has gone out,
since the family car is not there; to my son it means the bus for school has not yet
arrived; to my daughter it means the postman is late. The same scene is interpreted
in different ways according to our background information and predilections.