Lesson Plan

I've used this article in its full form for a few writing classes, and my students came up with very different opinions, so I thought I'd push things a little bit further. 

The basic idea is to use a topic where they wouldn't feel I or the other students care strongly about their opinions, and then to first let them do an oppositional reading in 1 group, and then form an opinion in another group with someone who had done the opposite oppositional reading.

Goals: 1. Introducing students to critical reading

2. Providing students with ideas and vocabulary to produce evaluative output.

Material: An article reporting on a controversy. The article has been simplified and then divided into two with one article (Part A) including some background and the for-arguments plus evidence, and the other (Part B) including some background and the against-arguments and evidence.

Class Plan:

1. Divide the class into groups of 4. Have a warm-up group discussion about bias in reporting, asking the students to come up with examples. Korean students are generally quite distrustful of the chaebol-owned newspapers, which could be useful in getting the lesson rolling.

2. Explain that they will be reading an article, and that they will be critically analyzing it. Do not explain that there are two different articles.

3. Hand out Part A to half the groups and Part B to the other half. Introduce some questions that can be used for a critical reading (“Who is speaking?”, etc.). The students read the articles and write down a short list of possible criticisms. In a low-motivation class it might be necessary to tell them that the group will receive a grade for the report. Grading will be in terms of reasoning and clarity of explanation.

4. After this task is completed, collect both the group reports and the articles.

5. Re-divide the class into pairs, with one student who had read and criticized Part A (the pros), and 1 student who had done the same with Part B (the cons). Do not tell them that they had read different articles; just that they have to come up with 3 opinions on the topic and reasons for their opinions. Once again, these reports can be graded if necessary.