Activate activities

Reading tasks:

1. Express yourself in your answers to the following questions:

a) How much does your understanding of stress change by the end of the text?

b) If it were possible, how would you present the problem of stress to the audience?

c) In your opinion, do we need to learn to diagnose stress?

d) Do you think it is possible to develop personal response to stress?

e) Have you worked out any stress management techniques so far?

2. Debate on the author’s statements:

a) Certainly, on a more obvious level, stress diminishes the quality of life by reducing feelings of pleasure and accomplishment, and relationships are often threatened.

b) Some studies have clearly linked job dissatisfaction and depression to pain, although it is still unclear if stress is a direct reason.

c) Some studies, however, have not found any strong link between stress and eating problems.

d) Different stress factors may affect differently.

Key phrases to share personal views:

Giving reason:

Owing to, due to the fact that, inasmuch as, since, because of, on account of;

Accordingly, hence, consequently, as a consequence of, on the grounds that, resulting in, therefore, thus, in view of, now that, seeing that, for this reason; on the whole, in general; that’s why I feel that…; I think there are (two/several reasons for that.

Comparing and contrasting:

As … as, not as\so … as, as much of …, more of\less of, the more … the less, is similar to; similarly, likewise, of equal importance is…, equally, in the same way, correspondingly; while, whereas, in contrast to, contrary to, rather than, conversely; at the same time

Exemplifying:

An example of this is when\the way …, for example\instance, for a star, for one thing, if you look at, one more thing, take … for instance, namely, particularly, specifically, to exemplify this, especially

Giving chronological events:

Initially, first, at first, to start\begin with, first of all;

Secondly, after this\that, second, afterwards, then, next;

Finally, at last, in the end, eventually, lastly

Making reference:

Considering, concerning, regarding, with respect\regard\reference to, in respect\regard\reference to this or to the fact that, according to, with reference to

Making concession:

Even so, however, still, yet, nevertheless, on the other hand, although, despite\in spite of, regardless of, admittedly, considering, whereas\while, nonetheless

Placing emphasis:

Besides, not only this but…also; as well, what is more, in fact, as a matter of fact, actually, indeed, let alone, clearly, obviously, the fact of the matter is, in practice, apparently

Indicating purpose:

So that, so as (not) to, in order (not) to, in order that, in case, lest

Giving addition:

Both …and, not only … but, also\as well, moreover, in addition to, further, furthermore, not to mention the fact that

Showing condition and its consequences:

In case, assuming that, on condition that, providing\provided that, in the event that, as long as, granted\granting that, otherwise, or else;

Under those circumstances, if so, if not, in that case, thus, consequently

Making assumptions:

Stated that, granted that, broadly considered\seen, when exposed to, unless otherwise (specially) stated (indicated, specified), things being as they are

Putting a different point of view:

After all, all the same, anyway, at any rate, to put the same thing in another way, in other words, contrary to the popular belief, it is often argued\alleged that,

Stating and justifying opinions:

In my opinion\view, to my way of thinking, to my mind, it would be more reasonable to say that …; I can’t be certain, but I think…, I could be wrong, but I think…, I feel strongly that, I am inclined to believe that, as far as I am concerned, I personally think…, In my personal opinion…; personally, I feel that…, this is what I think, seeing that, stating that, needless to say, suffice to say,

Making conclusions:

In conclusion, in summary, to sum up, as (it) was previously stated, on the whole, all in all, in short, briefly, to put it briefly, if we summarize, above all, taking everything into account, all things considered.

III. Summarizing statements on the given reading passage:

The text under consideration comes from an academic journal with a series of articles on socio-psychological issues. Apparently, the author’s reason for having written it is to inform the reader about causes of stress, both physical and moral, so as to encourage an ordinary person to seek methods how to handle its harmful effects. Judging from the first glimpse of the passage, it would seem that this piece of information based on some experimental findings is rendered formally in terms of developing human’s ability to deal with stress. The information contained in the passage enables to work out its theme concerning necessity of human’s adaptation for meeting natural threats emerging in private environment and social community as well, in other words called stress response. Thus the text is aimed at performing a psychological influence on the reader to convince him of obtaining proper understanding how much effect stress might have on our body and mind, taking into account its positive and negative aspects with men and women having different stress levels.

The author deliberately attends to a lot of evidence, sometimes controversial, coming from numerous studies on the subject of stress factors in order to put a point across more clearly. In this context, he sounds quite logic and convincing, however rather concerned and anxious about the lack of proper knowledge. As a result he brings home to the reader some peculiar details indicating primary connection between stress and weight gain, heart disease, tension type headaches, sleep disturbance. To make the matters worse, stress as a risk factor for suicide is mentioned by the author, as if to make us stop and think about posed threat. The author’s tone is in the perfect keeping with the message communicated through the whole text bringing out the idea that well-being should be focal point of happy disposition, whereas stress diminishes the quality of life by reducing feelings of pleasure and accomplishment. Being engaged with the content, we are encouraged to make personal judgments about necessity of taking responsibility for health. Even if the reader does not happen to know what serotonin, cortisol or abdmominal is like, he gets a vivid notion of bio-chemical processes triggering stress. This is crucial for inferring the gist based on generalization of the issues related to reasons for stress and its psychological and physiological effects, with respect to gender differences. Let’s take an example of work stress and marital stress correspondingly associated with men and women, or them being less or more exposed to stressful conditions. Interestingly, gender aptitudes influence the response to stress, resulted in using alcohol, eating less healthily, followed by loss weight or obesity. With all things considered, issues put forward in the article make sense to think about the way how to manage stresses so as to keep health safe. Through close reading, we familiarize ourselves with attitudes to lifestyle, where stress and tension come along: as people tend to live under pressure in different communities. Evident are cultural expectations of harmful effects for living, which should be shared by a representative of every culture, I suppose. This is why the author’s anxiety about shortage of knowledge in this respect is clear for everyone. What is more, emphasis is placed on culturally-appropriate behaviour generated from surrounding stressful conditions, i.e. system of patterns to adhere to: develop adequate stress response. By the way, this is something common we are expected to do irrespective of nationality.

IV. Conclusive remarks:

In this way we have come up with the idea of academic reading defined as purposeful critical reading of a range of texts placed in certain subject areas, which requires careful synthesizing of sources with subsequent extensive and intensive reading for information retrieval. It is expected to be profound and comprehensive in terms of its content peculiarities based on interpreting critically explicit and implicit information, inferred and deduced from the context in order to achieve a deeper understanding and a fuller appreciation of the retrieved information: you learn to see more, to uncover or create richer, denser, more interesting meanings. Readers are given opportunity to read actual selections from a variety of publications putting forward global in nature issues.

What is more, background knowledge of related topics embedded in texts is activated by the options following the reading passage, which are intended to bring about overall reading proficiency, inferring ability, using the vocabulary appropriately, as well as critical thinking. In the light of the given material it should be assumed that it is possible to build up common conceptually constructed frameworks and expectations, into which a reader fits the text by interpreting it. This provides the essential foundation of processing information so that a proficient reader can begin to achieve the highest goal of reading.

Glossary of helpful key words:

Acquisition a subconscious process like effortless mastery of language through being exposed to.

Activate/activation is based on putting learning into action in the course of completing the task.

Appropriacy choosing language that is not just correct but also appropriate to the situation.

Authentic used to describe texts written for native or competent speakers of a language.

Cognitive effort is when a person is encouraged to think about what he is working on.

Coherence organization of ideas in a logical way.

Cohesion lexical or grammatical with the help of devices sticking things together.

Colligation combination of words on condition of grammatical valency.

Collocation two or more words occurring together on condition of lexical valency.

Comprehension act or power of understanding.

Communicative activities are those where a person activates language to communicate real meaning.

Connotation is the impression that a word gives beyond its literal meaning.

Content the information and meaning rather than the language.

Context describes the environment (topic and linguistic) in which a word or phrase occurs.

Cross-cultural communication act of communicating representatives of different cultures.

Cue kind of signal (stimulus) for understanding.

Cultural appropriacy is when a topic suit certain culture.

Cultural background the culture(here means country, region or social group) that a person has grown up or lived.

Critical reading are activities aimed at making judgments or expressing views on the content of a reading passage.

Decoding means finding the meaning of something written in code.

Discourse communities are any groups of people that share ways of communicating in terms of established routines, formats, etc.

Discourse markers items of language indicating relationship between what went before and what comes after.

Elicit when we try to get information (often implied).

Engage\engagement the involvement of learners through curiosity or rmotion.

Extensive reading where a person reads texts, often specialized, which are longer than typical passages.

Feedback reactions to activity types.

Follow up activities to keep the conversation going.

Formal is a term to describe elaborate language used in situations where politeness and tentativeness is expected.

Heading word or words printed at the top of the written material to show the subject of what follows.

General English type of English for a wide variety of possible uses.

General understanding similar to skimming so as to get the gist of text.

Genre a style or type of discourse identified by discourse features, register and layout.

Genre analysis is when we study different examples in order to find out how texts are constructed within that genre.

Gist the general idea of a text, whether written or spoken.

Glean information gather details in small quantities.

Inference this is the meaning we get ‘behind the words’.

Informal is a term to describe relaxed, friendly easy-going language.

Intensive reading is when we read the text immediately and meantime discuss detailed aspects of meaning.

Interaction acting on each other.

Intention thing intended (aim, purpose).

Keyword is an essential, basic, fundamental word.

L1 (first language) a speaker’s main language.

L2 (second language) often used to describe the language which the students are learning.

Layout kind of format how material is presented.

Lexical cohesion is when words are used to bind a text together.

Lexis/lexical anything to do with vocabulary.

Literacy ability to read and write.

Linkers are words or phrases which connect ideas.

Multiple choice is when we choose between three or four possible answers.

Narrative is the word used to describe writing or speaking that tell a story.

Objectives are what we hope to achieve.

Paragraph organization the order in which sentences are put together within a paragraph.

Prediction the process of someone to trying to anticipate what they will see in reading.

Presupposition something required as condition related to some social situation or culture.

Proficiency being skilled in reading.

Reassembling a text a type of activity aimed to put scrambled paragraphs into correct order.

Reading for detailed comprehension means going through a text to focus on language, meaning or text construction.

Reading for pleasure is reading which is done for fun.

Register describes the choice of words in a text on the basis of topic.

Response is what happens when you react to a cue.

Scan is to look over a text trying to find some specific information.

Skim is to read a text to get the general meaning or gist; different from ‘scan’.

Stance means the person’s intellectual attitude.

Subject matter plot, topic of a reading text.

Signpost language words or phrases indicating direction of development of narration.

Tone means the attitude conveyed by the author’s choice of words.

Topic the subject of theme of a reading text.

Topic sentence the sentence within a paragraph which tells the reader what the paragraph is about.

Reference literature:

1.Akhmanova O.S. What is English We Use?/ Olga Sergeyevna Akhmanova. – М.: из-во МГУ, 1978.

2.Adams G. 101 helpful hints for IELTS Academic module/ Garry Adams. – Sydney: 2000.

3.Curriculum for English language development in Universities and Institutes. – Kyiv: 2001.

4. Dijk Teun A. van. Discourse Semantics and Ideology// Discourse as structure and Process. – London:1997.

5.Nuttall C. Teaching reading skills in a foreign language/ C.Nuttall. – Macmillan: 2000.

6. Harmer J. How to teach English/ Jeremy Harmer. – Longman: 2007.

7. Stephens M. New Proficiency Reading/ Mary Stephens. – Longman: 2002.

8. Smith L. Topics for today. An advanced reading skills text/ Lorraine Smith. – Heinle Publishers: 2002.

9. Хрестоматия по английской филологии \ ред О.В.Александрова. – М.: Высшая школа, 1991.

10.http://www./ang.uiuc.edu/r-li5/ESL projecr/es/beg.htm/

11.http://www.nationalreadingpanel.org/publications/summary.htm

Dictionaries:

12.Oxford ESL Dictionary/A.S.Hornby. – Oxford University Press: 2001.

13. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. – Longman: 1995.

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