Reading text and Notes on vocabulary pre-teaching & procedure

ReadingText
The Inuit

The Inuit are people who live in the Arctic regions of Greenland, Canada, Alaska and Siberia.
They originally came from Central Asia between 2000 and 6000 BC. They settled in the Arctic
because other groups had already moved into the warmer lands to the south. The traditional
Inuit way of life was dictated by the climate of the frozen landscape they still live in, which is
called the Tundra.

Housing
The Inuit were nomadic and built different types of house, depending on the season and the
materials available. House building materials such as mud and wood are difficult to find in the
Tundra in the winter, so the Inuit built their winter houses from snow and ice – these are the
houses we all know as igloos, which is the Inuit word for house. In the summer they made
tents from wood and animal skins.

Transport, food and clothing

Their main forms of transport in the winter were walking or qamutiik (dog sleds). In the
summer they often travelled on water in kayaks (small boats for one or two people), or
umiaks, which were larger boats that carried 10-15 people. Because the climate is too cold for
farming, the Inuit diet was mainly meat from animals such as caribou, walrus, seals and
whales. They also ate fish and wild berries. Animals did not just provide food: they also
provided the thick fur and skin the Inuit used to make the warm clothes they needed for the
cold climate. Traditional Inuit boots made of caribou hide or sealskin are called kamik and it is
easy to see how many modern fashion boots have been influenced by this ancient design.
Animal bones were carved and used to make tools, such as needles, which were traditionally
used by Inuit women to make their clothing.

Modern Inuit
Point Hope (Inuit name: Tikigaq) is a small Inuit village, about 200 km north of the Arctic
Circle. It is a very isolated village, connected to the American mainland only by very small
strips of land. There are no roads leading to it, so it must be reached by plane or boat. People
have lived at Point Hope for 2,500 years, longer than any other place in North America, and it
is the oldest Inuit settlement. Nowadays the Inuit of Point Hope live in permanent houses, and
they have running water and electricity. While Inuit in villages like Point Hope have adopted a
more modern lifestyle, they have not forgotten their own traditions and culture. For example,
the inhabitants of Point Hope still rely on fishing and hunting marine mammals for food. Whale
hunting is a very important part of their culture, and the captains of whaling boats are highly
respected by the rest of the village. It is still the custom that a man cannot get married until he
has learned to build an igloo.

Notes on vocabulary pre-teaching

1. Look at the text and decide which words and phrases are key – essential to an
understanding of the content.
2. Select 8-12 items to pre-teach not including the animals.
3. Then use a vocabulary profiler to help you decide which vocabulary to pre-teach.
e.g Vocab Kitchen: http://vocabkitchen.com/profiler/cefr
4. If you put the text into more than one profiler, you'll find that some words are
 categorised differently; profilers provide only a guide to what students are likely to
know at this level
5. Note also that profilers cannot recognise phrases, so you need to look at the text for
whole phrases and collocations such as way of life, depends on and animal skins that
it would be useful to teach as a single vocabulary item.
6. You should decide which items from the C1, C2 and 'off-list' categories you are going
to pre-teach. You should concept check more abstract items.
Most of the items you need to consider will be in the 'off-list' group in the profiler. A
word falling into this category is not necessarily very advanced, it simply means that it
has not been included in the list of words that have been categorised in the profiler.

You can assume, for example, that students at this level would know all the countries
referred to in the text, even though they are 'off-list.'

Although 'housing' is listed as a high level word, students are likely to know it already or be
able to work out its meaning from 'house' so do not pre-teach this word.

Notice that all the Inuit words are defined in the text, so you do not need to pre-teach
these. The students only need to understand the Inuit words while they reading the
text. It would not be particularly useful to do vocabulary work on these items.

Do not include animals in the list of items you pre-teach. The animals referred to that would
need to be checked at this level could be easily checked/taught by using pictures as part of
your lead in stage.

(Provide references for pictures – the website address alone is sufficient for pictures.)

Select 8-12 items to pre-teach not including the animals, Inuit words or place names
Use the Vocabulary Teaching Table to help plan how you will teach the items you have
chosen.

We are assessing your ability to make sensible decisions about what vocabulary to pre-teach,
so please do not send a ticket asking us to tell you!

Procedure

Your lesson must follow the standard procedure for comprehension lessons given in Unit 5

1. Lead into topic

2. Vocabulary pre-teaching
3. First reading
4. Second reading
5. Follow on activity (speaking)

Please look at the unit for more detail on how to plan these stages. You can reverse stages 1
and 2 if that suits your lesson better.

Look on the internet or use any ELT* books you have for ideas for lead-in and follow on
speaking activities, which you could adapt for this lesson. Reference all materials you use or
adapt and list them in your bibliography.

* English Language Teaching