CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
4.5 Intervention Phase
4.5.2 The Six-Stage R2L Cycle
The six stages of the R2L cycle have been introduced previously (see 3.2), however, this section will explain in more detail the teaching steps taken in each of the cycles:
a) Stage One: Preparing for Reading
Each R2L cycle begins with a contextual background to the particular text. This might mean explaining, for example, the time that the text was written, who wrote it and where.
Students were introduced to the functional grammar elements in the text, such as action and linking verbs, adjectives and the concept of nominalization, found particularly in academic texts. All these grammatical concepts (or meta-language) were introduced for function in order to scaffold students in there context and use in the particular genre.
R2L uses a concept of ―guided repetition‖, meaning that the meta-language and concepts are continually being re-taught throughout the year, whenever relevant to the genre involved.
105 b) Stage Two: Detailed Reading
After the background information (or ‗preparing for reading‘), the lesson takes the students through the process of detailed reading. This involves selecting a particular stage of the text, explaining the stage and phases within and reading, with the students, line by line. The whole text is first read by the class as a whole then each sentence is paraphrased by the teacher. After the sentence has been paraphrased, it is again read out loud. The teacher will then ask questions so as to help students locate the important information in the sentence, consisting of the ‗who, what, where, when, why and how‘
questions. The students give the answers to the questions and then underline the key word or words. For hard-to-understand words and phrases, the teacher will provide synonyms for the students by asking them: “what word in the text means the same as
…?” For example, if the text reads ‗couch‘, you might substitute ‗a soft chair in the lounge that two or three people can sit on‘. In this way, the students put the important information into their own words. An example of detailed reading (Rose, 2009: Book 4:22) is shown in Table 4 below. The text is from ―Good Tip for Ghosts‖ (see Appendix 9):
106 :
Table 4: Extract from "Good Tip for Ghosts"
1. A little way off behind some old rusting car bodies, I thought I heard a noise.
2. Pete was looking in the same direction. 3. I was too terrified to move.
4. I wanted to run but my legs just wouldn‘t work. 5. I opened my mouth to scream but nothing came out. 6. Pete stood staring as if he was bolted to the ground.
1. This is the part where the boys are at the dump. They think no one else is there but then they hear a noise.
- how would the boys be feeling?
2. what Pete was doing
- why would Pete be looking in the same direction? Must have been a noise.
3. how the boy was feeling, how scared he was.
- what are the things we want to do when we are really scared? Run and scream.
4. exactly how he couldn‘t run.
- so scared he couldn‟t make his legs move.
5. he wanted to scream but couldn‘t.
- discuss how both sentences have the same pattern – to emphasise the feeling.
6. Pete couldn‘t move either.
- discuss simile – as if he was bolted to the ground.
How far Where from Not sure
Same way How scared Tried to get away
Couldn‘t run Tried to yell
Couldn‘t scream Feet wouldn‘t move
107 c) Stage Three: Note Taking
The third stage of the cycle consists of note taking. The students take turns acting as a scribe and write the underlined words on the board. The students call out the underlined words for the scribe. Students can correct the scribe if and when a spelling or punctuation error is made (for example in the case of capital letters), and the students also learn how to take notes.
d) Stage Four: Joint Board Rewrite
Stage four consists of the board rewrite. Once again, students take turns acting as the scribe and the sentences of the text are written on the board. However now, the keywords are substituted with the students‘ own words. This helps to deconstruct the text, find meaning of difficult terms and words and ‗unpacks‘ the meanings in nominalisations.
Students also have assistance with spelling, punctuation and sentence construction. Both the third and fourth stage encourage students to take responsibility for their own learning, as the teacher is only the facilitator in these stages – it is the students who give the words and alternative meanings.
e) Stage Five: Group Rewrite
Stage five consists of a group rewrite. Whereas the board rewrite has meant replacing the keywords, or notes with everyday meanings, now the students are given back the original keywords and required to put them back together into a text resembling the original. The students are divided into groups of four for this task. The text is thus reconstructed.
108 f) Stage Six: Independent Rewrite
Stage six consists of an independent rewrite. This means that each student has to find another text of the same genre, and using keywords to understand meaning, rewrite the text in his or her own words. I soon discovered how crucial the choice of text is to the R2L approach. My initial directive to the students for the explanation task was for them to find a similar example of the genre. This many students struggled to do, so I chose a text on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (―JSE‖) due to, what I felt, was its economic relevance (see Appendix 6). The results were not good. The majority of the students did not pass this first assignment and one of the students burst into tears upon receiving his results. This was not how R2L was intended to be, as it is very concerned with affective factors and the morale of students, and I found myself with a demoralized team on the first attempt. I therefore had to locate another text, which I found with the help of another academic lecturer who had been involved with R2L for some time. This was an idealised explanation text on the differences between Indian and Xhosa Weddings (see Appendix 6.1). Although I was concerned that the text was very basic, it turned out to be pitched at the right level as the majority of the students were able to achieve a pass rate in this first assignment, and feel more confident.