Problems with your car

no

Lecturers
Students

Law

Classroom Context

Romanian

Any language

C1
C2

Activity/task
Audio

Vocabulary

Listening
Critical Thinking
Reading

The unit is part of a larger set of audio materials grouped by topics; the set consists of 23 such units containing both general language/interest (Family, In the village, On the train) and specialized elements of various degree of specialization and level of language (At the Doctor’s Practice, At the Bank, Problems with Your Car). Each unit is associated with a number of grammar and pronunciation activities of various types (gapped sentences, matching exercises), each of them being also associated with an audio material. The tasks are comparatively short and can also be turned in good assessment material. The resources presented here presents 3 unadapted texts from legal texts on legal requirements to register a car, on the requirements and conduct of a driver involved in an accident without victims, and on the process of issuing a driving license.

The resource Problems with your car offers material for C1 and C2 students, which was correctly assessed in the Description. The resources actually consists of three excerpts from a legal act (Ordinance and Highway Code) and is thus valuable as a sample of genuine unadulterated specialised discourse (written) in the legal domain; it can also be used with B2 students when focusing mainly on comprehension and/or specialised vocabulary. The resource is interesting, but it cannot be used as such, it requires a lot preparation on the part of the lecturer and effort on the part of the students. It is not very interactive, as it only offers the text and its audio rendition; nowadays, when text-to-speech tools are readily and freely available on the internet this is not an element that can trigger heightened motivation, therefore we suggest coupling it with other materials, such as case studies or excerpts from the press presenting examples of the Highway Code was broken, for example, followed by a matching exercise. The content cannot be used as one unit, we suggest breaking it into 2 or even three one hour units for maximal exploitation of its potentialities.

The resource can be used as one unit or it can be divided into the three sections to be used independently. If it serves as a listening activity, the following scenario can be used:
- Pre-listening: the trainer can begin by asking students questions about their experience regarding cars and driving: What documents do you need to drive/ to have a car? What happens in the case of an accident? What institutions are involved in such a situation?
- A number of specialized lexical items can be written down (inspectia tehnica periodica, vehicul rutier inregistrat, masa totala maxima autorizata etc.); the trainer elicits students’ knowledge of the phrases by asking them to explain/paraphrase them
- The trainer can give a hand-out with a text/sentences with gapped words (specialized legal terms) that students have to fill during listening, related to the previous list, then check with students after listening;
The teacher may have to provide translation/paraphrasing explanations of various difficult phrases or encourage students to use various references (online dictionaries, legal term termbases such as IATE etc.)
- Other possible tasks based on the text: matching, writing TRUE/FALSE for a set of given statements; answering a number of open ended questions based on the text: What happens when…? What should the driver do when…?
- A follow-up written task can require students to compare the legislation in their country regarding the same topic, thus practicing critical thinking.