Hungarobox: Text comprehension tasks No. 1.

2015, available on 28/10/2021

Lecturers
Students

Business & Communication

Autonomous learning
Classroom Context

Hungarian

Hungarian

B2
C1

Activity/task

Vocabulary
Grammar

Writing
Reading

The Hungarobox project has compiled an exercise package for learning ICT vocabulary. The exercises promote learning of words and expressions included to the glossary.
The exercises are mostly aimed at the level B1–B2, but there are also some addressed to more advanced students at the level C1.
The exercises, some 100 altogether, can be worked on either online or printed on paper. They are divided into five groups: playful, vocabulary developing, grammatical, text production and text comprehension.
This teaching resource is available on a website for learners of Hungarian as a Foreign Language. The content is produced by highly qualified professionals who are teachers or lecturers of several foreign languages and Hungarian as a foreign language having expertise in the field. Among the task sheets there is a thematic collection of task sheets of language of ICT in Hungarian for students of Hungarian as a FL. This task sheet contains a text of 162 words, which is about the parts and components of a computer. The task sheet comes with the key.

This task sheet is ideal both for practising and assessing the special vocabulary of ICT. The task sheet can be used for deepening the knowledge. It contains three exercises: the first exercise is to answer wh-questions about the text; the second exercise is a true-false exercise; the third exercise is to complete sentences with given words. Students are supported by the glossary on ICT terms that is available on the website and that can be used according to the instruction.
The text is very rich in special terms, however, they are often repeated in the text easing the understanding and text comprehension. A pre-reading activity can be scanning the text, and the learners can predict what kind of text is to be expected. Then they skim the text, focus on certain parts, words, expressions so that they can predict the content. Then the learners are asked to complete the task sheet; I would let the learners complete the task in the most suitable order for them. The tasks promote continuous monitoring of learners’ text comprehension; as they should go back in the text and check their understanding to complete all the tree tasks. In order to promote social learning, learners can be put in pairs so that they could compare their solutions. The last activity could be to make a spidergram of the computer terms and their definitions, and these visual graphic organizers could be used to make learners remember these expressions.

There is a life-like, authentic text in Hungarian in the task sheet; the language and the register of the text are very suitable for pragmatic reasons. The lead-in task could be to make learners perdict the content of the text scanning and skimming the text; they can predict what the the text is about and activate their background knowldge on the topic. Then they read the text thouroughly, and confirm or neglect their prediction, expectations about the text. Then learners are to answer questions about the content of the text; decide about statements if they are true or false; and then fill in the gaps in sentences. As students have previous knowledge on these terms, they can build on this knowledge while doing the task. After filling the gaps, they can do self-check, or compare their solutions in pairs. The final step could be to make students make graphic organizers using the terms and defintions in the text. This way the visual type of learners get extra support.