15.1 Teaching Inferential Skills [Nurhayati Khan]

My class consisted of 39 Secondary 3 Express students. They are the top Express class and expected to deliver top scores for the 'O' Levels next year. The students are very dynamic and responsive and while most are weak in the language, they make up for it with their motivation and enthusiasm to engage in classroom activities. They are also able to concentrate for extended periods of time.

The skills that I intended to impart to the students were identification of contextual clues in the given texts (through guided inquiry) and the subsequent inference of meaning using their prior knowledge and bank of personal experience.

For this lesson, I employed the use of texts from various media to trigger the students' inferential skills. On planning this activity, I assumed that most students were comfortable inferring meaning from familiar text types like television commercials and comic strips but were not explicitly aware of the transference of such skills to their comprehension passages.

For the first 10 minutes, I explicitly instructed the students on what was expected of them during the rest of the lesson. I also devised a mnemonic for them to be more aware of their inferential process: R-I-P [Recognise topic- Identify clues- Pen inference].

To test their understanding of what was expected of them, I provided a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip and guided their thinking process by posing questions using R-I-P. The use of the visual text was deliberate and intended to stimulate interest in the lesson. Students very easily decoded the visual text and were able to effectively infer the meaning of the comic strip. However, they faced difficulties in identifying clues and articulating their explanations to support their inference.

To tackle the challenge of explaining their answer, I presented them with a short television commercial which featured a personified Macintosh and Microsoft computer. Students were very receptive to both the medium and the topic. Their challenge this time was not to come up with the meaning of the text, but to explain it by identifying clues. They quickly picked up on the visual clues such as dressing, demeanour, language and content.

Assuming that the students were now more comfortable in explaining their inferences, I moved on to the final texts: 2 Petronas television commercials by the late Yasmin Ahmad. Instead of showing them the commercials, I wanted to ease them to reading written texts for clues. Students faced a lot of difficulties identifying clues in the written text. However, some stronger students were able to tentatively point out at some possible clues and I was able to add in my own explicit instruction during the activity to help them to focus.

The major learning indicator was my observations as I monitored their progress during this final activity. While many students faced difficulties in identifying clues, with the help of their peers, I was able to guide them to 'read' the texts critically for clues instead of just absorbing the information.

2 students were picked to share their answers on the board while the rest completed their handouts. Some questions were raised about possible alternative interpretations which signalled that they were engaging their prior knowledge.

In the next lesson, they were also able to recall R-I-P and the skills learnt and effectively applied them to shorter written texts.