Tuckeg, I am in Africa and wish I weren't ...... maybe that's cos I live here :-)

I'm not part of any "in" group if that denotes anything cliquey but I've been posting on Fodors since 1998/99 and on the Africa board since 2000 or earlier so I've come to know the real names of many regular posters just from the occasional times their real names happen to get mentioned.

Many people know mine as Kavey is just a nickname/ abbreviation for my real name, Kavita.

I've also always displayed an email address and regularly receive emails from posters here.

Nyamera, here are some ideas about teaching reading comprehension.

I'm a little confused about what the students' native language is vs what you are teaching in (is this English speakers to whom you are teaching Spanish, or is it a different class).

Anyway, here are some ideas for dealing with reading comprehension -- you can tweak these to use as a class exercise or as a test.

Always start with a conversation to give the students a context for the reading -- it sort of gets their brains in gear. One way of doing this is to start with one key word (e.g. Africa) and write it on the board, and then draw a cloud bubble around it. Then ask your students what they think of when you say the word Africa. Whatever they answer, write on the board around the cloud. Don't censor answers unless they are flat out wrong. So maybe they will say the following "travel" "Uganda" "desert" "lion" "hungry" "airplane" etc. After collecting all these words on the board, if you are lucky one of them will be a seque to your article and you can underline it, if not, write one more word yourself (e.g. 'people') and then say "now you will read an article about the PEOPLE of Africa".

It sounds like a waste of time, but it really helps orient them so they can read productively.

Always do the reading in two phases.
First, ask a very general question (i.e. 'gist question'), to force the students to quickly read the passage even if they don't understand it. For example, "does the writer think XXX is a good idea?". The point of this question is to train the students that they can get the gist of a passage even if they don't know every word.

Second, ask detail questions that require specific reading of the text (e.g. "which tribes practice XXX?")

If there are difficult vocabulary words, consider which ones are truly 'blocking' vocabulary (impeding understanding) vs words they can infer from context. For 'blocking' vocabulary, you can give a glossary, or explain the words beforehand. But don't fall into the trap of thinking they must understand every single word -- it is actually an important reading skill to learn how to read even if you don't know every word.

To put it in a nutshell:
1) start by giving context and getting their mental framework in gear
2) then ask a 'gist' question
3) then ask a series of detail questions
4) supply vocabulary for 'blocking vocabulary', not for every hard word.

Good luck.

Oh! (that's me waving my hand wildly in the air)

Can I be a part of the "in" group too? I've been lurking for a while getting great advice for our trip to Tanzania next year. Only 284 more days until we leave for our first trip to Africa. We are spending one day in Nairobi and then 10 days on the Northern Circuit before heading to Chumbe Island and Zanzibar for a few days.

1) Yes, it seems that the 'in' group honestly earns their kudos by being regular and helpful contributors to the board. Sort of like a lifetime achievement award. (Sandi definitely comes to mind.)

2) There is also an 'out' group that earns their notoriety by being annoying. The best tactic is to ignore them until they give up, because responding just keeps the flame wars going. (I won't identify anyone for obvious reasons!)

3) And there are people who may already have been 'in', but also post a particular topic that becomes so famous that they are known and quoted especially for that (LyndaS and her East African trip report and also her packing list).

4) And finally, there are posters who bring a unique personal writing style, and contribute such a memorable trip report that we simply can't forget them, whether or not they were already 'in'. I'm sure we all have our favorites but "daughter, I spent all my money on vaccinations", the story of "spa girl" and the bus ride in the bra come to mind! Real geniuses can even write a title that is so intriguing you just have to read the post(remember the "stupidest trip")

So the great thing is that even if you haven't yet earned your way into category 1, you can get into category 4 with one brilliant, personal report!!!

The only thing that I am in right now is Tokyo, where it's 5.30 in the morning and my body is time-confused. I've met some fellow posters while on safari, met several others at the Boston Fodor's GTG (get-together), and have corresponded with yet others through e-mail.

You can follow along on my current trip, which has nothing to do with Africa but does have some photos!!, at http://travelwithtopaz.blogspot.com/.

-Don

Ann, I loved your explanation!

But I can't recall the bus ride in the bra - who wrote that one? (maybe I havn't got there yet....)

I too still laugh over 'daughter, I spent all my money on vaccinations', that REALLY had to be the best trip report I have ever read! I laughed, I cried & I truly didn't want it to end.

And I can still picture Nicole, one of the people who climbed Kili, stepping out into 'the hot exotic African air' from the plane. That phrase still comes to mind whenver we get off the plane in Nairobi!

This thread is <b>one year old</b>! It’s really depressing to see that I’m still stuck in same kind of unpleasant “emergency” and that I’m still frustrated with not being active enough on Fodor’s and in the “in group”.

Ann-nyc, thanks for your reading comprehension tips! I’d put you on the VIP list of Nyamera Camp if it weren’t because you are already on it. Now as before I’m teaching Spanish and English to Swedish speaking students.

Nowhere else than on this Fruitcake forum would I be called a genius. Even if it’s tongue in cheek, it’s highly therapeutic.

Nyamera, actually I was serious! The ability to write a catchy title is really a great skill. Maybe you could get a job writing the cover taglines for a magazine, to make people curious enough to buy it.

Ann_NYC, would you be referring, by any chance, to a report I wrote on the Europe board several years ago? It had what might be described as a catchy title (related to my husband mis-translating an instruction on a Parisian bus as &quot;Keep your bras inside the windows&quot;, 'bras' being the French for arms) but wasn't a particularly scintillating report otherwise! I can't find it any more so it may no longer be there! :)

The bra is here:

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threadselect.jsp?fid=4

Tuckeg, bad linky but I'm assuming it's a report on the Africa board?

This is the 'bus ride in a bra' thread link,

http://www.fodors.com/forums/pgMessa...25&amp;start=0

Enjoy - its a great report,

Pol.

Thanks Treepol, yes I remember it now. It just made me laugh that I'd written a trip report on the Europe board several years ago and the thread title was something along the lines of &quot;Keep your bras in the window&quot;. I can't find it so it may be long gone now, it was posted several years ago and there was a period when trolls were adding inane comments to the ends of threads which resulted in entire threads rather than offending posts being deleted. Or it could still be there and the search engine is just not finding it, which is also a realistic possibility.

Nyamera, I hadn't noticed when I posted that the thread was so old, I wonder why Mischka topped it, with a post that doesn't seem relevent to the original topic at all!