INTRODUCTION
Learning a language effectively involves something more than just memorizing vocabulary and grammar rules. It also means getting in touch with a new culture, people with different interests and tastes from your own. One of the biggest leisure activities in the U. S. involves professional sports, and among them basketball is one of the most popular. Ready to learn about some of the greatest basketball players of all time?
TASK
Your task will be to look up information about three NBA players from the 80s – 90s and about the U.S. basketball team in the 1992 Olympic Games, the Dream Team. You will also make a small “basketball dictionary” with the terms you choose from a number of links I’ll provide, and then write a small report of a game as if you were broadcasting it for the TV or as if you were writing for a newspaper, you choose.
PROCESS
You will make groups of four (better if at least one person has a little idea about basketball!!). Each of you will select one of the following:
- Being Magic Johnson’s biographer.
- Being Michael Jordan’s biographer.
- Being Larry Bird’s biographer.
- Writing about the Dream Team.
You’ll tell the class the most relevant information that you have gathered.
Then all of you will have a look at the vocabulary links and using words taken from there write a short piece (around 400 words) narrating part of a basketball game. You can choose to do it as if talking live on the TV or as recap made by a journalist for a newspaper. You will compare with the rest of the group and select the composition you like most, which will be read to the rest of the class. The reading can be done by more than one person if you choose to do it as a TV broadcasting with more than one commentator.
RESOURCES
About Magic Johnson:
http://www.magicjohnson.org/home.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Johnson
http://www.nndb.com/people/401/000022335/
http://www.nba.com/history/players/johnsonm_bio.html
About Michael Jordan:
http://www.23jordan.com/bio1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jordan
http://www.nba.com/history/players/jordan_bio.html
About Larry Bird:
http://www.larrybird.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Bird
http://www.nba.com/history/players/bird_bio.html
About the Dream Team:
http://nba.com/history/dreamT_moments.html
http://www.usabasketball.com/history/moly_1992.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_men
Basketball glossaries and dictionaries:
http://wireless.stanford.edu/~rayw/bb.html
http://www.firstbasesports.com/basketball_glossary.html
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art1370.asp
http://www.yourdictionary.com/about/marchmadness.html
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/basketball/nba/stats/glossary.html
http://www.nba.com/espanol/terminos_nba.html
http://www.hickoksports.com/glossary/gbasketball.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basketball
A couple of basketball message boards:
http://grizzlies.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/frm/f/880608174
http://www.realgm.com/boards/index.php
If you want to see Nba games:
http://bt.davka.info/
http://atdhe.fr/
EVALUATION
The marks given for this task will be based in the oral presentations made by all the members of the group (40%) and the individual writing by each student (60%). It is essential that all the material is the students’ own writing, not just a “copy and paste” from websites (which is very easily discovered, by the way).
CONCLUSION
The aim of this webquest is to improve the students’ abilities when using the Internet to find information, as well as working on their oral and writing skills. A further point will be the development of team work, so students learn to work cooperatively. This task will also serve to show them that vocabulary is not just what is shown in the textbook, but that there are many areas with their own specialized lexicon that has little application out of that particular domain.
http://www.23jordan.com/bio1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jordan
http://www.nba.com/history/players/jordan_bio.html
About Larry Bird:
http://www.larrybird.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Bird
http://www.nba.com/history/players/bird_bio.html
About the Dream Team:
http://nba.com/history/dreamT_moments.html
http://www.usabasketball.com/history/moly_1992.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_men
Basketball glossaries and dictionaries:
http://wireless.stanford.edu/~rayw/bb.html
http://www.firstbasesports.com/basketball_glossary.html
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art1370.asp
http://www.yourdictionary.com/about/marchmadness.html
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/basketball/nba/stats/glossary.html
http://www.nba.com/espanol/terminos_nba.html
http://www.hickoksports.com/glossary/gbasketball.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basketball
A couple of basketball message boards:
http://grizzlies.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/frm/f/880608174
http://www.realgm.com/boards/index.php
If you want to see Nba games:
http://bt.davka.info/
http://atdhe.fr/
EVALUATION
The marks given for this task will be based in the oral presentations made by all the members of the group (40%) and the individual writing by each student (60%). It is essential that all the material is the students’ own writing, not just a “copy and paste” from websites (which is very easily discovered, by the way).
CONCLUSION
The aim of this webquest is to improve the students’ abilities when using the Internet to find information, as well as working on their oral and writing skills. A further point will be the development of team work, so students learn to work cooperatively. This task will also serve to show them that vocabulary is not just what is shown in the textbook, but that there are many areas with their own specialized lexicon that has little application out of that particular domain.
