ESL 111

Unit: Presidential Elections

Activity 2, handout 1

The Election System

Purposes:

1. To activate and reinforce reading strategies.

2) To facilitate effective group presentations.

3) To give students an idea of the workings of the American presidential election system.

Texts:

Jackson, J.S. (1991). Presidential Nominating Conventions.

Kessel, J.H. and J.E. McLean. (1991). Presidential Elections.

Longley, L.D. (1991). Electoral College System.

All in: Maisel, L.S. (1991). Political parties and elections in the United States: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing.

Introduction: When you do research in any topic, you are faced with lengthy texts that contain a good deal of extraneous information. Your job, then, is to extract the information you need as efficiently as possible.

Procedure:

1) You will be divided into 3 groups and each given a lengthy article to summarize for a presentation within 1 hour. Before you begin your work, however, you will be given 15 minutes to plan your strategy. Consider these questions as you plan:

a) What do we think the article is about (look at title, subheadings)? What questions should it answer?

b) How do we want to organize the information? (Possibilities to consider: outline form, flow chart, questions and answers)

c) Who is responsible for what? That is, how will tasks be divided?

d) How do we want to present our summary? (this may be decided later)

2) When you have decided the answers to the above questions, begin your research and summary. Remember that you only have 1 hour to finish; disregard any information that seems irrelevant!! If you finish early, you should practice your presentation.

3) As the presentations are being made, try to answer the questions in the handout I give you. If anything is not clear, be sure to ask about it.

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