about "Global Warming and Extreme Weather"

the Global Warming Series

“Global Warming and Extreme Weather” is the first of a planned series of readings on global warming. It is approximately 1600 words long and, according to a free, online testing service, it has a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of approximately 10 and a Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease Rating of approximately 55.

I’m hoping it will be useful reading material for “upper intermediate” or “intermediate/advanced” ESL students.

The tentative plan is for a series of between ten and fifteen readings of approximately the same length and the same level of difficulty as “Extreme Weather.”

Other topics that might be covered are: greenhouse gases; carbon dioxide; fossil fuels; average temperature increases; glacial melting; tropical expansion; sea level increases; species extinction; spread of disease; feedback effects; global warming scepticism; social effects of global warming

what I have tried to do

The plan is that the items in the series will have a definite order.The first readings will deal with the scientific background. A second group of readings will concentrate on explaining what the theory of global warming is and why scientists generally believe that it is true. A third group will be concerned with various types of evidence which seem to support the theory and with predictions about possible future effects of global warming. Possibly, there will be a fourth group dealing with less scientific aspects of the subject such as the doubts that some people have about the truth of the theory and ideas about how global warming might affect human society in the future.

Although “Extreme Weather” is meant to be part of an ordered series which will be “cumulative” in the sense that the later items will be more easily understood by students who have read the earlier items, I’ve tried to make it a “standalone reading,” so that it could be used independently of any of the others. I intend to do the other readings in the same way. (The introductory paragraph of “Extreme Weather” is a brief statement of the Global Warming Theory. Its purpose is to provide the minimal amount of background information required to ensure that a student who knew nothing of the theory would be able to undertstand the reading. The idea is to use the same paragraph or a similar one as an introduction to all or most of the readings. )

I see “Extreme Weather” as a sort of prototype for the other readings in the series.I’ve tried to make it a readable mix of (1) basic science (e.g. the explanations of evaporation and rainfall) (2) a general explanation of one particular aspect of the Global Warming Theory (the idea that one of the dangers of global warming is extreme weather) and (3) a more detailed description of a situation which apparently shows that global warming is already causing extreme weather (the recent Australian drought).

At the moment there are no supplementary materials for “Extreme Weather” I hope that within the next few weeks I’ll be able to provide a set of multiple choice questions, a vocabulary quiz, and some “Grammar and Meaning Notes” as well.

where the idea for this reading, and the series, came from

My idea for this series came from “outside“ my work on flesl.net. Up until early last year (2006) I had no special interest in global warming theory. Then I happened to see Al Gore’s famous film “An Inconvenient Truth“ and shortly after that, by chance once again, I saw the BBC documentary “The Global Warming Swindle.“ Impressed as I was by the first, the second one did raise in my mind serious doubts as to whether global warming was as serious a threat as Al Gore claimed it was.

A couple of months or so later a friend of mine told me of a lecture which he had attended by a climate scientist who is a strong supporter of the global warming theory. And he gave me a copy of an essay by this scientist. About the same time another friend sent me an article, which he had come across and which, like “The Global Warming Swindle,” denounced the theory as a fraud.

As a result of these events, I came to feel a need for a logical, fact-based answer to the question: is global warming a really serious threat or not? I also realized, however, that because the subject was so complex, coming to even a tentative “personal conclusion” about it was going to take a lot of work —and, of course, a lot of time.

Progress with flesl.net had been even slower than usual and I certainly didn’t feel I had the time to go more deeply into global warming. But then I had an idea: perhaps I could kill two birds with one stone by doing an ESL reading on the subject. So I embarked on what I thought would be a short detour—a pleasant return to doing some real writing, two and a half years or so after finishing the paired stories.

The first idea was to cover the whole subject with one reading of approximately the length of “Extreme Weather.“ But after two or three weeks of working on the project, it had become clear that to say anything that was detailed enough to be useful was going to require a lot more than 1500 words. I had no choice but to abandon the whole thing or to take on a project that was far larger than the one I had orignally imagined. By that time, I was enjoying myself too much to stop, so I kept going.

I’ve always felt that 1500 words is pretty much the maximum size for a useful ESL reading. So I decided that the best way to do what I wanted to do would be to put together a collection of “modules” of that size. After writing rough drafts of six or seven of these, I found myself “stuck” on the extreme weather reading; the main problem was just finding the right kind of material. At this point,I began to have doubts about the practicality of the whole project and decided to push toward a “finished” version of “Extreme Weather” in the hopes of convincing myself that I really could do what I was attempting to do.

what I’d like to know

I’m fairly happy with the results of these efforts, happy enough, at least, that I feel I definitely want to keep going. But I would very much like to have some good feedback on “Extreme Weather” before getting down to work on the other readings. I’ll be able to work more quickly and more effectively if I know how some teachers or students have reacted to what I’ve done so far. I’ve listed a few questions below, but only as a way to encourage responses; I’m eager to hear anything that anyone has to about “Extreme Weather” or about the whole global warming project I’ve described above.

So please send your comments and criticisms and suggestions to me at “flREMOVEun@sympatico.ca.”

Some questions:
(1) Is the degree of difficulty of “Extreme Weather” appropriate for any of the levels in your program? Is the subject matter likely to be attractive to the students in your program? To the teachers?

(2) Are the ideas and facts discussed in the article logically connected to one another? Is the overall structure of the article logical? In other words is the reading coherently?

(3) Are the individual sentences of the article written so as to make the connections between the facts and ideas as clear as possible? In other words, is the writing cohesive.

(4) Is the tone, or “register,” of the reading too colloquial—or too academic?

(5) Do you have any experience in using Flesch-Kincaid or any other measure of reading difficulty in assessing ESL materials? If so, do you think these tests are useful?