Exploiting texts

Damaged text
Aim of the activity To promote the development of intensive reading skills and raise awareness of text organisation. To check comprehension. Preparation Choose a piece of text and make one copy for each student or pair of students with the ending of each line missing. You can do this by photocopying the text and then cutting the page off down the right-hand side or by concealing the endings on the master copy with a piece of paper. (The more you cut off, the more difficult this exercise becomes.) Procedure Tell the students that they are going to read a passage, but that you have accidentally cut off the endings of each line. Their job is to finish off the lines so that the text makes sense. When they have done that, they should compare results. Check answers open class. Compare the students answers with the actual words missing from the text. Discuss mistakes as well as any acceptable variations the students may offer.

Story reordering
Aim of the activity To raise awareness of text organisation through the use of cohesive and lexical devices. Preparation You could use the example reading text about Shopping for jeans from English File 2 workbook, given out in the session. However, any story with clear development can be used. Chop up copies of the article into segments. For clarity, dont have any more than 7 sections. Split the class into groups and hand out a chopped up copy to each group. Make sure each student has one or two parts of the story and tell them to keep the segment hidden from other members of their group. Procedure Students take turns to read the sections they have and then re-assemble the text by standing in the correct order and then reading aloud to the class to check. Students still must not look at other students segments! Checking at this stage should only be oral. The first group to stand in the right order is the winner. The correct order is then placed on the OHP for all students to check and references and linkers between paragraphs can be highlighted.

1 @Lake School

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10 questions
Aim of the activity A pre-reading task creating student interest in the topic. Preparation You just need a text with an interesting title in front of you. Procedure Put the title on the board. The students must now ask you 10 yes or no questions to find out what the article is about. You keep a record of how many questions they have asked and if the activity becomes too difficult you can add key words from the article to guide them. The aim is to beat the teacher and get the gist of the article before the 10 questions are finished.

Word bingo
Aim of activity To set the scene and raise students interest in the article. To help students choose, listen for and identify key words in a text. Preparation A wordle is prepared from the article on line. Make sure all of the words are the same size. Use www.worditout.com Procedure Students look at the words in the wordle and predict what the article is about. Students then choose 9 of the words and write them in a 3x3 bingo grid. The teacher then reads out part of the text and when students hear their word they can cross it out. The first student with 3 in a line shouts bingo, the game continues and the first student to get all 9 words (a full house) then shouts bingo. Afterwards the text is handed out and students can check it by reading through.

2 @Lake School

Email: enquiries@englishinoxford.com

Text prediction
Aim of the activity A pre-reading task to engage the students interest. Formulating questions and skimming an article. Preparation Copies of the text for you and the students.

Procedure Put the article title or headline on the board. I use Russian survives snooze on train track as an example. The students write 5 questions they hope will be answered when the read the article. For instance: Why was the Russian snoozing? How long did he sleep for? Did he get hit by a train? Students check the grammatical accuracy of their questions in pairs and then the article can be handed out for them to check if their questions were answered.

Whispering dictation
Aim of the activity A fun multi-skilled activity that helps students to focus on listening, pronunciation, writing and spelling. Preparation A short, fun text is needed for this activity. One of the above pre-reading tasks should be done as a lead-in. Procedure Students are put into pairs. One from each pair takes the article and keeps it hidden at all times from their partner. They then sit directly facing their partner and whisper the text to their partner as clearly as they can. The other student must write down what they hear. The whispering student can stop, clarify and repeat words and segments. The aim of the activity is for the other student to write down the complete text as accurately as possible. After 5 minutes the teacher says change and the students must swap roles. The first pair to finish with the fewest mistakes is the winner. This whispering dictation is a good way of bringing noise levels down in a loud classroom. Alternative procedures include:

3 @Lake School

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Running dictation, where the article is posted up on the walls and student A runs back and forth from student B remembering and dictating chunks of the sentences. Student A cannot remove the article from its position on the other side of the classroom. Shouting dictation this activity is very noisy and suitable for classes of shy and quiet students who dont like speaking loudly in English. Student A stands with the text against the far wall and Student B stands against the nearest wall with notepad and pen. Student A then shouts the text at his opposite partner and s/he writes down what s/he hears asking for clarification as necessary. Its best if there are two or three different texts being dictated at the same time otherwise it becomes too difficult for the students to focus on their partners voice! Have fun!

Collocation deletion activity

Aim of activity Noticing the importance of strong and weak collocations in texts.

Preparation Photocopies of text A and text B. Descriptions of holiday destinations are good because they are rich in collocation. Thick black pens or correction fluid is also needed. Procedure Half the class gets text A and the other half gets text B. In A and B groups the students must black or white out half of a strong collocation within the text. After 10 words have been deleted from view the students then swap their texts. Groups A and B now have a word gap activity created for them by the other group and now they have to write the correct word back into the gaps. The aim of the activity is to get as many words correct as possible. Afterwards hand out a complete copy of the texts for students to check. The teacher can write up on the board any disparities and see if these alternative collocations are also valid.

4 @Lake School

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Punctuate a text
Aim of the activity To focus on sentence structure and punctuation. Preparation Choose a short text. Rewrite it with all punctuation taken out. Procedure Ask the students to work in pairs. Give each pair of students a copy of the text and ask them to punctuate it. Compare results. Give each pair of students a copy of the original text and ask them to correct their own version.

Scrunched-up stories
Aim A fun group activity to encourage students to make reasoned guesses about the content of an article. Preparation Choose and cut out a number of longer stories of at least half a page in length. Scrunch up the pages into a ball so thats its impossible to read everything. Procedure 1) Give one of these text-balls to each group, who can look all around it but may not touch or open it. 2) Their task is to guess what the story is and write a one sentence summary of what they think their article is about. 3) Collect these summaries in and then redistribute them. 4) Groups now look at different texts around the room trying to work out which summary goes with each text. 5) Text-balls could be un-scrunched to find out how well the students guessed the full stories.

5 @Lake School

Email: enquiries@englishinoxford.com