that particular day. I would advise including a speaking exercise to give a change of
focus and tempo after the reading tasks; I also wouldn’t do the speaking last of all the
4 post-reading activities. I think it is also respectful to the class to spend some time
explaining the words that they didn’t know or that caused them difficulty during the
reading; by this, of course, I’m referring to language that hasn’t been studied
elsewhere in the lesson.
(i)
You can spend some time satisfying the students’ natural desire to want to
understand everything in the text. Tell them to pick 3 or 4 words from the text that they
would like to know the meaning of. Answer their questions within reason or allow them
to use dictionaries.
(ii) You can study language work arising from the text. This could be vocabulary
around the theme of the text; for example holiday activities if students have been
reading about holidays. There might be a tense that is prevalent in the text, e.g. simple
past or a variety of past tenses if the text is a narrative. You will need to focus
students’ attention on the structure or language; you can do this by simply writing it on
the board.
Alternatively, you can ask students to find a phrase (or phrases) that
expresses past actions. You can elicit the meaning of the phrase and/or do a brief
presentation. This can be followed by practice of the language point.
The structure you choose to focus on might not be in the text. For example, a text
about somebody who was late for an interview because he overslept could give rise to
a study of the third conditional (if he hadn’t overslept he would have arrived on time) or
I wish
to express past regrets (he wishes he hadn’t overslept). You can ask students
why the character was late for his interview (because he overslept) then present one,
or both, of the following: he wishes he hadn’t overslept; if he hadn’t overslept, he would
have arrived on time. For ideas on presenting and practising language, see Chapter 3.
Language work could also involve studying the specific organisation of the genre; for
example in a film review the first paragraph might describe the film, the second
paragraph might compare it to others of its type, the third paragraph might
recommend, or not, the reader to go and see it. For further information on the study of
genre, see Chapter 7. After this language focus, you can do some oral or written
practice of the structure or text type.
(iii) You can do a related speaking activity. Examples include:
students give their opinion on the subject of the text;
students can talk about their experiences of the subject; e.g. “have you ever done
this?” “If so, describe what you did and how you felt”. “If not, what would you find
difficult / enjoyable”, “Do you know anybody who has done this?” and so on;
students can talk about how the text makes them feel;
students can say how they would react in such a situation;
students can compare the text to their own lives: focusing on what is different and
what is similar;
47
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students can role-play an interview with one of the characters from the text for the
local newspaper;
students can invent a dialogue between 2 or more of the characters from the text.
(iv) You can encourage the students to deduce meanings from the text. Take a word
that is unfamiliar and that you think students can deduce from the context. You can
give clues to help them out, e.g.
Is it a verb, noun, adjective or other?
If verb: is it connected to movement, to thinking, etc?
If noun: is it found in the house? The street? Etc...
Help your students to get at least an approximation of the meaning.
For example, if you want your students to deduce the meaning of the word “sideboard”,
you could use the following sentence and questions:
Mr Jones came home, walked into the sitting room, took off his shoes and put his keys
on the sideboard.
Is sideboard a noun, verb or adjective? Noun.
Where would you find a sideboard? In a home, in a sitting room.
What category does a sideboard belong to: food, clothes or furniture? Furniture.
Using the above, students can guess that a sideboard is a piece of furniture found in a
sitting room.
At lower levels, or where students are not used to guessing meaning from context, you
can choose 5 or 6 unfamiliar words and write their definitions in disorder. Ask students
to match the words with their definitions; they can use the text as a guide, but not their
dictionaries.
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