Using a text - While reading activities

These are activities which are designed to help your students to experience the text holistically as we do in the first language rather than to study it discretely as students usually do in a foreign language. The activities are intended to help the students to respond to the text in similar ways to those they would if they were reading it in their first language. The instructions are given to the students before they start reading but they are carried out by the students whilst they are reading.

Procedure

Here’s an example of a whilst-reading activity for the text Beginners' guide

1. As you read the text try to see pictures in your mind of players from the Premier League teams which are mentioned.
2. Also talk to yourself about any information which is new to you.

Here’s another example of a while-reading activity. This one’s for the text The Nike Premier League Ball

As you read decide whether you think the Premier League ball is similar to the one you wanted.

Suggestions for setting the activities

1. Keep the activity simple and global. If you ask the learners toconcentrate too much you’ll be making the reading more difficult rather than easier.
2. Try to focus the activity on such high level mental skills as visualisation, inner speech, interpretation, evaluation, prediction etc.

Suggestions for using the activities

1. Make the activity very clear to the students just before they start to read.
2. It’s sometimes useful to say why you’re asking the students to do a particular whilst-reading activity (e.g. justifying a visualisation activity by saying briefly why visualising whilst reading in English is useful).
3. It's important to reassure the students that they don’t need to understand every word in the passage and that they’re not going to be asked comprehension questions on what they’ve read.