Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 2; March 03

Many texts

Ages 11 and up
Levels Elementary–Advanced
Time 15-40 minutes
Focus Scanning, reading carefully, mutual dictation, conversation, vocabulary for particular topics and/or aspects of culture (depending on the texts).
Materials Handouts as described under 'Preparation'

This is a quintessential mixed-proficiency activity in that it doesn't matter how many of the texts particular students read, just so long as they get through a couple at least. It is usable with texts such as ones seen on signs (Don't even think about parking here!), , pen pal ads, book and website blurbs, short jokes, proverbs, short poems (or verses of longer ones), song stanzas (or refrains), news-in-brief articles, passages from short stories and novels, authentic emails, product labels, and consumer-association product reports. I find it works especially well with lonely hearts ads.

Preparation

1. Find 10-40 short texts. (The higher the level of your class, the more texts you will need and the longer they might be.) The procedure below describes a use of lonely hearts ads. If you do not live in an English-speaking country, these are readily findable at the websites of various newspapers (e.g., The New York Times.).
2. Mount your texts on sheets of blank paper (or do this electronically), putting the shortest and easiest texts first, and make a class set of copies.
3. Think of a few appropriate gist questions for Step 2 below.

Procedure

1. Lead a brief discussion about the kind of text you are going to use—e.g.,
   • What are 'lonely hearts' ads?, What are the pro's and con's of finding a partner that way?, What kinds of thing do people tend to write in them?
   • Where can you find 'for sale' ads? What are typical things that people offer for sale?
   • Why might it be good to have a pen pal in another country? What do people put in an ad for a pen pal?
2. Briefly describe your handout and set a small number of scanning or gist reading tasks. For example—
   • If you are going to give out lonely hearts ads, ask students to read and decide which texts were written by people who seem to be (a) honest, (b) interested in material things, (c) interested in religion or the spiritual side of life.
   • If ads offering things for sale, ask them to find ones offering (a) the cheapest thing, (b) something you couldn't take home in your car, (c) something that is almost certainly out-of-date.
   • If song stanzas, ask them to find one (a) about rejecting someone, (b) about being rejected, (c) about being happy in love, (d) not about love at all.
3. Distribute the handouts and ask everyone to read as many articles as they can within a set a time (long enough for your best readers to get through all of them).
4. Call time and elicit answers to your gist tasks.
5. Form pairs. Ask everyone to choose a one of the texts that is interesting to them for any reason. Add that partners should choose different texts.
6. In pairs, students each dictate their favourite text to their partner and say why they found it interesting. (If it is a poem or bit of a song lyric, they should also say what they think it means.)

Following on

• From memory, students try to write their own text; where memory for exact working fails, they try to express the original meaning in their own words.
• Ask everyone to choose a bit of new vocabulary and do 'Memory poster circles' (but you have to buy the book for this).

Variations

• Before you hand out the texts, dictate a few phrases from some of them. The first reading task is then to scan the texts and underline these phrases.
• If you are using lonely hearts ads, look for ones with acronyms and abbreviations in them. The first reading task is to scan the ads and underline all the acronyms and other abbreviations. Call time and tell students to turn their papers over. Ask what acronyms they found and give/elicit the full forms (e.g., WLTM = 'would like to meet', ISO = 'in search of', TLC = 'tender loving care', GSOH = 'good sense of humour', NS = 'non-smoker'). Then, move on to Step 2 of the main procedure.
• If the texts have titles, cut them off. During Step 3, write them on the board. After doing Step 4, ask students to re-read the texts and try to figure out which title goes with which text.
• Collect texts of the same general sort but from different countries—e.g., 'Personals' (i.e., lonely hearts ads) from 'The New York Times online' and 'Matrimonials' from 'The Times of India online'. The differences can stimulate interesting discussions.
• Present texts of many sorts. The initial reading task (Step 2) is then to label each text as to type—e.g., 'pen pal ad', 'news article', 'job wanted ad', 'work wanted ad'.

Comment Now that the internet teems with texts of every conceivable sort, composing suitable handouts is thoroughly feasible for anyone with access to a computer and a printer. Dave's ESL Café offers links to pen pal sites. For more ideas on how to use short texts, see both of the following excellent books by Alan Maley: Short and Sweet (1993) and Short and Sweet 2 (1994). Penguin.

Seth Lindstromberg