“Disappearing Text”

Thanks to Gianfranco Conti for reminding me of an activity I used to use a lot with beginner and intermediate classes.

Let’s assume you’ve been working with a written text on the board. You’ve worked through a repertoire of interactions with the class - choral repetition, individual repetition, true/false, correcting false statements and traditional question-answer. You then want to fill around 5-10 minutes with more useful practice and input.

Just tell the class to close their eyes, remove a few words or phrases from that same text, then ask them to reread aloud the text to include the missing words. Then tell them to close their eyes again and repeat the process, removing more words each time. Keep going until all or nearly all of the text has disappeared.

Students enjoy short term memory activities like this. They get to hear and read language repeatedly, hold it in working memory and create more opportunity for that language to go into long term memory. In addition, the task is great if you have time to fill, e.g. your lesson plan has gone quicker than you planned. You can gap as many or as few words as you want, tailoring the task to the class in front of you.

Easy-peasy, low prep and highly effective!

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