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A different way to approach a written text

When you work with a written text, for example at A-level, common practice would be to do a read-aloud, engage in some meaning-focused activities, e.g. questions and answers, general discussion, summary, then go on to do what researchers call 'form-focused' or 'language focused' work. This means looking at and practising aspects of vocabulary and grammar. That's all fine. It satisfies the basics of language learning: comprehensible input, interaction and some focus on form. If the text covers a relevant and interesting cultural topic, so much the better.

But how about a twist on this approach? Here is an alternative:

1. Give students a set of questions to ask about a text they cannot see. The teacher has a copy of the text.

2. Students take turn to ask you questions from the list which you answer, using our copy of the text.

3. As you answer, students take notes in L2 (or maybe L1).

4. After about twenty minutes, students can compare and discuss their notes in pairs.

5. Optionally, students could spend 10 minutes at this point writing a concise summary of their answers.

6. You then hand out copies of the text so students can read what they have been hearing about about.

7. You can then deal with any form-focused practice, including grammar exercises, writing, summary and so on.


I rather like this as a lesson plan for a few reasons:

1. Most important. There is an element of the 'information gap' (communicative) approach going on, especially in the early stages of question-answer. The students are missing information they need to find. There is an element of discovery and puzzle-solving.

2. There is a strong focus on listening for meaning and detail, as well as interaction. In a lesson like this, all four skills are used in an integrated way.

3. The emphasis on summary is a useful transferable skill for the current A-level exam in England. (In this exam, students have to write two summaries - one of a written text, one of an aural text.)

4. It makes a change from standard practice!

By the way, I would be amazed if this were original, but it's certainly an approach I never used myself.

For another twist on exploiting A-level level texts in a potentially more communicative way, have a look at this post.

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