5 fun ways to exploit a written text

Reading a large amount of information can indeed be heavy on adults as well as younger students. Here are a few activities that I have found raise the level of engagement with written texts:

1. Pronunciation Buzz

Students work in pairs. One student reads aloud, and the other student listens. If the student reading makes a mistake, their partner must make a loud 'ZZZZZ!' sound and correct them. The person reading must then go back to the beginning and read again. The rate of progress with this activity can be very fast and the students enjoy it!

2. Recognition shouts

First, decide on the focus. For example, if you have been studying the imperfect tense in French, tell the students that they must shout 'whoop whoop!' whenever they spot a verb in the imperfect tense in the text. Students take it in turns to read, pausing when their classmates shout out at the structure when they see and hear it. This can be done as a class or in pairs.

3. Multiple choice gap fills

Students are given a text with gaps where there is more than one possible correct choice provided in a box below. This allows students to consider different possibilities and cover more vocabulary than if there were just one correct word.

4. Race your partner

5. Put the text in order