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 You
can use this technique with virtually any text or dialogue from
Tieng Anh or English 10, 11 and 12. It requires a little preparation
before the lesson, but you can use again and again or share with
a colleague who is teaching the same book.
Luong Thi Mong
Hong and Nguyen Quynh Tram in Ho Chi Minh City used this activity
with the ‘Motion Pictures’ text from English 11.
Choose 3 paragraphs
to dictate from your coursebook. Write a gapped version of the text
on the board. About half the text should be missing. Dictate the
text very slowly AND ASK THE STUDENTS TO TAKE DOWN ONLY THE WORDS
MISSING FROM THE BOARD. In their texts they leave gaps that correspond
to the words on the board. Rub out the words on the board. Ask the
students to work in pairs and fill the gaps in their texts. Now
tell them to check their texts against the text in the coursebook.
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Write
The Text Before You Read It |
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 A
good way to stimulate students’ interest in a topic or a text.
(This activity works best with texts that contain some kind of story
rather than with ‘factual’ texts.)
Tried out by
Vo Thanh Long and Thai Duy Ngoay in Nghe An.
Give the students
8 or 10 words from the text they are going to read and ask them
to write the text using not more than 4 times as many words as you
have given them. They should include all the given words. Alternatively,
you could ask students to talk together and create the story orally.
When they have finished, they should read the original text to see
how close their version was.
Alternative
This alternative is suggested by Nguyen Thi Hong Tien in Thai Nguyen
– Instead of choosing a text, choose a dialogue. Give students
the situation of the dialogue and some of the key words and ask
them to write their own dialogue. Then get them to compare their
dialogue with the one in the textbook.
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 An
easy-to-prepare gist reading activity that can be applied to any
text. Before the lesson you will have to prepare the paragraph headings.
Idea suggested
by Tu Thanh Quang and Duong Thanh Hoai in Danang, who used this
activity with the ‘Conservation’ text from the English
12.
Before the lesson,
think of a suitable heading for each paragraph from your text, e.g.:
A Protecting
wild-life
B Conserving minerals
C Reducing air pollution
D Managing Forests
Write the headings
on the board. Ask students to read the text and match the headings
to the paragraphs in the text. [To make it more difficult, you could
add some extra headings to ‘distract’ the students.]
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 A
very good activity for those students in your class that have strongly
linguistic brains.
This activity
was applied by Mai Cong Thanh and Ngo Van Thanh in Nam Dinh gave
this activity a go during the workshop peer teaching.
Write a sentence
from a text of about 10 words, e.g.
I must say that
my great passion in life is studying.
The students
suggest substitutes: one, two or three words that could be rubbed
out and others (not necessarily exactly the same number) put in
their place.
I must say that
my great passion in life is watching football.
I can’t say that my great passion in life is watching football.
I can’t say that my only passion in life is watching football.
I can’t believe that my only passion in life is watching football.
And so on….
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 A
useful activity to stimulate students who have strongly visual minds
Idea suggested
by Tu Thanh Quang and Duong Thanh Hoai in Khanh Hoa, who used this
activity with the ‘Steamboat Coming’ text from the English
textbook series.
Ask students
to draw a picture representing the content of a text. When they
have done this, they should show their pictures to other students
and explain their picture.
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A nice way to
follow up a reading passage with a speaking (or writing) activity.
Idea from Vo
Thi Thuy Anh and Bui Thi Quynh Van in Hue. They applied this activity
to the reading text, ‘Being a Welcome Guest’ in English
12.
Think about
the topic of the reading text. Write down 4 or 5 statements relating
to the topic, e.g.:
Women in Vietnam
nowadays are used to being independent.
Women in Vietnam always shake hands when introduced to men.
You have to bring gifts when you are invited to someone’s
house.
You must help the host or the hostess with cooking in the kitchen
when you are invited to dinner at someone’s house.
In pairs, ask
your students to discuss the statements and whether they agree or
disagree with them. Discuss as a class afterwards.
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A
little preparation needed here (either handouts if you can get them,
or a poster, or part of a text written on the blackboard), but a useful
and challenging task for students. Activity
and adaptation from Thuy and Phuong in Ho Chi Minh City
Take a paragraph
of any text you have been studying. Write it out on a poster/ handout/
blackboard, but without including any of the punctuation. Ask students
to copy. Read out the paragraph twice. Students listen and put in
the punctuation where they think it should be. Finally, students
check in the textbook to see if their punctuation is the same.
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First
and Last Letter Dictation |
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This is
a variation of the ‘last three letter dictation’ which
appeared in Issue 4 of the VTTN newsletter. Again, it’s easy
to do, requires absolutely no preparation and gets all the students
involved and active. You’ll need to be careful to give clear
instructions though. Applied
to the English textbooks by teacher in Ho Chi Minh City
Choose a short
passage from the coursebook. Tell the students to write down the
first and last letter of each word, leaving the right spaces between
them. (This helps students visualise how the whole word is spelt).
Dictate the passage. Ask the students to work in pairs and fill
in the missing letters. Check with a partner and then with the original
text.
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This is
a great activity for those students in your class who find it difficult
to sit still! You’ll need to be careful how you organise it
as it can easily get out of control, but I’m sure your students
will enjoy it. You could use this for either dictating a passage from
a textbook text, or to dictate some comprehension questions. Make
sure you tell neighbouring teachers before you do this, as it can
become a bit noisy! This
activity was suggested by Pham Thanh Hien and Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh
in Binh Dinh.
Stick a piece
of paper onto the board with either part of a text or some comprehension
questions on it. Divide the class into small groups or rows. One
person – the runner – from each group (from the end
of the row) should go to the board, read a small part of the text,
return to their group and dictate what they can remember. The others
write it down. The ‘runner’ goes backwards and forwards
to the board until the group has completed the whole text.
Students can then either check with the textbook text or answer
the comprehension questions.
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Get the
students doing the hard work, but let them enjoy themselves at the
same time with this fun dictation, a variation on an old favourite,
the ‘whistle’ dictation. This
activity was suggested by Nguyen The Hai and Ha Thi Hoai Lam in
Thanh Hoa.
Choose a suitable
part of a textbook text or dialogue that your students have studied
recently. Prepare the text with some gaps. Dictate the text to the
students. Every time you come to a gap, you should say ‘orange’!
Students listen, write and when they hear the word orange, they
should choose a suitable word to go in the gap.
Example
My mother and ‘orange’ got married in 1963.
‘Orange’ = father.
Alternatives
Change the word
‘orange’ to any other funny word!
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A lovely way to turn a reading text into a listening exercise. It
also has a competitive element to keep your students on their toes.
Idea from Nguyen
Thuy Vong and Pham Ngoc Lan in Yen Bai and also (independently)
from Le Thi Lam Huong and Hoang Cao Huy Tram in Hue
Choose a short
passage from the coursebook that your students have recently been
studying. Read out the passage slowly but change some of the factual
information. The students should listen and shout ‘STOP’
when they here a factual mistake. They should then correct the mistake.
Teacher continues reading until the end of the passage.
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This
is a very simple way to introduce a dialogue to students. As with
all the best activities it requires virtually no preparation. And
an added bonus – the students will be doing all the hard work,
not you!! This
activity was road-tested by Nguyen Thi Huong Giang in Thanh Hoa
and also by Ha Thi Hong and Dinh Thi Thu Huong in Thai Nguyen.
Dictate the
lines of any dialogue from your textbook, but dictate the lines
in the WRONG order. Students listen and write down what you say.
When you have finished, ask students to re-write the whole dialogue
in the RIGHT order. Then ask them to check with the dialogue in
their textbook. Afterwards, continue your lesson as planned.
Alternative
Give the students a whole textbook text but cut up into paragraphs.
Ask them to read the paragraphs and put them in the right order.
Then they can read the original text to check. This idea was suggested
by Nguyen Thi Thu Huyen and Nguyen Thi Tuyet in Yen Bai.
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This is a very
nice way to review a text that students have just been working on
and a good way to introduce a speaking element into a reading lesson.
It’s also good fun as students have to remember increasingly
long stretches of language.
Suggested by
Truong Thi Lan and Tu Mai Vinh in Nghe An.
Based on the
content of the lesson, students have to ‘retell’ the
text in their own words. They have to do this together with other
students.
The first student gives the first line of the ‘retelling’,
e.g.:
“Jim saw
Peter yesterday…”
The second student
must repeat this and then add the next part, e.g.:
“Jim saw
Peter yesterday, but Peter didn’t see Jim….”
The third student
repeats everything that has gone before and then adds a new part
to the text and so on….. until the ‘retelling’
is complete.
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In this activity, students learn to cope with the ‘difficulties’
of listening – people speaking too fast, lots of background
noise etc. They also have the chance to ‘control’ the
teacher for a short time!
This activity
was applied by Nguyen Van Hang and Ha Van Hai in Nam Dinh province.
Draw the symbols
of a tape player on the board. Ask students what the buttons are
called:-
Go back to… Play Stop
Take part of
a text and read it out at normal speed. Students have to write it
down as quickly as possible. If you are going too fast they should
say “stop, go back to…, play etc.” in order to
control the speed of the dictation. The first student to finish
is the winner! Students can then check with the text in the book.
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A
quick and easy post-reading (or post-listening) activity. This
activity was tested out on the ‘Everybody’s Jogging’
text in the English series by Truong Thi Bich Hong and Pham Thi
Phuong Dung in Binh Dinh.
Ask students
to open their textbooks at a text they have recently been working
on. Ask them to read it rapidly. Ask them to close their books.
Write a list of 15 words on the board, including 5 which were in
the text, 5 which look like/sound like/ mean the same as words in
the text and 5 which were not in the text. Ask the students to discuss
and identify all the words which they have just read. The results
are usually quite surprising!!
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This is a very simple pre-reading activity which requires no preparation
and involves all students at the same time. Students get to read
a text and try to answer their own questions instead of the ones
in the textbooks
Oanh and Nhat
in Ho Chi Minh City used this activity with the environment text
from Unit 4 of English 12 – you can adapt it for virtually
any other text, though!
Write the title
of the reading on the board. Ask students to draw a picture relating
to the environment and to discuss with a partner. Ask students to
then write down 5 questions connected with the environment and conservation
that they would like to know the answers to. Students ask their
partners the questions to see if they can answer. Students then
read the text to see if the answers to their own questions are in
the text.
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