TEFL Resources and Lesson Ideas

 Note: this idea comes from Humanising Your Coursebook, by Mario Rinvolucri. It is used here with permission.

Preparation:

Make copies of a reading passage from the last unit covered in your coursebook. I find it useful to enlarge the copies to about 110%.

Instructions:

Text-Stripping

1. Give each student a copy of the reading passage.
2. Ask them to delete all the adjectives;
3. Ask them to delete all the adverbs;
4. (With higher levels) ask them to delete all the conjunctions and to change the punctuation accordingly;
5. (With higher levels) ask them to delete any subordinate clauses.

Dictation

1. Give one student a pen and ask him/her to come to the board.
2. Ask the other students to dictate the reduced passage to this student.

Reconstruction

1. Pair the students.
2. Ask them to close their books and turn over their reading passage sheets.
3. Ask them to write out the passage as it was before.