Reading Activities Inventory

 This inventory may help you design reading activities sequences for your lessons

and your materials design project.

 Your reading comprehension sequences should have the following structure:

1. Pre- reading Activities

2. While – Reading Activities:

- Reading for General Purposes

- Reading for Specific Purposes

3. Post Reading Activities

4. Focus on specific linguistic items: vocabulary/grammar

1- General Suggestions:

a- Begin with learner’s actual experiences

b- Draw on students’ background knowledge/concepts

c- Develop background knowledge/ concepts

d- Make students compare and contrast their knowledge/ concepts, experiences

etc.

e- Make students find out how concepts, ideas, etc. relate to their lives

f- Make them research work on these aspects through reading, films, songs,

writing etc.

g- Make students plan appropriate actions related to their lives, eventually resulting

in change

h- Build students’ self -confidence by developing a positive self-image through

valuing their own language and culture

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 2- Before Reading Activities

2.1 Make students discuss these questions and their possible answers:

a- What is this text? How do you know?

b- What is its function? How do you know?

c- What is its source? How do you know?

d- What is its general layout?

2.2 Make students have a look at the visuals and the title. Ask them to predict what the

text may be about and to justify their hypotheses

2.3 Ask general questions on the pictures, topic and situations

a- What do you know about this topic/ situation?

b- What is your personal experience related to it?

c- What is your general knowledge related to it?

d- What questions would you ask about this topic/ situation?

e- What don’t you know and would like to know about it?

f- What essential expressions / vocabulary can you suggest (in

English/Spanish) connected with this topic/situation?

Or give them a chart similar to the following one to fill in:

What I know about this topic:

What I don’t know about it:
What I want to know:
What I expect to find in the text:

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 3- During Reading Activities

3.1 Ask the students to read the text to have a general idea of it

3.2 Have them suggest an organization chart of the text

3.3 Ask students to suggest where the Main Idea(s) or topics(s) is/ are located and

to underline them

3.4 Ask them to justify their decisions

3.5 Ask the students to re-read the text to find the words, phrases, expressions they

suggested (predicted) in 2.1

3.6 Ask them to find transparent words and words they can recognize from the

context

3.7 Ask the students to underline the words they still have problems with

3.8 Ask them to guess the meaning of those words through context

3.9 Ask them to look up in a dictionary the meaning of the difficult words

3.10 Ask them to try and give a definition, a synonym, an antonym, a family set of

those words

3.11 Ask them to keep a Self - Monitoring List. You can use the following model:

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 Self- Monitoring Checking List
Name: Partner(s): Text:
Date:
What I/we am/are expected to do: What I/we really do:

- Look at the text/situation to

discover its origin/ source,
function, organization
- Predict content/ meaning from
the visuals, title, other clues
- Connect the topic/ situation with
our/my own experience,
knowledge, life, etc.
- Read the text without stopping at
every new word
- Take into account things, signs,
symbols I/we already know
(numbers, dates, transparent
words, abbreviations, drawings,
etc.)
- Extract the text’s general idea
and purpose first.
- Re-read to extract more detailed,
specific information

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 4- After Reading Activities

4.1 Ask the students to discuss this question:

What have I/we learnt?

4.2 Ask them to provide a short summary of the text (oral/written), or

4.3 Ask them to fill a guided retelling of the text, which they may read out (or not)

4.4 Ask them to share their retellings

4.5 Ask them to agree upon one version

4.6 Ask them to spot their predictions in the text

4.7 Ask the group to find out the different functions of language (explaining, describing,

introducing, concluding, etc) and how they are realized (the linguistic exponents)

4.8 Ask them to draw semantic maps (words that belong to the same semantic group)

4.9 Ask the students to synthesize the topic in one two sentences in English

4.10 Ask them to draw their conclusions about the topic/situation and express them in one

sentence

4.11 Ask them to compare the linguistic elements in English and their possible/probable

similarities with Spanish.