Using a text - Development Activities

These are activities which encourage the learners to use English in order to develop their own text based on the one they’ve been reading. The aim is to get the students to revisit the text to deepen their understanding of it before developing a related text of their own.

Here’s an example for the text Beginners' guide.

Either:

Write a 250 word introduction to the Premier League for your school magazine. Try to inform and interest your schoolmates and to tell them something they don’t know. You can make use of the text you have just read, of your own knowledge of the Premier League and of any information you can find on the web or in newspapers and magazines.

Or:

Imagine what changes might take place in the Premier League between now and 2020 and then write a 250 word introduction to the Premier League for your school magazine in 2020.

Suggestions for setting the activities

1. Set activities which get students to use the content and language which they have read in the text to help them to write a related text of their own.
2. Either set activities which focus on the same subject as the text or which focus on a similar subject in the student’s own country.
3. Specify what the students should write about and what sort of text they should write (e.g. article, letter, report, advert, notice, poster, story etc).
4. Give students a choice of activities.

Suggestions for using the activities

1. Encourage students to use their inner voice to talk to themselves in English about what they are going to say in their text.
2. Encourage students to visualise what they are going to write about in their text.
3. Tell students to read the lesson text again before starting to write their own text. Tell them to look for information and language expressions which could help them when writing their own text.
4. Let the students write their text individually, in pairs or even in small groups if they want to.
5. As the students are writing make yourself available to provide any language help they need. Students learn best by being given language they really need at the time when they need it.
6. Get students to show their text to another student, pair or group and to ask for suggestions for improvement.
7. Don’t collect the student texts in until the students have done a Text Study activity.