Things to Do with Content-based Material
Manipulation
- Matching
- left & right columns
- headings with content
- pictures with captions
- Ordering
(material must have inherent ordering - time, logic, coherence markers)
- mixed paragraphs
- randomly ordered pictures
- randomly ordered sentences
- Outlining
- boiling the passage down to its essentials
Guessing/Creating
- cloze passages
Song, movie, interesting reading with predictable sections. Students fill in the blanks by guessing from the context, and/or through multiple passes through the audio tape or video.
- creating an ending
- brainstorming more items similar to those in text
- brainstorm advice for 'Dear Abby'-type questions
- developing a plan
(From timetables, maps, event info)
Take off point
Have students role-play opinions of people on page
Analysis
- Straightforward questions on content
- Evaluation/classification according to a set of criteria
- which you like/dislike
- which are relevant for you
- which are suitable for children/teenagers/adults
- which are advantages/disadvantages
- Ferreting out same set of facts from multiple sets of info
(each set might mention a time, place, price, event, etc.)
Information gap activities (back-to-back)
- Same set of information but with different items deleted
- Similar sets of info & structured set of questions
- Student 1 - Amtrak schedule from New York to Washington, DC
- Student 2 - Night train schedule from London to Edinburgh
- One S describes and the other S attempts to find it.