We know that L2 reading is one of the most powerful activities we can do for acquisition, but how can we make sure it is comprehensible? How can we make reading more fun? How can we really get our learners to engage with a text? Watch this video for ideas on how really engage your learners with a L2 text.
Since the video is long, you can jump to the following scenes:
1:20 An example of a long form, 4 paragraph story
1:46 Reading and comprehension questions
5:01 Personalized discussion questions
9:54 Choral translation
12:32 Written translation
14:00 Volleyball/Ping Pong reading
12:10 Readers Theater
19:48 Read, Draw, and Tell
22:22 Read and write a parallel paragraph
24:50 Other suggestions/advice with reading
Every world language teacher must be familiar with Marcos Benevides work on extensive reading. We think that if our learners know most of the text they will be fine. However, when you can only understand 80% of a text you will want to immeadiately give up. Find ways to make your texts 95%+ comprehensible. More on his work here.
Here is an example of a long form four paragraph text I use very often in my program: