How can I introduce the text?
When students are less familiar with the background to a text, initial hypothesis-building can be usefully prompted by the teacher supplying an oral introduction to provide helpful information that cannot be gleaned from the text itself (eg on the conceptual background, the source of the text, the context in which it appeared). This need not, indeed should not, become a mini-lecture but should seek to involve students and to draw out from them a number of key points of information through carefully targeted questioning. For example, with a text discussing German unification in 1990, it would be important to understand the history of post-war Germany, and such questions as the following could elicit key background facts from students themselves:
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When did the Second World War end? When was the FRG created? What was the 'Iron Curtain'? What role did the Allies play in post-war Germany? What was the Berlin Wall? What do you know about the GDR? |
Another effective way to introduce a text is to arouse students' curiosity and to increase their motivation to read the text in order to solve problems or seek clues to answer a question. Consider the following two examples:
- With a narrative text about
the suicide of a powerful industrialist, after you have given some information
on the man's or woman's life, job and company, students might be asked
to consider 'What could make a person at the top of his/her profession
take his/her own life?', and you could run through possible scenarios
for which students would have to find evidence in their reading.
- Try to personalise a text so as to make it more relevant to the learners and gain their interest. On a text about xenophobia in Switzerland, for instance, you might preview content by asking: 'Have you ever experienced prejudice abroad or in this country? How would you feel if this happened to you? What would you do if someone verbally abused you as a foreigner?', etc.
One needs, of course, to be careful not to put learners in a difficult position if the subject matter is too close to home; one could imagine this might apply to the second of these examples, in particular.
The question of whether information imparted and elicited in these ways should be L1- or L2-medium is perhaps of less importance than ensuring the introduction observes the following guidelines:
- Make sure it is relevant to the content.
- Relate the text to the learners' own experience and interests.
- Make them want to read the text.
- Don't make it too long.
- Don't give away too much content.
- Don't provide significant detail or information students can obtain for themselves by reading.
(See Nuttall, 1996: 155-57, for a useful section on teacher introductions.)
ACTIVITY 7
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Read Text 3 ('Get online and in tune with the job market') and decide which of the following introductions you would give your students prior to classwork on the text. Why would you reject the others? Click on 'Commentary' to get some feedback on each of them. Can you come up with a better introduction of your own?
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Clearly, if a number of texts on a particular theme are grouped together in a reading programme, the topic will be examined in increasing detail and fewer explicit pre-reading activities will be required, since preceding texts and activities will have already provided the necessary background knowledge. This is a strong argument for a coherent, thematically related reading programme, or 'reading in depth', which will allow the learner for the first time to sense the ultimate goal of L2 reading: to become a confident and independent reader.
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