Get ready to read

Unit
13 
Read faster!
Ask students if they are quick readers in their own language. 
Ask them what kind of things they like to read in English: 
newspapers, books, websites, etc.
Get ready to read
Get students to tick the boxes next to the statements they agree 
with. After students have read the statements, do not discuss 
them or check them with the class. Explain that students will fi nd 
advice in connection with these statements in the two texts they 
are going to read in the unit.
A
Obstacles to faster effective reading
Elicit or explain that an 
obstacle
is ‘something that blocks you so 
that movement going forward or action is prevented or made 
more diffi cult’. Make the point that if students are studying in 
English – at university, for example – they will have a lot of 
reading to do, and it will be useful if they can increase their 
reading speed.
1
Get students to read the paragraph and decide whether a, b 
or c best sums it up.
2
Remind students to skim the text – they need to get a general 
sense of what the text is about rather than understand the 
details.
3–4
Refer students to the 
Learning tip
. Students can work on 
their own to fi nd the specifi c information and then compare 
answers.
5
Have students identify the three statements relevant to the 
text on this page. After checking the answers with the class, 
ask students to rewrite the statements so that they are true 
(
A good reader varies their reading speed, You should focus 
on groups of words, You can understand a text if you read it 
quickly
).
Extra practice
Encourage students to choose a book to read. Tell students that 
you will ask them in a later lesson how they are getting on with the 
book they chose. Have they been able to increase their reading 
speed, or has the book been too diffi cult for them to do this?