Get ready to read

More activities
1
You could ask students to summarize the text. 
2
Dictate the following sentence beginnings. Students 
then complete the summary – with words like those in 
brackets.
You only read slowly if you
(vocalize or look at individual 
words or letters).
 
To improve reading speeds, your eye
(must take in groups 
of words swiftly while your mind is absorbing the ideas).
One danger of practising faster reading is
(that you may 
not remember the ideas).
This may be because
(the English is too diffi cult for this 
type of practice).
Choose a book with
, (on average, fewer than seven new 
words per page).
PHOTOCOPIABLE
 
© Cambridge University Press 2008
B Hints for reading practice
1
Students can do this exercise in pairs. They can either work 
together to complete the sentences, or they can work on their 
own and then compare what they have written.
2
Remind students to skim the text. Set a time limit, e.g. one 
minute. Check the answers with the class. Draw attention to 
the fi nal sentence of the fi rst paragraph.
3
Students should do this exercise on their own, and then 
compare answers with a partner. At this stage they could 
underline the information in the text which relates to the 
statements. Check the answers with the class. Ask one 
student to read out the statement with the correct answer, 
and another student to read out the information from the text 
which is related to the statement. The information relating to 
each statement is as follows:
Think of the passage as a whole
… (1b) do not try to take in each word separately, one 
after the other. It is much more diffi cult to grasp the broad 
theme of the passage this way, … (2a) It is a good idea to 
skim through the passage very quickly fi rst to get the general 
idea of each paragraph. (3c) Titles, paragraph headings and 
emphasized words (underlined or in italics) can be a great 
help in getting this skeleton outline of the passage. 
Pay attention to paragraph structure
… (4c) It has been estimated that between 60 and 90% 
of all information-giving paragraphs in English have the topic 
sentence fi rst. … (5a) Sometimes, though, the fi rst sentence in 
the paragraph does not have the feel of a ‘main idea’ sentence. 
It does not seem to give us enough new information to justify a 
paragraph. 
… (6c) while the closing paragraph often summarizes the 
very essence of what has been said.