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Graded Reader Blind Date A way of introducing students to graded readers that contains a lot of speaking and personalisation, allowing students to find out about each other's taste in books.

by Alex Case The class brainstorm some language to talk about reading matter, then discuss in pairs when/ what they read and like reading. They then choose graded readers for other students in the class to read. 25- 55 mins. Hopefully, students will also take the graded readers to read at home. Stage Tim

e Procedure

1. Question brain-storm

5 a) Explain that Ss are going to talk about what they read in pairs.

b) Brainstorm a few questions, not writing up the whole questions, but just the question words on the left of the board. Try to get at least one question for each possible question word e.g. How often (do you read newspapers)? Where (do you read)? What (do you read in English)? Accept questions both about reading in English and in their native language.

2. Brain-storm vocab

10- 15

a) Start by asking a couple of questions to a few students in the class. Concentrate on getting exactly what they read, and write up any useful vocab they use to describe this e.g. romance, short stories.

b) Draw this vocab into a mind-map, starting with books/ others and dividing books first into fiction/ non-fiction

c) Either as class or in groups/ pairs, brainstorm as much vocab onto this mind-map as possible, concentrating on ways of describing fiction, as this is what the students will be looking at later.

d) If Ss worked as pairs, bring together onto board

3. Discussion

7- 10

a) Ss discuss/ ask each other about themselves and reading in pairs.

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about reading 4. Reporting/ starting to look at graded readers

4-7 a) Divide the class into new pairs. b) Give each pair a graded reader, and

ask them to discuss if their original partner would/ might/ would not enjoy this book and why. Then they should decide who out of the four people they know about (themselves and their two original partners) this book would best suit.

c) Feedback as class if not continuing to stage 5.

5. Group- work 'Book Blind Date'

5- 12

a) Divide the class into 2 groups, so that the original pairs from stage 3 are split up.

b) Give each group a set of graded readers, one (different) title per student, plus possibly a couple more per group. The books given to the two groups can be different or the same, depending on what you have available.

c) Tell group they must use these books to choose a book for each of the people in the other group to read, all working together.

d) When finished, ask groups to explain which book they chose for each person in the other group and why.

e) Hand over the books to their 'blind dates'.

f) Extension- quickly discuss if people are happy with what books have been chosen for them

g) Advertise the fact that students can/ have to take these books home to read and how they can do so

6. Optional extension- group dynamics

5 a) Discuss how the groups came to their decisions- Did anyone dominate the proceedings? Did anyone think they didn't get a chance to speak? (NB. Formats for discussing this can be found in many Business English books.)

7. Optional extension- reading feedback

5 a) If students do take the books home, you could discuss in a future lesson what the students now think of the books that were chosen for them/ the experience of using graded readers and if they'll do so again etc.

Stage