[Eric]

Quote Tobita

I would like to use stories in my classes, I use ones from the state text book but my students get bored, I need something interesting for learners from 11 to 13 years old. Can you help me?

have you tried the Easy True Stories series. Those are pretty interesting. There's Easy True Stories, Very Easy True Stories and possibly just True Stories.

[Tobita]

Thank you! I'll Try those.

[cabst90]

For 11-13 year old learners, I suggest trying to use Harry Potter (there is another very popular fantasy series, but I can't remember it right now.) There are several advantages in addition to the popularity. It is written for young readers. Many students may have already read it in their native language or seen the movies, which will make it easier to understand the content even if they don't completely understand the English. You can suppliment the reading with the videos.

Good luck...

[Pix]

When I learned French I used to read all the Asterix books, and then books by François Sagan who wrote pretty awful love stories - idea for me as a young teenager - I suppose the equivalent in English would be Mills and Boon stuff.

I don't mean to brag but I was sooooooooooooooo much better than my school mates and I'm sure it was from all the reading where the syntax and grammar were just being absorbed.

They used to make us read articles from Le Monde and boy were they dull and incomprehensible to boot. I don't see the point of making students slog through something dry and difficult.

Here's a post with ideas on how to improve your reading fluency.

[Pix]

Other reading ideas I've just had for teenagers:

Biography of the Spice Girls or which ever band is in these days, or David Beckham's story or just how much plastic surgery has Victoria Beckham had anyway - you can get fun stuff like that in girly magazines like OK!

[Mr. E English]

Hi Jeremy,

I don't regularly use readers in class, partly because using a reader can be time consuming and partly because the national group I teach have a very poor reading habit in their L1 and therefore a reluctance to read in English.

But on the occasions when I have utilised a class reader I've always thoroughly enjoyed it, even if the students have been less enthusiastic.

One activity I like to do is to take a passage from the text which contains lots of speech and act it out in class. I assign roles to the students including one as the narrator. We practice together at first by the students shadow reading as they listen to me, then they work on the text alone. Once we're ready we act it out - speech and actions. The students can still read the text (it's not a memory test) but they can not read and speak at the same time - they can look at a sentence, then look up and say it.

I find this activity is good fun, a change of pace and focus, great fluency practice and a good opportunity to work on pronunciation - particularly intonation and stress.

[michèle 2]

[quote=Pix]When I learned French I used to read all the Asterix books,
when I learned English I used to read all the Asterix , Tintin in English!!!
I knew the stories so it was easier for me!!!
Michèle