Exploiting a Reading Passage to Teach Different Language Skills through Activity-Based Learning

Abstract

Graded texts in course books generally contain different reading comprehension passages. An intelligent improvisation on the part of the teacher would help him/her go a long way in exploiting the text book for teaching different items of language, reading skills, grammar and other academic skills. This article is an attempt to formulate more creative ways of using a simple reading passage for teaching different skills, subskills of reading, vocabulary and grammatical items through activities. Instead of frantically hunting down new materials, the teacher can save a huge amount of time and energy. Further, it is also time for the teachers to explore ways of making learning more activity based. These activities would not only cater to different learning styles of learners, but would also make classrooms more interactive, learner-centred and fun-filled. This paper explicates how to build interesting activities around a reading passage with a specific skill/skills focus and also give a step by step description of how these activities can be executed in the classroom.