English Readers
English for Life
Classroom implementation
Reading aims to help students improve how they read in
practical real-life situations and to widen students’ range of
vocabulary in line with A2 expectations.
The book contains twenty units, each of which can provide
the basis of a lesson. They are divided across four sections:
1. Communication, dealing with contemporary text-based
interaction between friends and within peer groups.
2. Around town, dealing with reading tasks students
might confront as a tourist or a longer-term visitor to an
English-speaking country.
3. On the move, which provides practical examples of
readings activities on planes, trains, on the road and on
foot.
4. In your free time, utilizing reading material like
newspapers, magazines, instruction booklets, etc. which
students might find in a more downtime context.
There are also appendices covering the following:
• different ways of reading (skimming, scanning for
general understanding and reading for detail)
• study tips
• text types
• short forms
• punctuation
• signposting
• using a dictionary
All the units in Reading have a broadly similar structure and
similar features. Below you can find explanations of how
these features can be deployed for classroom use.
 GETTING STARTED
What is it?
Each unit begins with three or four simple Getting Started
questions directed at the student. The aim of the questions
is to introduce the topic and prepare for the texts which
follow.
Suggested implementation:
1. Direct the questions at the class, personalizing the theme
for the students and getting them thinking about the
topic – which you can then discuss or brainstorm for
vocabulary.
2. Get students to ask the questions of each other.
3. Highlight/clarify key basic vocabulary for the unit.
4. Write the questions on card, cut the sentences up into
individual words and have students reassemble them.
5. Write model answers (perhaps your own) on card and get
the students to match them with the questions.
Reading (A2 Pre-intermediate)
 PARTS (A, B, C)
What are they?
The units are organized into parts (A, B and sometimes
C), each with their own reading text (text chat, web page,
newspaper article, sign), and each containing between
one and eight exercises.
Suggested implementation (pre-reading):
Some initial exercises may provide pre-reading tasks such
as vocabulary building or identifying the cultural context.
If there is no obvious pre-reading activity, you can instigate
your own such as predicting the content of the text.
1. Pre-reading tasks often work well as group/pair activities.
Get pairs of students to predict the kind of language
the text might contain, and feed back to the group with
their most likely suggestions. Ask students to guess what
the text might be about by just reading one of these
elements:
• the headings or bullet points
• the topic sentences (first sentence of each paragraph)
• illustrations, graphs, charts, photographs and captions
• several key words from the text (which you will have
written on board).
2. You might also want to get the students to identify the
text type, and ask your students:
• Why and how often would you read this type of text?
• Where would you normally see it? What is its normal
context?
• What sort of reading style is appropriate in that
context: skimming, scanning or reading for detail?
3. Asking students to read aloud is often discouraged in
language teaching; it is often viewed as a skill in itself,
and one which does not directly relate to language
learning. However, it should be remembered that for
some students it may well be a skill that can usefully
be employed in their jobs. It also has value (particularly
at pre-intermediate level) in getting students to
look beyond individual words and see sentence and
paragraph structure. At the very least, offering a different
presentational approach to the texts will add variety to
your lesson.
• When choosing which texts, if any, to ask students
to read aloud, select shorter ones and divide the task
across the class.
• Model new and difficult vocabulary first, and allow
silent comprehension reading before asking students
to read aloud.
• Make notes of any pronunciation issues to model and
drill later.
 English Readers
English for Life
Suggested implementation of the exercises:
Each part contains between one and eight exercises which
are all of the type that students may face in exams at this
level (multiple choice, true/false/not given, short answer
questions, gap-fill or sentence completion).
1. Some of these exercises will work better as individual
activities and some as group activities. The following
types of exercises lend themselves well to pairwork or
groupwork:
• inferring
• distinguishing between facts and opinions
• paraphrasing
• discussion questions
• questions that ask students to consider what happens
next
The following types of exercises are more suited to
individual work:
• inserting missing sentences into text (which mirrors
another common exam task)
• summarising
• finding evidence to back up claims made in text
2. The exercises will variously test different reading methods
(skimming, scanning for general understanding, and
reading for detail). Alert yourself to what is required
in each exercise so that you will be able to direct your
students appropriately and ensure they employ the
reading skills most suited to the text type and question.
(See Appendix 1: How should I read?)
3. Make sure that students understand the structure of
the exercise before they begin, taking advantage of the
examples where they occur.
4. If students are working individually, allow them time to
check their answers with a partner before feeding back
to the class.
5. Speed-reading (skimming and scanning) tasks are often
better done individually. Set a strict time limit and make
sure that students are aware of it. Allow them time to
check their answers with a partner before feeding back
to the group.
Reading (A2 Pre-intermediate)
 FEATURES
What are they?
All the units contain highlighted boxes for Reading tips
(blue) and Language notes (green). These serve well as fillers
if you have a few spare minutes during the lesson or for
providing independent homework ideas. There is also a
My review section at the end of each unit with a list of
can-do statements for the students.
Suggested implementation:
1. Reading tips: These blues boxes appear at varying points
in the unit and contain ideas for improving the students’
reading skills, either appropriate to the text type or in a
general sense.
• Get students to find other texts in the book where the
reading tip might be successfully employed.
• Have a discussion about this approach or tip and
how useful it would be in students’ everyday reading
activities.
• As homework, ask students to find a text where this
reading tip might be appropriate and get them to
bring the text to the next class.
2. Language notes: These green boxes appear at varying
points through the unit and contain additional
information about language from the unit text.
• Use these as a starting point for discussion.
• Elicit further examples of the language identified,
or set this task as research homework.
3. My review: These can-do statements should be used
primarily as a way of checking that the students feel
comfortable that they have made progress in the class
and can make the statements with confidence. If you
like, you can make them the targets of your learning
programme, and create a table to record your students’
progress. In class, get students to challenge each other
about the statements: Anna, can you understand signs in
shop windows? – Yes, I can, I know how to find the till,
how to find the departments.
Alternatively, you could ask students to talk about which
of the can-do skills they think will be most useful for
them and why.
 English Readers
English for Life
Classroom implementation
Reading aims to help students improve how they read in
practical real-life situations and to widen students’ range of
vocabulary in line with A2 expectations.
The book contains twenty units, each of which can provide
the basis of a lesson. They are divided across four sections:
1. Communication, dealing with contemporary text-based
interaction between friends and within peer groups.
2. Around town, dealing with reading tasks students
might confront as a tourist or a longer-term visitor to an
English-speaking country.
3. On the move, which provides practical examples of
readings activities on planes, trains, on the road and on
foot.
4. In your free time, utilizing reading material like
newspapers, magazines, instruction booklets, etc. which
students might find in a more downtime context.
There are also appendices covering the following:
• different ways of reading (skimming, scanning for
general understanding and reading for detail)
• study tips
• text types
• short forms
• punctuation
• signposting
• using a dictionary
All the units in Reading have a broadly similar structure and
similar features. Below you can find explanations of how
these features can be deployed for classroom use.
 GETTING STARTED
What is it?
Each unit begins with three or four simple Getting Started
questions directed at the student. The aim of the questions
is to introduce the topic and prepare for the texts which
follow.
Suggested implementation:
1. Direct the questions at the class, personalizing the theme
for the students and getting them thinking about the
topic – which you can then discuss or brainstorm for
vocabulary.
2. Get students to ask the questions of each other.
3. Highlight/clarify key basic vocabulary for the unit.
4. Write the questions on card, cut the sentences up into
individual words and have students reassemble them.
5. Write model answers (perhaps your own) on card and get
the students to match them with the questions.
Reading (A2 Pre-intermediate)
 PARTS (A, B, C)
What are they?
The units are organized into parts (A, B and sometimes
C), each with their own reading text (text chat, web page,
newspaper article, sign), and each containing between
one and eight exercises.
Suggested implementation (pre-reading):
Some initial exercises may provide pre-reading tasks such
as vocabulary building or identifying the cultural context.
If there is no obvious pre-reading activity, you can instigate
your own such as predicting the content of the text.
1. Pre-reading tasks often work well as group/pair activities.
Get pairs of students to predict the kind of language
the text might contain, and feed back to the group with
their most likely suggestions. Ask students to guess what
the text might be about by just reading one of these
elements:
• the headings or bullet points
• the topic sentences (first sentence of each paragraph)
• illustrations, graphs, charts, photographs and captions
• several key words from the text (which you will have
written on board).
2. You might also want to get the students to identify the
text type, and ask your students:
• Why and how often would you read this type of text?
• Where would you normally see it? What is its normal
context?
• What sort of reading style is appropriate in that
context: skimming, scanning or reading for detail?
3. Asking students to read aloud is often discouraged in
language teaching; it is often viewed as a skill in itself,
and one which does not directly relate to language
learning. However, it should be remembered that for
some students it may well be a skill that can usefully
be employed in their jobs. It also has value (particularly
at pre-intermediate level) in getting students to
look beyond individual words and see sentence and
paragraph structure. At the very least, offering a different
presentational approach to the texts will add variety to
your lesson.
• When choosing which texts, if any, to ask students
to read aloud, select shorter ones and divide the task
across the class.
• Model new and difficult vocabulary first, and allow
silent comprehension reading before asking students
to read aloud.
• Make notes of any pronunciation issues to model and
drill later.
 English Readers
English for Life
Suggested implementation of the exercises:
Each part contains between one and eight exercises which
are all of the type that students may face in exams at this
level (multiple choice, true/false/not given, short answer
questions, gap-fill or sentence completion).
1. Some of these exercises will work better as individual
activities and some as group activities. The following
types of exercises lend themselves well to pairwork or
groupwork:
• inferring
• distinguishing between facts and opinions
• paraphrasing
• discussion questions
• questions that ask students to consider what happens
next
The following types of exercises are more suited to
individual work:
• inserting missing sentences into text (which mirrors
another common exam task)
• summarising
• finding evidence to back up claims made in text
2. The exercises will variously test different reading methods
(skimming, scanning for general understanding, and
reading for detail). Alert yourself to what is required
in each exercise so that you will be able to direct your
students appropriately and ensure they employ the
reading skills most suited to the text type and question.
(See Appendix 1: How should I read?)
3. Make sure that students understand the structure of
the exercise before they begin, taking advantage of the
examples where they occur.
4. If students are working individually, allow them time to
check their answers with a partner before feeding back
to the class.
5. Speed-reading (skimming and scanning) tasks are often
better done individually. Set a strict time limit and make
sure that students are aware of it. Allow them time to
check their answers with a partner before feeding back
to the group.
Reading (A2 Pre-intermediate)
 FEATURES
What are they?
All the units contain highlighted boxes for Reading tips
(blue) and Language notes (green). These serve well as fillers
if you have a few spare minutes during the lesson or for
providing independent homework ideas. There is also a
My review section at the end of each unit with a list of
can-do statements for the students.
Suggested implementation:
1. Reading tips: These blues boxes appear at varying points
in the unit and contain ideas for improving the students’
reading skills, either appropriate to the text type or in a
general sense.
• Get students to find other texts in the book where the
reading tip might be successfully employed.
• Have a discussion about this approach or tip and
how useful it would be in students’ everyday reading
activities.
• As homework, ask students to find a text where this
reading tip might be appropriate and get them to
bring the text to the next class.
2. Language notes: These green boxes appear at varying
points through the unit and contain additional
information about language from the unit text.
• Use these as a starting point for discussion.
• Elicit further examples of the language identified,
or set this task as research homework.
3. My review: These can-do statements should be used
primarily as a way of checking that the students feel
comfortable that they have made progress in the class
and can make the statements with confidence. If you
like, you can make them the targets of your learning
programme, and create a table to record your students’
progress. In class, get students to challenge each other
about the statements: Anna, can you understand signs in
shop windows? – Yes, I can, I know how to find the till,
how to find the departments.
Alternatively, you could ask students to talk about which
of the can-do skills they think will be most useful for
them and why.
 English Readers
English for Life
Unit 1: Meeting and greeting
SUMMARY
You can use this summary to guide the learning objectives
and target setting for your class.
Can-do statements
By the end of this unit, students will be able to say:
• I can read introductions in Internet chatrooms.
• I can understand personal information in online
profiles.
• I can get to know somebody by chatting online.
Skill focus
Skimming:
Part A 1
Scanning:
Part A 2 , Part C 1 2
Reading for general understanding:
Part C 3
Reading for detail:
Part A 3 , Part B 1 , Part C 4
Vocabulary
Chat abbreviations: atm, cu, thx, btw, pls
Function
Expressing wants and wishes: I want to / I hope to …
/ I’m looking forward to … / I’m looking to …
CLASSROOM EXTENSION IDEAS
You can use some or all of these ideas to check and
enhance your students’ understanding as they work their
way through Unit 1 of Reading A2 in class.
Using Getting started
Ask the students the Getting started questions and use their
answers as the basis of a classroom discussion and then as
the basis of a survey about internet/chatroom use.
1. Ask students to think of categories of questions they
could ask about internet/chatroom use (What sites?
Who do they chat to? Why do they chat? When?
Where?) and elicit a couple of example questions.
2. Divide the class into small groups. If you want students
to take the questionnaires away and ask people outside
the class (for homework), then they could work on all
the categories. But if you want them to present to their
classmates, you could get them to work on questions for
just one category.
3. As students work, monitor and prompt questions like:
Software/Sites: What search engine do you use? What
Reading (A2 Pre-intermediate)
email domain do you use? Do you use Skype? MSN?
People: Do you chat with family? With your friends?
With work colleagues/fellow students you know?
With complete strangers?
Reasons: Do you just want to chat? Do you want to
meet up? Do you want to get involved in activities?
Are you looking for love? Do you chat while gaming?
Time: Are you online all day? Just in the evening?
At school/work?
4. Get students to include options for the answers,
for example:
Which search engine do you use?
Google __
Yahoo __
Baidu __
Bing __
Ask __
AOL __
Other __
5. Either allow students to gather answers as homework,
or get the groups to survey the other students (they will
have to write a few copies) and feed back to the whole
class.
6. An alternative homework activity would be asking the
groups to find some way of displaying their results in
the form of a poster (with pie charts or bar graphs) that
could be displayed in class.
Using Part A
After exercise 1, you can give students further skim reading
practice by asking them to extract the key words in different
categories from the EnglishClub.com activity.
1. Write these categories on the board:
Greetings:
Names:
Languages/Nationalities:
Countries:
2. Ask the students to find the words in the messages that
fall into these categories:
Greetings: Hello (everyone), Hi, Hey
Names: Mariana, Hannah, Pedro, Li
Languages/Nationalities: English, Spanish, Chinese
Countries/Places: Brazil, France, America
(Remind students to find just what is in the text – so
Brazilian and China are not there. However, you could
make identifying these a further extension activity.)
 English Readers
English for Life
3. Feed back with the whole group.
At the end of Part A students can:
1. Work in pairs (or small groups) to write two more
paragraphs for each of the EnglishClub.com students
which fulfil the description provided by options a and c
of exercise 1 (i.e. what they like to do in their free time,
and, the schools and colleges where they are learning
English). There are eight paragraphs in total – but your
students do not have to complete all of them.
2. The pairs/groups should write their paragraphs on
separate pieces of paper and swap them with another
pair/group who can then work out both which student
and which answer they refer to.
Using Part B
At the end of Part B you can get students to write their own
chatroom dialogue:
1. First ask students to identify the topics that are discussed:
Where you are from.
Where you are living now and what it’s like.
Your age.
When you are online.
2. Then get the students to think about other topics that
they might discuss and note them on the board.
3. Pairs of students can write their own dialogue of about
12–14 exchanges.
4. Allow students to be as creative as they want, or
encourage them to stick more closely to the format in
the Part B reading text if you feel it suits their personality
or ability.
5. Students can then cut their dialogue up and exchange
with another pair to reconstruct.
6. Feed back with the whole group.
Using Language note: chat abbreviations
There are a variety of activities you can do around text chat
and you will have to decide for yourself how useful this
receptive lexis is for your students.
Reading (A2 Pre-intermediate)
1. Elicit further examples from the students:
lol – laugh(ing) out loud
rofl – rolling on the floor laughing
imo – in my opinion
brb – be right back
2. Further examples and discussion on the topic can be
found in Appendix 3 – Reading specific text types.
Using Part C
Exercises 1 and 2 involve scanning for specific (types of)
information so this would be a good time to revise the rules
of scanning.
1. Ask students what type of text they might scan and what
information they would be looking for in each case.
Timetable: destination, last departure, next departure
TV schedule: this week’s movies, what’s on now
Dictionary: definition, examples of usage
All involve unspoken assumptions about the presentation
of the material.
2. Use Appendix 1 – How should I read? to assist the
students.
3. You can bring in examples of text types which could be
scanned, give them to pairs of students and ask them to
challenge each other to scan for particular information.
Part C Exercise 5 involves students creating their own profile
for CitySocialising.com. Using their answers, you can use the
template below to create a poster webpage for the whole
class.
1. Get students to check their answers to Exercise 5 with a
partner and correct if necessary.
2. Give students a copy of the template above and get
them to transfer their answers to it.
3. Working with a partner get students to think up
additional entries if they wish. They might want to use
friends or famous people like Brad Pitt or Barack Obama.
4. Feed back with the whole group and attach the entries
to a poster for the classroom wall.
 English Readers
English for Life Reading (A2 Pre-intermediate)

PHOTOCOPIABLES
CitySocialising.com profile

________________ ____ ____________________

Likes:
Says:
((.)) Online now!!
Say hello!

+ Add as a friend __ Friends __ Socials __ Reviews __ Photos __ Points

 English Readers
English for Life Reading (A2 Pre-intermediate)

Unit 2: Staying in touch

SUMMARY
You can use this summary to guide the learning objectives 2. Monitor their discussions and get them to start writing
and target setting for your class. further questions about social networking, picking
different categories for different groups. For example:
Can-do statements • What methods do you use to stay in touch? email,
By the end of this unit, students will be able to say: text, voice calls, Twitter, Facebook
• I can navigate the pages of a social networking site. • What devices do you use? phone, desktop, laptop,
• I can read a social networking site quickly to find tablet
information about particular friends. • How much time spent a day? hours, minutes, I lose track
• I can use the right expressions when making • How much do you think networking costs you? phone
comments on social networking sites. charges, upgrades, packages
• I can read an email quickly to understand its main 3. Get the students to mingle with each other and ask their
message. questions of students in other groups.
Skill focus 4. Feed back with the whole group.
Pre-reading: 5. As with other extension exercises of this type, you can
Part A 1 get the students to write up and display the answers to
Skimming: their survey as a poster in class or as homework.
Part B 1
Scanning: Using Part A
Part A 2 Part A Exercise 1 is a pre-reading task aimed at familiarizing
Reading for general understanding: students with the vocabulary in the reading text. You may
Part A 3 , Part B 2 want to further expand the students’ vocabulary with
Reading for detail: action words (e.g. like, block, unfriend, etc.) found on social
Part A 4 , Part B 3 networking sites.

Vocabulary 1. Complete Part A Exercise 1.

Social networking: status, profile, message, comment,
share, like, subject box, email
(Personal) news: having a baby, taking a (driving) test,
finish/run a marathon
Responding to news: congratulations, happy birthday,
good luck, me too, that’s terrible, get better soon
Grammar
Ellipsis: (I) Can’t wait, (I’m) Having a great day, (I’m)
Taking a test, (I) Broke my arm
CLASSROOM EXTENSION IDEAS
You can use some or all of these ideas to check and
enhance your students’ understanding as they work their
way through Unit 2 of Reading A2 in class.
Using Getting started
This mingle activity extends the questions in Getting started.
1. Get the students to discuss the Getting started questions
among themselves in small groups or pairs depending on
the size of your class.
2. Elicit verbs for actions on social networking sites
(e.g. like, block, unfriend, report, edit, upload).
3. Ask students for definitions as in Part A Exercise 1 for
each one.
like – to indicate you think something is really good
block – to stop someone from sending you messages
unfriend – to remove someone from your list of contacts
report – to send a message about something to the
website administrator
edit – to change something you have written on a website
upload – to add a photo or file to the website
4. After a brief introduction you can allow students to
do stages 2–3 in pairs or small groups and set their
questions as another exercise for other pairs.
You may want to highlight the use of ellipses on social
networking sites:
1. Ask students to identify examples on Friendsmeet.
(I) Can’t wait to meet …
(I’m) Having a great day!
(I’m) Taking my driving test today.
(I) Broke my arm
 English Readers
English for Life
(I) Will post pix soon.
2. Discuss with students the way ellipsis becomes more
and more frequent the briefer the message, from email,
to message board, to text message, to chat.
3. Ask students to think of other places where they may
read ellipsis, for example, newspaper headlines, short
memos, to-do lists.
4. Discuss with students when they should use it and when
not, and the importance of punctuation to maintain
coherence, e.g. I’m 23. And you?
Part A Exercise 4 gives students the opportunity to add
comments to the posts on Friendsmeet. You can extend this
activity by creating a class social networking site.
1. Get students to think of a name for your social
networking site.
2. Give each student a copy of the handout below and get
them to complete the site name (top right) and add their
name and a piece of news.
3. Students can then pass them round the class (in one
direction) and fellow students can add comments.
4. Remind students that they should read all the comments
and can comment on the comments.
5. Encourage students to use ellipses but monitor to make
sure they maintain coherent sentences.
6. Students may want to do the activity with made up
identities or with the identities of famous people –
perhaps someone who has recently been in the news.
7. Feed back with the whole group.
Listening (A2 Pre-intermediate)
Using Part B
Yiannis’s email has fewer ellipses but does use an informal
writing style which would be common when writing to friends.
1. Get students to identify the non-standard features.
Hi
…
!!!
VERY
See you soon
Students may also identify And at the start of a sentence.
2. After Exercise 3 the class can share their replies in pairs or
groups.
3. If they have used new non-standard writing styles in
their own emails, pairs can feed back to the whole group
about whether it was easy to understand.
You may want to bring in some other examples of non-
standard writing from comment boards on news sites for
students to decipher. Or, for business-focused students,
bring in some business emails for students to create their
own scanning questions to test a partner.
For practical purposes, you may want to raise the issue of
safety on the internet and in chatrooms or rules for good
behaviour in chatrooms. This can provide a good discussion
topic, research homework or another opportunity for
creating a wall poster, and will allow you to activate the
language should/should not or do/do not.
Rules for internet safety might include not giving out
contact details or passwords. Rules for good behaviour
might include not using insulting language.
 English Readers
English for Life Reading (A2 Pre-intermediate)

PHOTOCOPIABLES
CitySocialising.com profile

__________________________________________________

My profile ______ ___________

My friends
Share Comment Like

My messages
______ ___________

___________________________________________

___________________________________________
______ ___________

___________________________________________

___________________________________________
______ ___________

___________________________________________

___________________________________________
______ ___________

___________________________________________

___________________________________________
______ ___________

___________________________________________

___________________________________________
______ ___________

___________________________________________

___________________________________________
______ ___________

___________________________________________

___________________________________________
 English Readers
English for Life Reading (A2 Pre-intermediate)

Unit 3: Making plans

SUMMARY How much do they rely on their mobile phones?

You can use this summary to guide the learning objectives Does it have all their contacts in?
and target setting for your class. Do they use it as a map for finding where they are
going?
Can-do statements
What would they do if it were broken or lost?
By the end of this unit, students will be able to say:
3. Monitor and feed back with the whole class.
• I can understand text abbreviations.
• I can follow a group conversation by email. Using Language note: text-speak smileys
• I can understand useful phrases to make plans.
If students are interested in emoticons and you think it
Skill focus would be useful for them, you can use the emoticon cards
Pre-reading: below to play a memory game with the students.
Part A 1 1. Make two photocopies of the table below and cut them
Skimming: out into a pack of 24 ‘cards’.
Part B 1
2. In class, make pairs or groups of three and give a pack to
Reading for general understanding: each group.
Part A 2
3. Students should shuffle their pack and place the cards on
Reading for detail:
the table, face down, randomly (or in a grid) so that they
Part A 3 , Part B 2 3
don’t know which is which.
Vocabulary 4. One student can then turn over two cards.
Text speak: cu, 2moro, l8r, r u • If the cards match, the student must name the
Emoticons: :) ☺, :( emoticon (or explain what it means) and if they are
Function right, they can keep the pair.
Making plans: present continuous, going to … • If they don’t match, or the student can’t name the
Making suggestions (informal): How about …? emoticon, they must turn them back over and play
moves on to the next student.
Grammar
5. Eventually students will memorise the places of the cards
Present continuous
and quickly build up pairs.
going to … (+ infinitive)
Using Part A
Highlight and discuss the use of short forms in Part A
CLASSROOM EXTENSION IDEAS Exercises 1 and 2.
1. Ask students to find all the examples.
You can use some or all of these ideas to check and
enhance your students’ understanding as they work their ru = are you
way through Unit 3 of Reading A2 in class. 2day = today
4 = for
Using Getting started
x = (kiss)
Use the Getting started questions to initiate discussion.
abt = about
1. Ask the whole class the questions in Getting started.
2mro = tomorrow
2. Put students in small groups and provide them with
hse = house
additional questions such as:
2 = to
Do they always go to a meeting with someone (friends
or business) with a mobile/cell phone? probs = problems
Do they sometimes change plans or make final gd = good
arrangements on their way? c = see
Can they imagine the world before mobile phones when ur = your or you’re
you had to meet at a certain time and place and you pix = pictures (pics)
could not rearrange as you went?
4wd = forward
 English Readers
English for Life
2. Ask students why people do it (for speed, because it’s
cool and funny)
3. Compare the different sorts of short forms. Some are
abbreviations of the spelling (hse) and some are common
pronunciations of single letters (c).
4. Ask students how useful, or confusing, they find these
short forms. Also, how much they use them and whether
new technologies will change them or make them
redundant. Do similar short forms exist in students’
native language?
5. Refer students to Appendix 4 – Understanding short
forms of English for more examples and information.
Texts or instant messaging (like BM or iMessage) as a form
of writing tend to mimic conversation in that they are made
up of short acts of communication, they attempt to include
intonation and gesture using emoticons, and they usually
encourage interaction with a question or with ‘…’. For
this reason, the text messages in Part A Exercise 2 provide
a good text type for reading aloud in class. It provides a
clear interpretative challenge alongside the task of simply
speaking to the group. Students can also express the
emoticons in their voice at the appropriate point:
1. Get students to practise the exchange in Exercise 2 in
pairs and monitor.
2. Feed back with the whole class.
Reading (A2 Pre-intermediate)
Having completed all three exercises in Part A, activate the
students’ knowledge and creativity with this writing/reading
pairwork activity:
1. Photocopy the Request/Respond table below, and cut out
the separate roles. (This provides for ten students but you
can easily give the same activity to two pairs.)
2. Create a speech bubble template with six or seven
exchanges (as in Exercise 2) or ask the students to make
one in class.
3. Give each pair of students a pair of role cards (A1/A2,
etc). The pair of students should not see each other’s
cards.
4. Get student A to write a short text message, on the
template, to their partner using the abbreviations they
have learned, and adding new ones.
5. Student A can then pass the template to student B to
reply and so on.
6. Feed back to the whole class. Make note of any
pronunciation issues to model and drill later.
As homework, you could ask students to turn other short
text types (small newspaper articles, for example) into text
speech and bring them into class as a reading challenge for
other students.
 English Readers
English for Life Reading (A2 Pre-intermediate)

PHOTOCOPIABLES

:)
I’m happy
;) :-? :(
I’m joking I’m confused I’m sad

:-@ :-> :P <3

I’m angry (smug) (tongue out) I’m in love / I love …

</3 ;P
I’m broken-hearted (flirting)
:0 :-x
I’m surprised It’s a secret

Request/Respond

STUDENT A
A1: text a friend to ask them to come to your
house to play a new computer game
A2: text a friend to cancel a trip to the theatre –
try and rearrange it
A3: text a friend to ask if they want to go
shopping
A4: text a friend to see if they want to go to the
new George Clooney movie
A5: text a friend to ask about their trip to New
York
STUDENT B
B1: you have to look after your little sister
tonight, but you can go out tomorrow
B2: you were really looking forward to the
theatre trip
B3: you’ve got no money at the moment
B4: you hate George Clooney, you prefer action
movies
B5: your trip to New York was great, but you
spent a lot of money