READING COMPREHENSION EXERCISE TITLE Reading and telling the news online

GROUP English for Specific Purposes/ Intermediate TIME FRAME 60minutes To present and demonstrate the activity to the students I think 30 minutes is enough. But we need to consider if the students already have an avatar and if the activity will be done in the school (if there is a lab and a computer available for each one) or at home. OBJETIVES This exercise has the purpose to get students to read the news online, identify the main parts of the news (headings/ people involved/content/fact) and retell it to their classmates, presenting this news via voki.

RESOURCES Computer internet paper - pencil PROCEDURE 1. Students will need to look for news on different news sites (e.g.: BBC News bbc.co.uk) 2. They will read the latest news and choose one and summarize it (trying to answer the 5 questions: What? Who? How? When? Where?). To avoid repetitions among the students its necessary to warn the teacher what they are going to talk about. 3. The teacher will correct the text they created 4. Students should create an avatar (voki.com) 5. This avatar will be the journalist responsible for announcing the news they have just summarized. 6. The students will need to write a comment about the news presented by one of their classmates and hand it in to the teacher. 7. The teacher will show students some sites to obtain the news and will show them her avatar. She will also demonstrate the procedure of how to create and avatar and how to insert the text on it, so that students have an idea what of they are expected to do.

CONCLUSION This exercise is good to groups of English for specific purposes, as the teacher needs to encourage the students to read, specially the news, since it is of one the genre most required on the proficiency and examination tests for universities they will have to face. It is also nice to develop writing skills.