Reading 1 Teacher’s notes
Test training: Answering short-answer
Activity: Academic Reading
Aims: Focus on Academic Reading test; practise True/
False/Not given and short-answer questions; practise
identifying topic sentences and supporting details
Topic: Agricultural Revolution
Classroom dynamics: Pair work; individual
Marking: 12 marks
Time: 45 minutes
Procedure
Lead-in
1 Put students into pairs and ask them to discuss
the question together for a couple of minutes.
Encourage the students to have a guess even if
they don’t know the answer. Have a brief class
discussion.
Test training: Topic sentences
2 Put students into pairs and ask them to read the
topic sentence from the reading passage. Ask them
to work together and discuss which of the details
will appear in the rest of the paragraph. Ask a few
students for their ideas.
3 Next, ask the students to skim the paragraph from
the passage checking their ideas. Keep the time
short (i.e. 30–45 seconds) so that students do skim
rather than read every word. Check answers with
the class.
1, 2, 5
4 Ask students to complete the sentences with the
words in the box. Put students into pairs and ask
them to compare their answers before checking the
answers with the class.
1 carefully 2 Underline 3 Scan 4 contradict 5 agrees
6 opposite 7 mentioned
Test practice: True/False/Not given
statements
5 Start by reminding students to use the advice
from Activity 4. Then ask the students to complete
Questions 1–5. Check answers with the class.
1 False (we don’t know if it was caused or was the cause) 2 True
3 True 4 Not given 5 False
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questions
6 Put students into pairs and ask them to decide if
the advice is for before, while or after you read.
They should write their answers at the end of each
sentence. Check answers with the class.
1 after 2 while 3 after 4 before 5 after 6 before 7 while
8 while
Test practice: Short-answer questions
7 Ask students to read the text again and answer
Questions 6 to 10. Check answers with the class.
6 50 percent 7 iron 8 bone damage 9 life expectancy
10 dairy products
Vocabulary
8 Students can either do this individually or in pairs.
Ask students to complete the sentences with the
words in the box. Encourage students to find the
words in the reading passage to help them work out
the meaning from context. Check answers with the
class.
1 sedentary 2 nutrition 3 starvation, expectancy 4 settle
5 simultaneously 6 forage 7 transformed
Follow-up
9 Put students into pairs and ask them to discuss
which strategies they found useful – encourage
them to look back at the test training sections and
use the table to help them develop their ideas. You
might wish to draw the table on the board and elicit
a couple of ideas before students work in pairs.
When pairs have finished, ask for feedback from
some pairs.
10 In their same pairs, students discuss the questions.
After a few minutes, ask some pairs to feedback to
the class, and open up into a class discussion, time
permitting.
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