Wrong Words: Reading Activity

(TESOL Ideas--Activities that Can Be Used with Any Reading Text)

Sample: docs, pub

This is yet another activity which I got from 21 Must-Use Reading Activities For Your Language Lessons. As it was written on that website, the activity reads:

The teacher provides students with a copy of the text with a selection of incorrect words. As they listen to the text being read, they must highlight the word they hear that is incorrect. Go through a second time, and this time, the students must write in the correct words. This will give the students an idea of the text before they do any comprehension activities.

In my class, I adapted this slightly.  Instead of doing this as an introduction to the text, I did this after the students had already completed a reading of the text for main ideas.  After they had already read the text once, I had them close their books, and then handed out the "wrong words" worksheet. (My theory was that even if they had read the text once, they wouldn't be able to remember every word.  This proved to be correct.) 

I also added in a stage where students try to find the wrong word before listening to the text.  I also had the students work in groups while doing this, and added in a competitive element--the group which identified and corrected the most words would be the winner.

After the groups had some time to try to identify and correct the wrong words just from context, I then had them listen to their answers and check.  (Instead of reading the text myself, I just played the audio track from the publishers.  Many ESL books nowadays contain an audio track to accompany the reading texts.)

After getting one more chance to finalize their answers after hearing the audio, the groups then had to exchange their paper with another group.  I would hand out the answer sheets, and they would score each other.  (1 point for identifying an incorrect word, and 1 additional point for changing the incorrect word to the correct word.)

The example document I've linked to at the top of this post comes from Q: Skills for Success: Reading and Writing 4 (Second Edition), and is from Unit 4 Reading 2: Haji Noor Deen--A Chinese Muslim Calligrapher p.102-108.