Find the Missing Sentence: Reading Activity

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

Sample: docs, pub

Notes: I had previously posted this activity as an example of Running Dictation for Reading Texts.  But I've been thinking recently that perhaps I had mislabeled the activity.  The activity itself wasn't running dictation.  Running dictation was simply a way of checking the answers.  The activity itself was "Find the Missing Sentence."

This activity is partially inspired by similar activities mentioned in Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language by Christine Nuttall.  The idea is that it practices students ability to recognize coherence in a text by removing a sentence, and seeing if the students can recognize where there is a gap in the text.

The sample activity is from Q: Skills for Success: Reading and Writing 4: Unit 3 Reading 1: The Good Teen p.65-70.  The text has been recopied onto a Google Doc, but one sentence from each paragraph has been deleted.  The students have to read through the paragraph, and identify where the missing sentence is located.

The directions I originally included with this activity are:

Directions: Tell students to close their books.  Put them in pairs.  Give each pair a copy of pages 1-2.  Instruct them that there is one sentence missing from each paragraph.  They have to read the paragraph and use the cohesion clues to tell where sentences are probably missing.  They mark the spot in the paragraph where they think the sentence is missing.

Then, give each pair a copy of sheet 3.  Instruct them that the full text is posted outside the room (p.4-5).  They have to go outside of the room, look at the full paragraphs, and find the missing sentence, and then write it down on their answer sheet.  Standard running dictation rules apply (i.e. one student can run outside to look at the text, but they can't write anything.  They have to memorize the sentence, and run back and dictate it to their partner).  The first pair to write down all 9 missing sentences is the winner.

...but the running dictation part is optional.

In fact, another way to continue the activity would be to provide students a list of the missing sentences, and students have to decide which sentence goes in which paragraph.