Exploratory task 5.2

In the right-hand box you see a text with one’s personal opinion on whether the drivers should be allowed to use mobile phones. Complete the “advance organizer” grid with the meaningful elements to help the readers/listeners anticipate what the opinion will be about. The most essential element in the middle (shaded box) however is to be left blank for the readers/listeners to complete it by themselves. Some elements have been completed for you.

“I agree that drivers need two hands to control a car, but hands free kits are fine. They're no more dangerous than talking to the person next to you. What next, banning talking to your passengers? Hands free kits are fine, but if you haven't got a kit, you should really do something to free up your hands.” (Adapted from BBC World Service Discussion Point) Drivers need two hands		Talking to passengers is no problem
		Free up your hands

Priming is borrowed from psycholinguistic research, in which it was proved that retrieval of lexical information from long-term memory could be "primed" (prepared) by the preceding information. In teaching text comprehension the effect of priming could be observed if the learners are given a number of texts with a certain communicative message and this introduction "primes" comprehension of the target text.

Exploratory task 5.3

The following three short anecdotes are excerpts from longer stories and have a feature in common. Read the three anecdotes and make this feature explicit.

… the village has been hungry for months. Nobody has eaten meat. The boy took a wire and made a coil, which he put in a piece of fat. The seal ate the bate and soon the village had a feast. There will be no famine…	…Icarus was kept in the gloomy maze on the island of Crete. He was desperate to escape and made the wings coated with wax. In his flight he flew too close to the Sun. The wings melted and Icarus fell into the sea…	…The Greeks had been unable to take Troy for ten years. They sailed away and left a wooden horse filled with armed warriors. The Trojans took the horse in the city. At night the warriors killed the guards …
Feature in common All the three texts …

Mental rotation is taken from Gestalt psychology experiments with drawings of spatial figures shown at varying angles with the task to say whether these figures are the same or different. In text comprehension the learners are given a number of texts, which communicate one and the same or different messages and are asked to say whether the meaning of these texts is the same or different.

Exploratory task 5.4

Read the following versions of the parable and decide which parable is an "odd-one-out". Tick it off. Discuss the variants of the answer.

Once a hungry fox was running along a high wall and saw the grapes high above. He jumped and jumped, but could not reach the grapes. "Why should I jump for the sour grapes?", thought the fox and ran away.

Once a hungry fox saw a cluster of grapes high above. The grape season was still a long way down the road but the grapes looked so nice and tempting. "It must be sour", thought the fox and ran away.

Once a hungry wolf was hunting in the winter wood. He saw a small haret. The white hare hid behind the white snow-hill and the wolf missed it. "I need a more substantial breakfast", thought the wolf and ran away.

Step-by-step organizer is used to take the reader gradually through the text by completing the phrases “Now I know from the text that …” and “Next I expect to know from the text that …”. Reading or listening is stopped at regular intervals and the learners complete the phrases.