The activity uses a small text playing program called Zap Reader. You simply paste or type in a text and it will play the text for you word by word as you read. You can adjust the speed to make it go faster or slower.
The second site we are going to use is Colin's Movie Monologue page. This site has a huge collection of speeches from the scripts of popular films.
Lastly, to get some examples for you off what the speeches should sound like, we are going to use YouTube.
Task:- Go to: Colin's Movie Monologues and choose a monologue from a film that you know or like.
- I've chosen one called '10 Things I Hate about You' I chose it because it was the first one on the page. You can find the text here: http://tinyurl.com/6lxvkv or choose your own text. Copy the text.
- Next go to http://www.zapreader.com/reader/ and paste your text into the field. Then click on 'ZAP it'.
The text reader will appear. Change the text speed from 300 to 100 and then click play. Each word from the text will appear. Try to read through the text (you could also read out loud) as thee words appear.
- If you want to hear what the text should sound like then go to YouTube and search for the video of the monologue.
Here is the video of the text '10 Things I Hate About You'.
- Listen to the text and then try to read it again. Gradually increase the speed each time and try to get up to 200 (words per minute)
If you enjoy this activity find some more monologues from your favourite films and try to Zap read them.
Come back tomorrow for more EFL ESL activities.
Related links for teachers:
- Prompting reading speeds
- Interactive multiple choice activities
- Picture phrases
- Learning through karaoke!
Nik Peachey
4 comments:
Hi Nik,
I like the blog you have going here, and always enjoy clicking through the links you suggest (my Pageflakes pagecast effort came through this).
I was intrigued enough to try the Zap Reader out.
However, I'm concerned that the reading habit that it seems to promote is unlike the one I find effective for reading (quickly), where I tend to scan back and forth to see which words are coming up as I read along.
Thinking about it, this technique probably helps me to identify suitable intonation etc. So, whilst the YouTube video helps in this respect, I'm left wondering how learner readers will fare when faced with a plain text.
What do you think?
Hi Christoj,
I think using something like ZapReader isn't the best way to learn to read quickly, but it's a different way. I think it can fit into a variety of approaches. I was also a bit unsure about ZapReader, mainly because it only shows one word at a time and prefer speedreader.com as it chunkc the words, which is much more imilar to what the the brain does when we read naturally (at the time wrote the activity though, the speedreader site was down).
I still think that Zapreader has its uses though and especially for word recognition it could be really useful. I maintain though that no single approach is 'best' for developing reading skills. I think variety in all things is more likely to be successful and this is just another approach to use.
Best
Nik
Hi Nik,
Fair comment about using a variety of approaches, and thanks for the speedreader.com link.
Chris
Hi Nik,
Fair comment about the usefulness of variety, and thanks for the spreeder.com link.
Chris
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