It is remarkable that input seems to be a key point for learning a language; either if it is written (stories, articles), spoken (dialogues, monologues), or multi-modal (videos, comic books). The teacher can encourage and motivate students with a good choice of texts to work in the English class. Essentially, the chosen texts should be engaging and relevant for them, that is to say that they have to be aligned with students' interests in order to be really exploitable. On top of that, we should not forget to choose challenging texts, but not so far from their level as it will be impossible for them to understand and all the motivation will fade immediately.
Among the proposed designs for text-based tasks from Willis (1996) we can find prediction activities, jumbles, restoration tasks, jigsaws or split information tasks, comparison tasks, and also memory challenge tasks. Images and even songs can be a good option too if we know their musical preferences (forget about the Lemon Tree!), and the teacher can give the chance to students to create their own activities and select their own material to boost the motivation factor.
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