- Authentic text: "One whose primary intent is to communicate
meaning to native speakers of the language" (Swaffar)
- Topic: is the text or clip of sufficient interest to students
- Presentation: is the presentation attractive enough
to arouse interest?
- Do the students have at least some experience with the topic?
- What are the students' own cultural schemata for this text?
- What kind of pre-activities will be necessary?
- Is the level of difficulty at, below, or slightly above the students' present level?
- What is the percentage of known and guessable items?
- Do the known and guessable items relate to the main ideas?
- Does the text contain a significant number of metaphors, symbols, hidden meanings, and/or idioms?
- Do the pre-activities need to include limited language preparation?
- Is the text organized in a clear way?
- Are there illustrations/typographic conventions/title(s)
that support the text?
- How long is the clip or segment?
- How is the sound quality? the rate of delivery? the register?
- How many speakers are involved?
- Do the visuals support the audio? Do they give everything away?
- Is this a timeless clip, with a universal topic?
- You don't necessarily simplify the text, you simplify the tasks.
- Always define the task before reading/listening/viewing, so that students can look/listen for and find vs. look at/listen to and get lost.
- Remember that most tasks require a separate reading/listening, since our purpose for reading/listening determines how we read/listen.
- Design a hierarchy of tasks: pre-activities > global activities > specific information activities > linguistic activities > post activities.
from Chantal Thompson, Brigham Young University, a presentation at the ACTFL Annual Meeting, Nashville, 1997.
