Each lesson consists of five stages: Introduction, Reading, Comment, Skills Training and Feedback. You can also print the lesson (Introduction, Word Bank, Reading only) by clicking on Printer Friendly Version.
In this section you read a short comment, written by a blogger, about the article you are going to read in Reading. You can find out more information about the blogger by mousing over the profile. The Introduction may also contain up to ten items of difficult vocabulary or concepts that you need to understand in order to read about the topic. Mouse over these underlined words in order to learn more about them. There is also a short comprehension question to check that you understand the main point of the comment. Choose an answer and see if you are right or wrong. You can find the correct answer by looking at the text where the correct answer is highlighted. After answering the question, this section is marked as done and the next section Reading is ready for you to take.
In this section, you read a text and answer five comprehension questions. These questions test a number of reading skills including reading for the main idea, detailed comprehension, guessing meaning from context, identifying topics and identifying the writer's attitude. You can click Next/Prev at any time but you must select an answer for ALL the questions before you can submit your answers. After submitting your answers, you can find the correct answer for each question by looking at the text where the correct answer is highlighted. Your score in this section is used to decide if you pass or fail the lesson.
In this section, you are asked to respond to the comment you read in the Introduction and the article you have just read. You can do this by clicking on the poll and by leaving a comment in the text field. You must choose an opinion in the poll in order to complete this section and move forward to Skills Training. After choosing an opinion, you can also type your comment in the text field. After you finish all sections in the lesson, your comment and poll will be sent to the Comments section of the lesson. You can also choose to go here directly from the Lesson Menu page in order to join the discussion.
In this section, you practice three different types of skills to improve your reading: reading skills, vocabulary development, speed reading. You can take these activities in any order but you need to complete all three before this section is done. If you leave this section and close the lesson before you complete all three, you will need to start again and complete all three. You can also take each activity as many times as you want.
Highlighter helps you develop your reading skills by asking you to identify key words, phrases or sentences in the text. Read the question and then select the part of the text that best answers it using your mouse. This activity can be used to help improve your reading skills, including guessing meaning from context, understanding paragraph and sentence organisation, and identifying the writer's attitude.
Word Match helps you improve your vocabulary. A vocabulary of the 2000 most high frequency words in English should help you understand 80% of a text so it is important that you increase your vocabulary to improve your reading comprehension. You will see 8-10 words related to the topic of the lesson and you need to match the word to its meaning. You can also find these words and their definitions in the Word Bank.
Blockbuster helps you improve your reading speed. One problem that learners often have is that they read one word at a time. Learners also often say the words aloud to themselves in their heads. This process of reading single words and saying them aloud slows down a student's reading speed but does not necessarily improve their comprehension. Blockbuster helps you read the text from Reading by chunking words into 3-5 natural word groups. You can practice reading the text at different speeds.
We would really like to hear from you about what you thought of the lesson and any ideas on how we can improve it. In Feedback you need to select an opinion about the lesson. Your rating for each lesson will appear on the lesson menu page and help other learners choose the lessons with the highest rating. You can also send us your comments in English or your own language by typing into the text field in the Feedback section.
After finishing a lesson, you will see a short message telling you how many lessons you have completed in total and showing you your score for the lesson you have just finished. Click Go to Lesson Menu to choose another lesson. If you are taking the lesson again, or taking the same lesson at a new level, your lessons completed total will not change.