Pre- and Post-Reading Activities to Personalize

The text below is from Headways Pre-intermediate (p. 30) and I prepared pre-reading and post-reading activities related to it. My aim in these activities are to let students personalize the text.

Pre-reading Activities:

1. Ask the following questions to students:

• What is your eating habit?

• Would you consider your eating habit as healthy?

• What do you eat in a day?

• What is the healthiest food you’ve ever eaten?

• Do you know someone who specifically pays attention to eating healthy?

• Do Turkish people have healthy preferences when it comes to food?

• Is there anyone who is popular because of their eating habit/healthy lifestyle/ambition to be healthy in Turkey?

• Do you think having a healthy diet can help us to live longer?

• Can you imagine yourself eating only raw or vegetable food for the rest of your life?

• Do you know the eating habits of different countries/cultures?

• Would you swap your food preferences for a day and eat the opposite? (like eating fully raw, red meat, vegetarian, or foods that can contain insects)

• Do you have any ambition to be healthy? Do you do something to become healthier?

2. Tell students to imagine their own and their best friend’s eating habits & ambitions in 20 years. Then, ask them to draw and present in the class.

Post-reading Activities:

1. Ask the following questions to students:

• Would you be able to stick to this kind of lifestyle if you were in the shoes of Claus or Elvira?

• Imagine these two people as Turkish who lives in Turkey. What would they eat? What kind of reaction they would get from others?

• Do you think they will be able to live until 120 years old?

• Can you suggest another diet type other than the calorie restriction diet to them?

• Is there anyone you know who tries to live longer by having a calorie restriction diet or any other specific diet?

• Imagine Claus Bonrich and Elvira from another universe -their other selves who live in a different universe-. What would they eat and have an ambition for?

• If Claus Bonrich and Elvira were your parents, how your eating habit would be?

• If they lived in the past, what would be different? Why?

2. Imagine you come across Claus’s or Elvira’s Instagram profile. What kinds of photos would you see? What about their captions? Who he/she follows? Write/draw them and share.