As any TEFL theory book will tell you. We need to help the students develop the many different reading skills and strategies such as gist reading, reading to confirm expectations, reading for communicative tasks etc. This is an example of scan reading or reading to extract specific information. In the real world you would do this to find a number in a telephone book or find out how deep the swimming pool is in a holiday brochure, what is on at the cinema etc. This text will hopefully give some practice in this type of reading.

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Suggested Procedure:

1. Spend 5 minutes pre-teaching some of the difficult vocabulary. eg hive, honey, bees, wax, sweetener, nests, life span, sealing cracks, survive, nectar, pollen etc.

2. Hand out a photocopy of the text to all the students. Let them read it for 3 or 4 minutes or if you really want to develop scan reading don't let them read it at all.

3. It is best to use the cheap trick of having a competition to add some motivation. Divide the class into two teams. You ask questions on the text and the team who answer your questions correctly first get a point. Ask the questions from various parts of the text don't start at the top and go down.

Here are some ready made questions:

Approximately how many bee stings are considered fatal? (1100)
Which continent are bees not found on? (Antarctica)
How long can a queen bee live up to? (Five years)
How many queen bees are there per hive? (one)
What is the life span of worker bees in the winter season? (up to six weeks)
Which bees create beeswax? (worker bees)
What shape are honeycomb cells? (Hexagonal)
What do bees use as a coolant to regulate the temperature inside of the hive? (water)
Where are the cave paintings that evidence honey hunting? (Valencia, Spain)
Besides being used as a sweetener, what other use did honey have in Ancient Egypt? (Embalming the dead)
What religion considers honey one of the five elixirs of immortality? (Hinduism)
What is the characteristic that separates honey from all other foods in the world? (It does not spoil or rot)
What word does honey originate from? (hunig)
What can be used as an aid in locating wild bee nests? (Honeyguide birds)
What is the tool that a beekeeper uses to help calm the bees to be able to extract the honeycomb? (beesmoker)
How fast can bees fly? (15mph)
Which country was the top producer of natural honey in 2012? (China)
How much honey will an average honey bee produce in it´s lifetime? (one-twelfth of a teaspoon)
How many miles must worker bees fly to produce one pound of honey? (55,000 miles)
How many flowers must worker bees tap to produce one pound of honey? (two million flowers)
About how many different species of bees are there? (20,000)

That should be enough.

More suggestions:

If this activity was a success there are other ways you can practice reading for specific information.
It is a good idea to find texts that the students might really have to read.

e.g.. Photocopy the accommodation flats for rent section from a newspaper and ask questions like how much is the bedsit in Acacia Avenue. Other sources could be :- Job adverts, brochures, TV and entertainment etc.

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