With the Christmas season and the New Year upon us, it’s time to start thinking about what Christmas activities we can use in class. With this seasonal activity, we can practise B1 Preliminary Reading Part 4, which is a gapped text. The text itself is one of my childhood favourites, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Check out our Christmas songs and Christmas speaking activities too!
Contents
About B1 Preliminary Reading Part 4
The gapped text, which has haunted Cambridge B2 First, Advanced and Proficiency candidates for years, has found its way into the B1 Preliminary exam since 2020. However, it’s not as scary as it seems. Most of the examples I have seen have been reasonably easy as long as you apply a logical process.
Train your students to look for 3 elements when completing the gapped text.
- Logical continuity – Does the story flow and do the missing sentences fit stylistically?
- Lexical continuity – Are there any synonymous words or phrases used in subsequent sentences?
- Grammatical continuity – Do the pronouns, linkers and reference words connect between sentences?
Use all the available clues together. The sentence you choose must fit the meaning and connect logically and grammatically with the text on both sides of the gap.
The origin story of rudolph
We all know the famous song about Rudolph and his shiny nose, but did you know that the story was first released as a book in 1939 as a free publication by a department store to encourage holiday shoppers? The song wasn’t released until 1949, when it hit number 1 at Christmas and sold more than 2.5 million copies.
Listen to the classic version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer by Gene Autry on Youtube.
The materials
Use this example B1 Preliminary Reading Part 4 to train your students and get them in the holiday spirit. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind listening to the song after too.
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