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 the new Preliminary (PET) Reading Part 4, which is a gapped text. The text itself is one of my childhood favourites, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Checkout our Christmas songs and Christmas speaking activities too!
Contents
About Preliminary (PET) Reading Part 4
The gapped text, which has haunted Cambridge First, Advanced and Proficiency candidates for years, has found its way into the Preliminary (PET) 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 usd in subsequent sentences?
- Grammatical continuity – Do the pronouns, linkers and reference words connect between sentences?
The goal should be to meet at least 2 of these 3 requirements to choose a correct answer.
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. Now, Rudolph is officially 80 years old!
Listen to the classic version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer by Gene Autry on Youtube.
The materials
Use this example Preliminary (PET) 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.
