Novice High

Content/Context

1. Texts are personal and very familiar
2. Learners can rely heavily on extralinguistic support or contextual knowledge to understand the topics
3. Consist of mostly modified material specifically for this level

Examples:

family, weather, school, work, food, transportation, community, home, shopping, daily routines

Text Type

Learners at this level can understand short passages with the following:

1. Conveying basic information
2. Simple texts
3. Concrete forms

Examples:

maps, small infographics, social announcements, advertisements, short stories, receipts or bills, menus, lists, short descriptions, schedules, signs, letters

Structure

1. Has very predictable patterns of presentation based on repetition, background knowledge, familiar contexts and grammar structure, extralinguistic support, etc.
2. Mostly simple paragraphs
3. Predominantly uses simple sentences with some compound sentences
4. Does not rely on order of events, sequencing, or chronology to make sense of the text
5. Uses high frequency vocabulary

Function

Learners at this level can understand the following:

1. Explicit main ideas
2. Explicit major details
3. General high frequency vocabulary

Level of Tasks

Learners at this level are able to:

1. Preview for main ideas and topics
2. Scan for major details
3. Recognize basic organization patterns
4. Connect content to background knowledge

Example activities:

Discussions or writing prompts related to the topic, making connections about the text to personal experiences before and after reading, scanning to find major details, pre-teaching vocabulary words, identifying parts of an infographic/map/etc, watch videos related to the topic, using visuals to support the text

Learners at this level should be able to understand and answer questions about the following:

1. Explicit main ideas
2. Explicit major details

Provide at least 5-8 multiple choice comprehension questions after each reading passage