Procedure:
- The first sentence is of vital importance for many authors, and quite often for the readers as well.
- The students look in books and magazines for those first sentences that they like particularly well. The teacher, or an older student, may assist the younger ones. The students write the selected sentences legibly on a paper (A3 format). Possibilities for further activities (in groups or as a whole class):
a) The students read the sentences and try to find out from which book or magazine a certain sentence might have originated.
b) The students make assumptions about what kind of story this could be, based on its first sentence. They also try to guess the genre of the text (thriller, fairy tale, newspaper article, realistic story, nonfiction, operating instructions, etc..).
Variants:
- Students select for the posted begining sentences one that they like best and invent their own story based on it. Their invented stories will then be compared with the real texts.
- The students select the last sentences from different books and other texts, and then try to develop hypotheses from the end about the content or the origin of the text, based on the last sentences (from which book…).
- The following exercise #7 (developing hypotheses) is a good expansion step.