The macro issues in any text are "who" or "what" is the text about, and "where" and "when" it takes place.  Those facts are generally provided to the reader in the initial paragraphs of any text.  As has been emphasized in Part I, titles and pictures of texts in periodicals provide at least one or two of the five or six essential concept words students can locate in their initial reading.

     The caveat here is that the traditional skimming and scanning activity, in itself, is not helpful, unless the studentknows what he or she is looking for.  The essential teacher task in Phase 2 of any curricular unit on reading, therefore, is to identify the "ballpark" in which their readers are playing, and what kind of orientation into the text will build on the general cognitive readiness established by pre-reading.  Initial reading should take place in the classroom under supervision of the teacher (as a preview for a homework assignment), or with carefully-structured reading tasks that students complete before they actually read.

     If looking at the first page of Draußen vor der Tür, for example, adult readers might be asked to find words that suggest to them 1) who is talking and 2) what they are talking about.  If looking at initial paragraphs of "Sein Name ist Hase" (the short newspaper piece discussed in Part 1), they must look in the first three paragraphs for words that suggest to them where the "Osterhase" comes from and might be found today in Germany.  If the teacher expects a complete reading of the text, students must also be introduced to the fact that, after the first three paragraphs, different languages are used in the text to correlate rabbits with human behaviors and superstitions.

     Such differences between persons and conversation versus objects and their location or objects and their linguistic referentiality may seem minimal.  However, they constitute essential cognitive boundaries for the student with limited foreign language abilities.  If these boundaries are clear to the novice reader, they will have a better chance to reduce their uncertainties and make better use of their prior knowledge and experience.

     In the sections that follow, we will illustrate ways to help students undertake initial reading, starting with examples for Grade 8, for students ready to confront foreign language texts as coherent statements, not just as support for their own activities. The exercises that follow are designed to help teachers create reading objectives for a class that enable those readers to identify comprehensible and meaningful semantic foci in the various texts read in Part 1 as well as Draußen vor der Tür.  As in Unit 4, you will be asked to gauge the suitability of particular exercises for specific student groups, and then you will have the option to either Brainstorm about your choices and then confirm your ideas by proceeding to Hints, or to go directly to Hints.