What Should We Do with Textbook Reading Activities?

Many language textbooks emphasize more on product (answers to comprehension questions) than process (using reading skills and strategies to understand the text), providing little or no contextual information about the reading selections or their authors, and few if any pre-reading activities. Newer textbooks may provide pre-reading activities and reading strategy guidance, but their one-size-fits-all approach may or may not be appropriate for your students. 
There are some guidelines for developing reading activities which can serve as starting points for evaluating and adapting textbook reading activities. 

• Use existing, or add your own, pre-reading activities and reading strategy practice as appropriate for your students. 
• Don’t make students do exercises simply because they are in the book; this destroys motivation.
• Another problem with textbook reading selections is that they have been adapted to a predetermined reading level through adjustment of vocabulary, grammar, and sentence length. This makes them more immediately approachable, but it also means that they are less authentic and do not encourage students to apply the reading strategies they will need to use outside of class. When this is the case, use the textbook reading selection as a starting point to introduce a writer or topic, and then give students choices of more challenging authentic texts to read as a follow-up.