Activity Ideas: Contemporary Readers - A Contextual Role Play

A teaching resource created by the HEA English Subject Centre.

This role-play activity highlights in a very practical way the impact of the contexts of reading the different ways in which a text is read over time and perhaps most importantly the role of the reader in creating meaning. It is an activity that helps underline the fact that no reading is neutral. Through this activity students also get to grips with contextual information which may be important to their reading as they develop their own interpretation of the text.