READING INSIDE THE LINES - AN ADVENTURE IN DEVELOPING CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING

One of the major concerns of the foreign language profession today is to find a way to promote better cross-cultural understanding while con tinuing to develop lingustic skills. This paper presents a series of o ral and written tasks based on authentic written texts. In this case, the texts, taken from magazines for Hispanic readers, clearly reflect the traditional Hispanic cultural value placed on close ties among fam ily and friends. A series of activities grouped into prereading, readi ng, and postreading tasks is provided along with some student response s to them. After locating appropriate authentic tests, activities can of course be designed for any language. The authors argue in favor of such task progressions for authentic texts. Reading ''inside '' the li nes can be a motivating and enjoyable adventure for the students, and developing the tasks can be a similar challenge for the teacher.