Teachers who do not use specifically communicatively-oriented textbooks can still derive much useful communicative language work from them. A key to success is engaging the student in the reading and comprehension of the text. Class exercises that can be used as pre-reading or pre-listening activities include: (1) giving students key words or allowing them to hear very brief excerpts and asking them to guess the story, individually or in groups; (2) letting students read or listen to different parts of the story, or see pictures of the story, and together work out the entire story; (3) ordering story pictures incorrectly and having students reorder them; and (4) having some students view story pictures and describe them to the others. Reading the text, which should be done silently, can be accompanied by the students' asking comprehension questions of each other or of the teacher. Communicative activities to follow reading include: having students write down their interpretations of the story and comparing them; having students act out the story; and having students relate some aspect of the story to their lives in a variety of exercises. (MSE)