Using English texts in the classroom

I've tried using one-page text in the classroom with the 3rd of Biology and the 4th of IT.

It's not extremely difficult for them, I think it's a good tool to begin with in CLIL. Of course, they complain, some of them are absolutely convinced they will never be able to understand that... but almost all the pupils have enough level to try, at least.

I've used two different approaches:

• Asking them to underline and look for in the dictionary the unknown words. It has some failures, the main one is that some pupils underline words already known and translate them, not worrying about the meaning of the more difficult ones. It's their way to obtain a positive mark without working
• Asking them to translate to Catalan. It's a bit more boring, but at least they are obliged to fully understand the text. It works better with short text like this:
  http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/20-tips-thatll-make-your-blog-work.html

It may be interesting trying other approaches, like asking them to answer questions or underlining some information, or using occasionally shorter texts...