DIE LUPE READERS. By Gwen Berwick and Sydney Thorne pound;60. Hodder amp; Stoughton

Reading in any language seems nowadays a chore for young people, whereas in my adolescence it was a pleasure. Developing reading skills in French or German is therefore a particularly challenging task for the language teacher and attractive reading materials which appeal to most teenagers and can be used to supplement course books are in great demand. A la Carte is a colourful resource in a bright red box, with 50 different A4 laminated reading cards for pupils in Year 7 and 8.

There are three copies of each card, which is useful for group work. Each has attractive, clear visuals and is not overloaded with text. There are straightforward activities to check comprehension on one side and vocabulary support and extension work on the other. None of the tasks seems like hard work and they are there to slow down the pupils so that they look at what they are doing and reading.

Links to websites are given. The cards have texts in the form of cartoon stories, jokes, geographical facts, tips to improve football technique and poems. Thankfully we are spared the endless letters from pen-friends so common in our course books. Admittedly there is one example of this type of text, from Guillaume in Guadeloupe, which takes a different angle and at least his handwriting is legible.

Answer cards and cross-referencing to the national curriculum levels and the programme of study provide useful support. These cards are pleasant to handle, the storage box sturdy enough to withstand pupils flicking through while making their choice and best of all they seem fun to do either as a painless activity at the end of a lesson or as a homework.

Die Lupe relies on the inherent interest of the text to keep the reader focused, so there are no comprehension tasks. This works very successfully, as the pack is aimed at older readers, aged about 13 or 14, and this age group is generally interested in the life stories of the famous people listed in the collection of 12 readers, supplied with two copies of each reader.

The stories of sporting heroes such as Linford Christie and Muhammad Ali and film stars including Ewan McGregor, Keanu Reeves and Nicole Kidman feature, as well as readers about the Grand Prix and the job of a DJ. All are written mostly in the present tense, and while there is a clearly recognisable format, with colour covers and plenty of black and white photographs, there is also variety in the vocabulary support: sometimes as a glossary at the back, sometimes on the page.

An effective technique is the leading questions inEnglish at the start, to encourage the pupil to read on.

These readers are extremely well-presented and the authors have balanced the sophisticated appearance so crucial to create interest and the simple language so necessary to sustain it. I only wish there were 30 in the collection as I do not have many classes of only 24 pupils.

Nuala Leyden is head of modern languages at Carlton le Willows comprehensive school, Nottinghamshire