I am looking for advice about using student's L1 texts and parallel texts

in the classroom. I teach multilingual ESOL classes, that is to say I have

no real proficiency in the majority of my students' L1s. 

I was preparing for a visit by a nurse from Newham PCT , she was going

to do a talk on TB with them. To this end I did an ICT activity wherein they

found leaflets on TB in their own languages on the Department of Health 

website. The students are ostensibly E1 but are in fact at a variety of levels

including E3. 

Basically I just got them to access these texts and read them, that was the

only task. It felt rather unsatisfactory, not having a task where I could assess

their learning. However the students all read their texts with interest, so

perhaps that is not really an issue. What do you think ? The obvious point

is that doing it like this would appear not to be suitable for an observed 

lesson. 

I also wondered about the usefulness of using parallel texts - eg the NHS 

TB leaflet in English and in their own language , on the same screens. I 

am guessing that they have the same content , but I emphasise that is 

just speculation on my part.  What do you think ?

Thanks to everyone for advise/advice comments from my earlier post.