Teaching Reading

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Teaching Reading
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Teaching Reading

• Topics for discussion
• How do people read?
• What do people read?
• What are the skills involved in reading?
• Principles for teaching reading
• Common types of activities in teaching reading

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For the responses of the author of the book,
please see pp. 185-6
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The nature of reading
Reading aloud Silent reading
Manner Utterance of every word Silent
Speed Usually slow Usually fast
Purpose Usually to share information Usually to get information
Skills involved Pronunciation and intonation Skimming, scanning, predicting Guessing unknown words Understanding details Understanding relations between sentences and between paragraphs Understanding references Understanding inferences
Activity type Collective activity Individual activity
Management in the classroom Easy to manage as it can be observed and heard Difficult to manage as teachers cannot see what is going on in the students minds
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What do effective readers do?

• Effective readers
• have a clear purpose in reading
• read silently
• read phrase by phrase, rather than word by word
• concentrate on the important bits, skim the rest,
  and skip the insignificant parts
• use different speeds and strategies for different
  reading tasks
• perceive the information in the target language
  rather than mentally translate
• guess the meaning of new words from the context,
  or ignore them
• have and use background information to help
  understand the text.

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What do we read?

• We believe ESL/EFL reading textbooks should have
  a great variety of authentic materials, as much
  as the coverage allows. Of course, textbooks
  should always be supplemented by extra materials.
• A list of things we read in daily life

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Calendars Clothes size labels Magazines
Addresses Graffiti on walls Radio/TV guides
Phone books Childrens scribbling Advertisements
Name cards Informa1 letters Posters
Bank statements Business letters Travel guides
Credit cards Rules and regulations Cookbooks
Maps Electronic mail Repair manuals
Anecdotes Telegrams Memos
Weather forecast Fax messages Time schedules
Pamphlets Junk mail Street signs
Product labels Postcards Syllabi
Washing instructions Credit cards Journal articles
Short stories Comic books Song lyrics
Novels Newspapers Film subtitles
Plays Diplomas Diagrams
Poems Application forms Flowcharts
Handbooks Store catalogues Name tags
(adapted from Gebhard 1996189) (adapted from Gebhard 1996189) (adapted from Gebhard 1996189)
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• It is important for ESL/EFL teachers to bear in
  mind what we read in real life, so that when we
  select reading materials for our ESL/EFL
  classroom, we not only have a greater variety but
  also meet the needs of different students.

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• Besides authentic texts, ESL/EFL textbooks also
  employ a lot of non-authentic texts, i.e.
  simulated text. Simulated texts are aimed for
  beginner students who are probably not able to
  handle genuine authentic text. It is believed
  that the reading of such texts will help students
  to acquire the necessary receptive skills they
  will need when they eventually come to tackle
  authentic materials (Harmer, 1983).

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Skills involved in reading comprehension

• Two broad levels in reading
• Visual signal from the eyes
• A cognitive task of interpreting the visual
  information, relating the received information
  with the readers own general knowledge, and
  reconstructing the meaning that the writer had
  meant to convey.

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Visual signal
Writers meaning
Readers knowledge
Visual information
Readers reconstruction
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Skills needed in reading

• Recognising the script of a language
• Understanding the explicitly stated information
• Understanding conceptual meaning
• Understanding the communicative value (function)
  of sentences
• Deducing the meaning of unfamiliar lexical items
• -

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• Understanding relations within sentences
• Understanding references
• Recognising indicators in discourse
• Recognising the organization of the text
• Making inferences.

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Strategic skills needed in reading

• Distinguishing the main idea from supporting
  details
• Skimming reading for the gist or main idea
• Scanning reading to look for specific
  information
• Predicting guessing what is coming next

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Principles and models for teaching reading

• Principles for teaching reading
• The texts and tasks should be accessible to the
  students.
• Tasks should be clearly given in advance.
• Tasks should be designed to encourage reading for
  the main meaning rather than test the students
  understanding of trivial details.
• Tasks should help develop students reading
  skills and strategies rather than test their
  reading comprehension.
• Teachers should help the students to read on
  their own, so that they eventually become
  independent readers.

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Models for teaching reading

• The Bottom-up Model
• The Top-down Model
• The Interactive Model

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The Bottom-up Model

• This model of teaching reading is based on the
  theory in which reading (and listening, too) is
  regarded as a process of decoding, which moves
  from the bottom to the top of the system of
  language.

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The Bottom-up Model
DiscoursesSentences/PhrasesWordsMorphemesPhon
emes
Linguistic knowledge is used.
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• In the Bottom-up Model, the teacher teaches
  reading by introducing vocabulary and new words
  first and then going over the text sentence by
  sentence. This is followed by some questions and
  answers and reading aloud practice.

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The Top-down Model

• This model of teaching reading is based on the
  theory in which reading is regarded as a
  prediction-check process, a psycholinguistic
  guessing game (Goodman, 1970).
• In the Top-down Model, not only linguistic
  knowledge but also background knowledge is
  involved in reading.

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The Top-down Model
DiscoursesSentences/PhrasesWordsMorphemesPhon
emes
Linguistic Knowledge Background Knowledge
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The Top-down Model

• Therefore, it is believed that in teaching
  reading, the teacher should teach the background
  knowledge first, so that students equipped with
  such knowledge will be able to guess meaning from
  the printed page.

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The Interactive Model

• This model of teaching reading is based on the
  theory in which reading is viewed as an
  interactive process.

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• According to the Interactive Model of reading
  (also called as the Schema Theory Model), when
  one is reading, the brain receives visual
  information, and at the same time, interprets or
  reconstructs the meaning that the writer had in
  mind when he wrote the text. This process does
  not only involve the printed page but also the
  readers knowledge of the language in general, of
  the world, and of the text types.

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The Interactive Model
DiscoursesSentences/PhrasesWordsMorphemesPhon
emes
Schemata to be activated the schema of
language the schema of content the schema of
forms
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The Interactive Model

• Based on such understanding, teaching reading in
  the classroom divides reading activities into
  basically three stages, in which bottom-up and
  top-down techniques are integrated to help
  students in their reading comprehension and in
  increasing their language efficiency in general.

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• The three stages are pre-reading, while-reading,
  and post-reading.

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Pre-reading activities

• The purpose of pre-reading (also called Lead-in)
  is to facilitate while-reading activities.
• predicting,
• setting the scene,
• skimming, and
• scanning

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Predicting

• Predicting will get the readers mind closer to
  the theme of the text.
• Ways of predicting
• predicting based on the title,
• predicting based on vocabulary,
• predicting based on the T/F questions.

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Predicting based on the title

• A Nation of Pet-Lovers
• Save the Jungle Save the World
• Police Hunt for Child

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If the students are not good at predicting, the
teacher can help them by asking certain
questions.

• Text 1 What is a pet? What are pets for? Why do
  people love pets? Are there any problems with
  pets?
• Text 2 What is a jungle? Where can you find
  jungles? What do you think has happened to the
  jungle?
• Text 3 What happened to the child? How do you
  think the parents would feel? What could the
  police do?

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Predicting based on vocabulary

• Having made predictions based on the title,
  students can be asked to predict some lexical
  items that they think are likely to occur in the
  text. Then the students read the text to confirm
  their predictions.
• A variation of this prediction activity is that
  the teacher provides students with a list of
  words, and asks the students to predict which of
  the words are used in the text, and to read the
  text and confirm their predictions.

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Predicting based on the T/F questions

• e.g. Reading How to behave at a job interview

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(p. 120) (For the text please see pp. 193-4.) Before reading After reading
Always try to please the interviewer.
Do not try to dominate the interviewer.
Never interrupt the interviewer.
If necessary, disagree with the interviewer.
Never change your mind.
Always try to please the interviewer.
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Setting the scene

• Setting the scene means getting the students
  familiar with the cultural and social background
  knowledge relevant to the reading text.
• The culture-bound aspect of the text can start at
  the beginning with the title. e.g.

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• The culture-bound aspects of a text are often of
  great interest to students, and they can be used
  to provoke an interesting discussion not only
  about the other culture, but also about the
  home culture. (e.g. Eskimos, p.121)

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• ESKIMOS
• Eskimos love in the polar areas between latitude
  66 N and the North Pole. There are Eskimos in
  Northern Canada, Greenland and Siberia. This
  means that they are the only people who have
  their origins both in the Old World (Europe an
  Asia) and in the new world (America).
• It is difficult to make an accurate estimate but
  there are probably about 50,000 Eskimos. Eskimos
  are not usually tall but they have powerful legs
  and shoulders they have a yellowish skin and
  straight black are. Eskimos have a common
  language and can understand members of another
  group although they may come from many thousands
  of miles away. The most important unit in Eskimo
  society is the family. Marriage is by mutual
  consent the Eskimos do not have a special
  marriage ceremony.
• In the Eskimo community, the m0st important
  people are the older man. They control the
  affairs of the group. The economic system of the
  Eskimo communities works like a commune they
  share almost everything. Eskimos live by hunting,
  fishing and trapping. When they go to hunt seals,
  they sail in Kayaks (light boats made from skins)
  and when they hunt animals, they travel across
  the ice in sleds pulled by teams of dogs. The
  Eskimo snow house is very well known, but, in
  fact, Eskimos usually live in houses made of wood
  and turf. When they are not hunting and working,
  Eskimos like to carve they use ivory and wood
  and they often make very beautiful objects.

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Skimming

• Skimming means reading quickly to get the gist,
  i.e. the main idea of the text.
• Some suggestions
• Ask general questions. e.g. Why did the writer
  write the article?
• Ask the students to choose a statement from 3-4
  statements.
• Ask the students to put subtitles for different
  parts of the text into the right order. e.g.

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Headings Where can we put it?

• Confirming Action
• Greetings
• Interrupting without insult
• Closing the call
• Getting to the point

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Text

• Top tips for telephone English
• If you're looking for a challenging situation to
  practice your English, just pick up the
  telephone. Not being able to see the person
  you're talking to and the body language they're
  using can make chatting on the phone one of the
  most difficult forms of communication. Never
  fear, though! We've compiled some tips to guide
  you through an average telephone conversation in
  English.

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• (Which heading should be here?)
• Every phone call should begin with a polite
  greeting such as, Hi, how've you been? or Nice to
  hear from you. Even if you're calling a business
  contact for a specific purpose, it'd be rude to
  jump right into business without a little small
  talk at the beginning.

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• (Which heading should be here?)
• There always comes the point, however, where you
  want to move on from friendly banter and get down
  to business. For this situation, use the phrase
  I'm just calling to ... to transition to the
  topic at hand. For example, I'm just calling to
  see if you'd like to set up a meeting. If the
  situation is reversed, however, and you are
  waiting to find out why someone called you, you
  can guide the conversation by saying, So what can
  I do for you?

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• (Which heading should be here?)
• If you happen to be speaking with a very
  talkative person, it may be difficult to get a
  word in edgewise or contribute to the
  conversation. If someone is going on and on, and
  you'd like to interrupt, be sure to do it
  politely. For example, begin with I would like to
  say something here, if I may or Allow me to make
  a point. Or, you could just ask May I interrupt
  you for a second?
• If you're making plans on the phone, be sure to
  confirm the details toward the end of the call.
  Begin with phrases like Please let me confirm...
  and So, let me make sure I've got things
  straight... and follow up with the details as you
  understand them.

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• (Which heading should be here?)
• Sometimes this can be the trickiest part of the
  conversation! It may be the time to offer some
  good wishes, such as good luck on that interview
  or hope you feel better soon if it's appropriate.
  Additionally, you may want to confirm any plans
  you've made I'll see you on Friday, then.
  Sometimes it's easiest to just say you enjoyed
  speaking to the other person. Also, keep in mind
  that strategically saying the word well at the
  beginning of a sentence can indicate that you are
  ready to end the conversation Well John, it's
  been a pleasure talking to you.

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Scanning

• Scanning means to read to locate specific
  information.
• The key point in scanning is that the reader has
  something in his mind and he or she should ignore
  the irrelevant parts when reading.

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• Questions for a scanning activity are often about
  specific information.
• We can also ask students to scan for vocabulary.
• We can pre-teach some words within the semantic
  area of the theme. This does not mean that we are
  teaching reading following a Bottom-up model,
  because the schema of content is activated after
  the students have scanned the text.

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• We can also ask students to scan for certain
  structures, e.g. tense forms, discourse
  connectors, particular sentence structures.

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Something to bear in mind when conducting scanning

• Set a time limit.
• Give clear instructions.
• Wait until 70 of the students finish.
• Make clear how you are going to get feedback.
• Answers to the scanning questions should be
  scattered throughout the text rather than
  clustered at one place.

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While-reading activities

• While-reading activities focus on the process of
  understanding rather than the result of reading.
• Information transfer activities
• Reading comprehension questions
• Understanding references
• Making inferences

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Information transfer activities using transition
devices

• Transition device A way to transfer information
  from one form, e.g. the text form, to another,
  e.g. a visual form.

Sophisticated Input (SI)
Transition Device (TD)
Output (OP)
Transition devices can be used to make
information in text form effectively processed
and retained.
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Some transition devices

• Pictures, drawings, maps, tables, tree diagrams,
  cyclic diagrams, pie charts, bar charts, flow
  charts, chronological sequence, subtitles
  (providing subtitles), notes (taking notes while
  reading), etc.

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Bar chart
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Pie chart
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Examples of using transition devices

• Example 1
• Read the following passage and complete the
  table, which compares the two earthquakes.

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At 513 on the morning of April 18th, 1906, they city of San Francisco was shaken by a terrible earthquake. A great part of the city was destroyed and a large number of buildings were burnt. The umber of people who lost their homes reached as many as 250 000. About 700 people died in the earthquake and the fires. Another earthquake shook San Francisco on October 17th, 1989. It was Americas second strongest earthquake and about 100 people were killed. It happened in the evening as people were travelling home. A wide and busy road, which was built like a bridge over another road, fell onto the one below. Many people were killed in the cars, but a few lucky ones were not hurt. Luckily the 1989 earthquake did not happen in the centre of town but about 50 kilometres away. In one part of the town a great may buildings were destroyed. These buildings were over 50 years old, so they were not strong enough. There were a lot of fires all over the city. The electricity was cut of for several days too.
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Time Date Location Number of people killed Damage
Earthquake in 1906
Earthquake in 1989
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• It is important that students fill in the table
  while they are reading rather than after they
  finish reading.
• Then a follow-up output activity can be conducted
  based on the results.
• e.g.
• The teacher can ask questions like Which
  earthquake caused more damage and why?

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Example 2
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Summary on transition devices

• The purposes of TDs
• Focus on the main meaning.
• Simplify sophisticated input.
• Allow students to perform while reading.
• Highlight the main structural organization, and
  show how the structure relates to meaning.
• Involve all students.
• Go step by step.
• Conduct follow-up activities for oral and written
  output.

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Reading comprehension questions

• Questions for literal comprehension. (Answers
  directly and explicitly available in the text)
• Questions involving reorganization or
  reinterpretation. (Require Ss to obtain literal
  information from various parts of the text and
  put it together or reinterpret it)
• Questions for inferences. (what is not explicitly
  stated but implied)
• -

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• Questions for evaluation or appreciation. (making
  a judgement about the text in terms of what the
  writer is trying to convey)
• Questions for personal responses. (readers
  reaction to the content of the text)

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Understanding references

• All natural language, spoken or written, uses
  referential word such as pronouns to refers to
  people or things already mentioned previously in
  the context.
• e.g.

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(No Transcript)
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Making inferences

• Making inferences means reading between the
  lines, which requires the reader to use
  background knowledge in order to infer the
  implied meaning of the author.
• e.g. What can you infer from the following?

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• Blandida is a country which has every climatic
  condition known to man.
• When she came into the room, the large crowd grew
  silent.
• The painting had been in the family for years,
  but sadly Bill realised he would have to sell it.

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Post-reading activities

• Post-reading tasks should provide the students
  with opportunities to relate what they have read
  to what they already know or what they feel.
• In addition, post-reading task should enable
  students to produce language based on what they
  have learned.
• e.g.

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(No Transcript)
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Discussion questions

• Do you think he was a good doctor?
• How do you think the young man felt?

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Reproducing the text

• Tell part of the story from these prompts
• A doctor village annoyed.
• People stop street advice.
• Never paid never money made up his mind
  put and end

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Role Play

• 1. Act out the conversation between the doctor
  and the young man.
• 2. Act out an interview between a journalist and
  the doctor.

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Gap-filling

• One day the doctor ________ by a young man. The
  doctor _________ to be interested. He felt the
  young man __________ in the street with his
  tongue ______ out.

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False summary

• The teacher provides a summary with some wrong
  information, and asks the students to correct it.

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Writing

• Writing based on what the students have read,
  e.g. producing a tourist brochure, an
  advertisement, a short summary, etc.

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Conclusion

• The teaching of reading should focus on
  developing students reading skills and
  strategies rather than testing students reading
  comprehension.
• We should view reading as an interactive process.
• Reading in the classroom can be divided into 3
  stages pre-reading activities, while-reading
  activities, and post-reading activities.