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Questions and Answers
What is the primary purpose of an anticipation guide?
What is the primary purpose of an anticipation guide?
Which of the following is a recommended technique for teaching vocabulary?
Which of the following is a recommended technique for teaching vocabulary?
How should comprehension be taught according to the content?
How should comprehension be taught according to the content?
What approach should be avoided when working on increasing reading rate?
What approach should be avoided when working on increasing reading rate?
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What technique is recommended to stimulate vocabulary building?
What technique is recommended to stimulate vocabulary building?
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Which type of reader should be the focus when increasing reading rate?
Which type of reader should be the focus when increasing reading rate?
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What type of questions should educators ask during the reading process?
What type of questions should educators ask during the reading process?
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What is considered a key component of building a strong vocabulary base?
What is considered a key component of building a strong vocabulary base?
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What is the primary goal of pre-reading activities?
What is the primary goal of pre-reading activities?
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Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of effective tasks for reading?
Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of effective tasks for reading?
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How should teachers support students in becoming independent readers?
How should teachers support students in becoming independent readers?
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In the context of predicting while reading, which method can help students?
In the context of predicting while reading, which method can help students?
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What is the relationship between the three stages of reading?
What is the relationship between the three stages of reading?
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Which strategy is a form of predicting that helps students engage with the text?
Which strategy is a form of predicting that helps students engage with the text?
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Why is it important for teachers to help students develop their reading skills?
Why is it important for teachers to help students develop their reading skills?
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What is one way teachers can enhance students' predicting skills?
What is one way teachers can enhance students' predicting skills?
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What is the purpose of small talk in a professional conversation?
What is the purpose of small talk in a professional conversation?
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How can you politely interrupt someone who is speaking too much?
How can you politely interrupt someone who is speaking too much?
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Which phrase is appropriate to confirm plans during a phone call?
Which phrase is appropriate to confirm plans during a phone call?
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What does scanning involve when reading a text?
What does scanning involve when reading a text?
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What is an effective way to encourage conversation on the phone?
What is an effective way to encourage conversation on the phone?
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What might indicate that the speaker is ready to conclude a phone conversation?
What might indicate that the speaker is ready to conclude a phone conversation?
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Why is it beneficial to pre-teach vocabulary before a scanning activity?
Why is it beneficial to pre-teach vocabulary before a scanning activity?
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What is a potential downside of a very talkative person during a conversation?
What is a potential downside of a very talkative person during a conversation?
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Study Notes
Teaching English Language Skills I - Week 12-13: Teaching Reading
- Reading is a complex process of constructing meaning from written texts.
- Successful reading requires coordination of interlinked information sources.
- The ultimate goal is good reading comprehension.
Factors Influencing Reading Comprehension
- The reader: Strategies, schema, purpose for reading, manner of reading, and fluency.
- The text: Content and structure.
- The interaction between reader and text: Interaction between strategies, schema, and fluency.
Background to Teaching Reading
- Interest in teaching second-language reading has increased dramatically in recent years due to its critical role in academic learning.
- L2 students can master reading skills, particularly in academic contexts.
- Reading comprehension is crucial for academic progress, and can be integrated with other skills like writing and speaking.
History of L2 Reading Trends
- 1980s: Focused mainly on meaning, activating prior knowledge, and building on learners' first-language (L1) reading schemata to develop L2 reading skills.
- Nowadays: Recognizing varied proficiency levels, prioritizing bottom-up skills (linguistic processing), and focusing first on literal comprehension.
Activity Differences
- Method 1: Learners read a text and underline sentences describing hypothetical scenarios (conditional sentences).
- Method 2: Students list prior knowledge on a topic; then, in groups, they discuss a similar experience after reading the article.
Models of Reading
- Bottom-up: Decoding, influenced by 1950s behaviorist psychology. Reader discerns meaning from smallest units (e.g., letters) to achieve comprehension. It requires focus on repetition and drills of sounds of words. This model proceeds from the bottom (letters) to top (meaning) of a text.
- Top-down: A prediction-check process or a psycholinguistic guessing game (Goodman, 1970)
- Interactive: Integration of bottom-up and top-down approaches (mixture); readers use both techniques simultaneously or alternately.
Bottom-up Processing (Decodong)
- Based on the theory of decoding, reading proceeds from bottom (letters) to top (meaning).
- This model emphasizes recognition of letters, morphemes; syllables, words, and then phrases to enable comprehension of larger texts.
- Uses simplified materials until more advanced phonological rules are mastered.
- Books for this approach use words that are decodable based on already learned rules.
Bottom-up Processing (Decodong) - continued
- It uses a linear method and relies heavily on repetition and drills to help learners decode words.
Phonics
- Emphasizes connecting speech sounds to letters.
- Letter names and sounds are fundamental in reading.
- Simplified materials (until proficient) aid learning.
- Phonics generalizations (short vowel families, like can, fan, man) are taught first.
- Decodable books are key to learning.
Phonemic Awareness
- Understanding separate sounds in words is crucial for proficient readers.
- Awareness of phonemes helps in effortlessly, quickly, and unconsciously decoding and comprehending the language.
- Readers who understand and use these strategies are better readers, and can more successfully connect sounds to symbolic representations.
- Learners benefit from understanding phonetic components of words to acquire English phonemes more effectively and quickly.
Intensive Reading
- Focused on understanding details on shorter texts for extracting specific information.
- Emphasizes grammatical forms, discourse markers and other surface details.
- Purpose includes understanding literal meaning, making interpretations, and noting the text's rhetorical relationships.
Intensive Reading - Characteristics
- Reader intensely analyses the text for linguistic or semantic details (e.g. grammar , discourse markers).
- Reader identifies key vocabulary and sometimes draws pictures.
- Focus is on building language knowledge, not only practicing the reading skill itself.
Top-Down Processing
- Reading as a prediction-check process that involves prediction combined with background knowledge.
- Readers use their background knowledge (cultural, linguistic, syntactic, etc.), prior experience, and expectations.
- Known as a problem-solving process in which the reader actively constructs meaning.
Top-Down Processing - Continued
- Focuses on the reader's knowledge to support comprehension, and not just decoding isolated elements of a text.
- Relies on schema theory.
- Involves meaningful learning (contrast to rote memorization).
Schema Theory and The Reading Process
- Formal Schemata: Understanding text structure (e.g., recipe, scientific article).
- Content Schemata: Using prior knowledge about a topic to enhance comprehension. The more familiar students are with a subject, the better their comprehension.
Schema Theory and L2 Reading
- Choose appropriate texts based on student needs and preferences, cultural background, etc.
- Use pre-reading activities to activate schemata (e.g., prediction, brainstorming, semantic mapping).
- Conduct pre-reading activities to activate learners' prior knowledge of the text topic.
Pre-reading Activities
- Activate existing schemata
- Build new schemata
- Inform teachers about student knowledge
- Formal schemata use advance organizers & overviews to clarify text structures.
- Content schemata use pre-reading activities to help students brainstorm and anticipate information.
Whole Language Approach
- Reading is literature-based, focusing on authentic texts and rich vocabulary.
- The approach is student-centered and supports choices regarding what is read.
- Reading and writing are integrated; students work on both simultaneously.
- Focus is on constructing meaning as a whole, not isolated parts.
Extensive Reading
- Extensive reading aims for general comprehension of longer texts, with focus on meaning and gist, avoiding difficulty with unknown words.
- This is usually outside of class and intended to boost reader confidence and encourage enjoyment of reading.
Extensive Reading - Characteristics
- Reading is for pleasure, information, and general understanding.
- Reading materials are within students' linguistic competence. Reading is individual, and silent.
- Speed of reading is generally faster than slower formats.
- Teachers provide opportunities for practicing strategies already introduced in intensive reading.
Extensive Reading Activities
- Interviewing each other for self-reflection and to share experiences with similar reading material.
- Writing, for example, newspaper reports based on reading material.
- Setting own goals for following reading sessions.
- Reading logs to record number of pages and level completed in each session.
- Reflection on own progress and identifying patterns in personal reading style.
- Summary, book reports, or retelling about parts of a text.
Interactive Approach
- Readers use both bottom-up and top-down strategies simultaneously or alternately
- Use top-down for familiar texts, switch to bottom-up to decode unknown words for successful comprehension.
Which Model Should Be Adopted?
- Avoid over-reliance on either top-down or bottom-up models for beginning ESL/EFL learners; employ an interactive balance between these approaches.
- Provide L2 learners with shorter texts to teach specific skills explicitly, followed by longer texts.
- Support developing extensive reading alongside intensive reading.
Interaction ("Balance") of Bottom-up and Top-down Strategies
- Bottom-up strategies (e.g., decoding, using capitalization to infer nouns, graded reader approach, pattern recognition) balance with
- Top-down strategies (e.g., using background knowledge, predicting meanings of unknown words).
Authentic Texts vs. Simulated Texts
- Authentic Texts: Reading materials reflect the language used in real-world settings, helping students adjust to authentic language situations when studying or working abroad.
- Simulated Texts: Specifically designed for language learners with varying levels of language proficiency. These are particularly useful for novices.
Principles for Teaching Reading
- Exploit the reader's background knowledge
- Build a strong vocabulary base
- Teach for comprehension
- Increase reading rate
- Teach reading strategies
- Encourage readers to transform strategies into skills
- Integrate assessment and evaluation
- Strive for continuous improvement
Exploiting Background Knowledge
- Background knowledge includes past experiences, education, understanding of text types and culture.
- Activating this knowledge through setting goals, asking questions, making predictions, and teaching text structure is crucial for comprehension.
Activate prior knowledge
- To activate prior knowledge, you can use methods like anticipating or previewing or giving the students time to talk about the topic.
Build a Strong Vocabulary Base
- Prioritize explicitly teaching basic vocabulary.
- Teach L2 learners to effectively guess meanings from context.
Teach Comprehension
- Use questioning techniques during reading.
- Encourage students to ask questions of the text instead of focusing purely on recall.
Increase Reading Rate
- Do not overemphasize accuracy over fluency.
- Develop essential reading skills for speed such as scanning and skimming.
- Introduce varied reading strategies, such as using context clues or predicting meanings, to help students improve overall reading skills.
- Train learners to use dictionaries effectively and efficiently.
Teach Reading Strategies
- Learners need diverse strategies to match reading purposes.
- Demonstrate, teach the variety of strategies through modeling, group work, or discussion.
Encourage Readers to Transform Strategies into Skills
- Transformation of strategies into skills occurs through consistent practice. As strategies become automatic, they become skills, not just conscious activities.
Build Assessment and Evaluation into Teaching
- Implement quantitative assessments (e.g., comprehension tests, reading rate tests).
- Emphasize using qualitative assessments (e.g., reading journals, interest surveys, checklists) to measure improvement in skills and strategies.
Summary of Three Stages of Reading
- Pre-reading: The stage involves setting the scene and actively trying to anticipate or predict the text's meaning before reading. This stage often includes predictions and other preparatory activities, such as previewing headings, illustrations, illustrations or vocabulary.
- While-reading: This stage involves working through the reading text. The focus is on reading comprehension. Strategies are employed for effective understanding, including employing strategies like summarizing and making inferences or predictions.
- Post-reading: This stage occurs following the reading activity. The purpose of post-reading activities is to summarize, evaluate, and reflect on the reading and learning.
Pre-reading Activities
- Predicting: Using background knowledge to anticipate content, vocabulary, and writing style.
- Setting the scene: Familiarizing students with the cultural and social context of the text.
- Previewing: Scanning the text (e.g., headings, subheadings, illustrations) to form a general idea of the content.
- Skimming: Reading quickly to grasp main ideas.
- Scanning: Quickly locating specific information.
While-Reading Activities
- Using information transfer activities (e.g., creating a chart or table) Asking comprehension questions during the reading activity.
- Understanding and making inferences
Information Transfer Activities (Using Transition Devices)
- Pictures, drawings, diagrams, tables, tree diagrams, cyclic diagrams, pie charts, flow charts, chronological sequence are examples of transition aids.
- To improve understanding, learners should be encouraged to create various visual representations to help them to better process and retain the text as they are reading.
Summary on Transition Devices
- Focus on main ideas and simplifying information.
- Use transition techniques to help L2 readers learn to process information in a text.
- Use visual aids to help students grasp the main reading or structural concepts.
Reading Comprehension Questions - Types
- Literal comprehension: Questions that require direct answers available in the text.
- Reorganization/Reinterpretation: Questions that ask for reorganizing or re-interpreting information from various parts of the text.
- Inferences: Questions that ask for implied meaning, not directly stated in the text.
- Evaluation/Appreciation: Questions that encourage subjective evaluations about the text and the author's intent.
- Personal Responses: Questions that assess readers' personal reactions to the content.
Understanding References - Continued
- All languages rely on reference words, such as pronouns. Writers implicitly refer back to information already stated previously in a text. Readers should become aware of this to fully comprehend texts.
Making Inferences
- "Reading between the lines". Readers need to employ background knowledge to understand implied meaning.
Post-Reading Activities
- Activities that allow students to connect the reading to their own knowledge and feelings.
- Post-reading tasks may include discussion, writing, or role-plays to give L2 learners more opportunities to show their reading comprehension and retain new knowledge.
Discussion Questions - Examples
- Reflect on the content and characters in a story.
- Give individual opinions about the story, characters, or themes from the given writing piece.
- Encourage deeper understanding by analyzing the content in order to provide more insight and clarity.
Reproducing the Text - Examples
- Re-tell a story from their own perspective.
Role Play - Example
- Act out the interactions between characters.
- Replicate interactions between a journalist and the speaker.
Gap-Filling Exercises
- Help learners increase familiarity with words and context used in a story.
Retelling - Examples
- Rephrasing a story.
- Replicating the story from another character's perspective.
Writing - Examples
- Using reading to develop writing skills (e.g., creating a tourist brochure, an advertisement, a summary).
Activities - Summary
- Use examples to illustrate pre-reading, while-reading, and post-reading activities.
- Include examples for each from the slides.
Conclusion
- Focus on developing reading skills and strategies rather than solely testing comprehension.
- View reading as an interactive process with three stages (pre-, while-, and post-reading activities).
Additional Principles to be Considered
- The selected texts and tasks must be appropriate for students. Tasks should be clearly introduced prior to in-class or out-of-class reading.
- Tasks should focus on main ideas and comprehension, not just minutiae (minor facts).
- Aid learners in coping with one text, and help them improve and master reading strategies in general.
- Encourage self-sufficiency and independence in reading.
Additional Notes
- There are various methods for activating, developing, and assessing reading skills. These can be employed within a variety of contexts.
- Reading strategies have various purposes and uses.
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Description
Test your knowledge on effective reading instruction techniques! This quiz covers anticipatory guides, vocabulary building, comprehension teaching methods, and strategies for improving reading rates. Explore the essentials for helping students become independent readers.
