Unit 11 Teaching Reading

Beltei International University

Moniroith Vann

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 Teaching Reading
Topics for discussion:
1. How do people read?
2. What do people read?
3. What are the skills involved in
reading?
4. Principles for teaching reading
5. Common types of activities in
teaching reading
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 How do we read?
Some assumptions about reading: See the
table on the next two slides.

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 4
For the responses of the author of the book, please see pp. 185-6
 The nature of reading
Reading aloud Silent reading
Manner Utterance of every Silent
word
Speed Usually slow Usually fast
Purpose Usually to share Usually to get information
information
Skills Pronunciation and Skimming, scanning, predicting;
involved intonation Guessing unknown words;
Understanding details;
Understanding relations between
sentences and between paragraphs;
Understanding references;
Understanding inferences
Activity type Collective activity Individual activity
Management Easy to manage as it Difficult to manage as teachers
in the can be observed and cannot see what is going on in the
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classroom heard students’ minds
 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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 10.2 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 (p.
115):

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Calendars Clothes size labels Magazines
Addresses Graffiti on walls Radio/TV guides
Phone books Children’s 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 8
(adapted from Gebhard 1996:189)
• 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 reader’s own general
knowledge, and reconstructing the
meaning that the writer had meant to
convey.
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 Visual
signal

Writer’s Visual Reader’s

meaning information knowledge

Reader’s
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
Discourses
Sentences/
Linguistic knowledge Phrases
is used. Words
Morphemes
Phonemes

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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
Discourses
Linguistic Knowledge Sentences/
& Phrases
Background Words
Knowledge Morphemes
Phonemes

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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
reader’s knowledge of the language in
general, of the world, and of the text types.
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 The Interactive Model
Discourses
Schemata to be activated
Sentences/
the schema of
Phrases
language;
Words
the schema of content;
Morphemes
the schema of forms Phonemes

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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 reader’s 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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 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.

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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.: 38
 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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 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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 At 5:13 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
America’s 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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 Number of
Time Date Location people Damage
killed
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. 49
 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)
• - 50
• 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.
(reader’s 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. on p. 131:

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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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 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. 64
End of Unit 11

Thank you!
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