Teaching Reading Comprehension

1. Teaching Reading Comprehension

3. A text type A text type which has a distinctive form and content and which is socioculturally recognizable as serving a particular function, e.g. “short story”, “business letter”, “theatre programme”, “shopping list”, ...

10. Right teaching strategy? (1) I explain the passage to students sentence by sentence, and in Chinese, so that they will understand the passage.

11. Right teaching strategy? (2) I start by asking my students to read aloud the whole passage in chorus. Then I go through the comprehension questions with them.

12. Right teaching strategy? (3) My students are good at English. They can read on their own.

13. A three-phase framework

14. What is required in making sense of utterances? The social dimension

15. The janitor story Sam was on his way to school last Friday. He was really worried about the math lesson. Last week, he had been unable to control the class. It was unfair of the math teacher to leave him in charge. After all, it is not a normal part of a janitor’s duties.

16. How do we make sense of a listening/reading text?

17. Bottom-up processing • Decoding spoken discourse at phonological, word and sentence level is called “bottom-up processing” (sounds  syllables  words  grammatical units (phrases, clauses)  meaning). • But bottom-up processing is NOT enough for complete understanding in real life.

18. Top-down processing What gap? Application of background knowledge to construct the overall meaning.

19. Implications for teaching

20. Students will not be able to make sense of texts which are linguistically difficult. • Students will not be able to make sense of texts with content ideas that are too difficult. • Reading texts/tasks should have an appropriate linguistic and/or cognitive challenge. • Drawing on students’ background knowledge/Activating their scheme will help students understand a text. • There are specific reading skills and strategies that L2 learners need to develop. Classroom teaching techniques and activities should help learners develop these skills and strategies.

21. Pre-reading: Purposes To arouse interest in the reading To present the context To activate background knowledge Vocabulary preparation

24. Two types of while-reading tasks As ‘rehearsal’ for real-world listening, e.g. • taking a telephone message; • taking notes on a talk/lecture; • following directions to a place For developing certain listening skills and strategies, e.g. • Listen and draw • Listen and match • Listen and rank order • MC; T/F; items

25. Post-reading: Use the text as springboard for further language activities. What do you think of Hans? Tell your classmates your opinion.

26. Post-reading task: Example 2 Following the example conversation between Sue and Sam, plan and try a conversation in pairs. One of you will be Sam.

27. Dealing with vocabulary Pre-teach or post-teach?

28. Dealing with vocabulary: Some principles Few new words: Consider going back to them in post-reading stage. Many new words: Work on some of them in pre-reading stage. Deal with the rest in post-reading stage. Don’t turn the while-reading into a vocabulary teaching session.

29. Reading in the school curriculum

30. What is Extensive Reading? ‘… generally involves rapid reading of large quantities of material or longer readings (e.g. whole books) for general understanding, with the focus generally on the meaning of what is being read than on the language.’ Carrell & Carson, 1997

31. Extensive reading

32. Why Extensive Reading?

33. Benefits for reading We become better readers through plenty of reading.

34. Benefits for writing How do we know what is good writing if we seldom read?

35. For L2 learners – Reading provides input for further language development

37. Teaching pedagogy self-check Am I helping my students todevelop a range of reading skills and strategies for dealing with a variety of text types?