Teaching Reading

1. Teaching Reading

2. Teaching Reading Topics for discussion: • How do people read? • What do people read? • What are the skills involved in reading? • Common types of activities in teaching reading

3. How do we read?

4. The nature of reading

5. What do effective readers do? • 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; • guess the meaning of new words from the context, or ignore them; • have and use background information to help understand the text.

6. 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.

8. 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.

9. Skills needed in reading • Understanding the explicitly stated information; • Understanding the communicative value (function) of sentences; • Guessing the meaning of unfamiliar lexical items;

10. Understanding relations within sentences; • Understanding references; • Recognising indicators in discourse; • Recognising the organization of the text;

11. 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;

12. 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.

13. Models for teaching reading • The Bottom-up Model • The Top-down Model • The Interactive Model

14. 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.

15. In the Top-down Model 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.

16. The Interactive Modeldivides 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.

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

18. Pre-reading activities The purpose of pre-reading (also called Lead-in)is to facilitate while-reading activities. • predicting, • skimming • scanning

19. 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,

20. Predicting based on the title A Nation of Pet-Lovers If the students are not good at predicting, the teacher can help them by asking certain questions such as; What is a pet? What are pets for? Why do people love pets? Are there any problems with pets?

21. 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.

22. Skimming Skimming means reading quickly to get themain idea of the text. Some suggestions: • 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.:

23. Headings: Where can we put it? • Confirming Action • Greetings • Interrupting without insult • Closing the call • Getting to the point

24. 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.

25. (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.

26. (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?

27. (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 youunderstand them.

28. (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.

29. 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.

30. Questions for a scanning activity are often about specific information. • We can also ask students to scan for vocabulary.

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

32. 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.

33. 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

34. 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.

35. Some transition devices • Pictures, drawings, maps, tables, tree diagrams, cyclic diagrams, pie charts, bar charts, flow charts, etc.

36. Family

37. Family Tree

38. Prediction Chart

39. Examples of using transition devices • Read the following passage and complete the table, which compares the two families.

40. 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 family is rich ?”

41. CLASSIFY THE INFORMATION

42. 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)

43. Questions for inferences. (what is not explicitly stated but implied • Questions for evaluation or appreciation. (making a judgement about the text in terms of what the writer is trying to convey)

44. 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

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

47. Reproducing the text Tell part of the story from these prompts: • A doctor – village – annoyed. • People – stop – street – advice.

48. 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.

49. 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.

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