TEACHING AND ASSESING
READING
Group Members:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Diah Kurnia Asri
Agnes Rizky Primadari
Nicko Kharisma Gunawan
Tria Risky Pambudi
(201310100311270)
(201310100311291)
(201310100311293)
(201310100311300)
ENGLISH DEPARTEMENT
FACULTY TEACHING TRAINING AND EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF MUHAMMADIYAH MALANG
2015
A. What is reading?
"Reading" is the process of looking at a series of written symbols and getting meaning
from them. When we read, we use our eyes to receive written symbols (letters,
punctuation marks and spaces) and we use our brain to convert them into words,
sentences and paragraphs that communicate something to us.
B. Types of written language
In our highly literate society, there are literally hundreds of different types of written
text, a much larger variety than found in spoken texts. Each of the types listed below
represents, or is an example of, a genre of written language. Each has certain rules or
conventions for its manifestation, and we are thus able immediately to identify a genre
and to know what to look for within the text. Consider the following non-exhaustive
list:
Non-fiction: reports, editorials, essays and articels, reference (dictionaries,
encyclopedias)
Fiction: novels, short stories, jokes, drama, poetry
Letters: personal, business
Greeting cards
Diaries, journals
Memos (e.g., interoffice memos)
Messages (e.g., phone messages)
Announcements
Newspaper journalese
Academic writing: short answer test responses, reports, essays and papers,
theses and books
Forms, applications
Questionnaires
Directions
Labels
Signs
Recipes
Bills (and other financial statements)
Maps
Manuals
Menus
Schedules (e.g., transportations information)
Advertisements: commercial, personal (want ads)
Invitation
Directories (e.g., telephone, yellow page)
Comic strips, cartoons
C. Strategies of reading comprehension
1. Identify your purpose in reading a text.
Efficient reading consists of clearly identifying the purpose in reading something.
By doing so, you know what youre looking for and can weed out potential
distracting information. Whenever you are reading, make sure you know what
your purpose in reading something.
2. Apply spelling rules and conventions for bottom-up decoding.
In many cases, learners have become acquainted with oral language and have
some difficulty learning English spelling conventions. They may need hints and
explanations about certain English Orthographic rules and peculiarities. While you
can often assume that one-to-one grapheme-phoneme correspondences will be
acquired with ease, other relationships might prove difficult.
3. Use efficient silent reading techniques for relatively rapid comperhension
This strategy can help learners to be efficient readers, reading speed is usually not
much of an issue for all but the most advanced learners. Academic reading, for
example, is something most learners manage to accomplish by allocating
whatever time they personally need in order to complete the material.
4. Skim the text for main ideas
Skimming consists of quickly running ones eyes across a whole text (such as an
essay, article, or chapter) for its gist. Skimming gives readers the advantages of
being able to predict the purpose of the passage, the main topic, or message, and
possibly some of the developing or supporting ideas.
5. Scan the text for specific information (names, dates, key words)
Scanning is quickly searching for some particular piece or pieces of information in
a text. Scanning exercise may to look for names, or date, to find a definition of a
key concept, or to list a certain number of supporting details. The purpose of
scanning is to extract specific informations without reading through the whole
text.
6. Use semantic mapping or clustering
Readers can easily be overwhelmed by a long string of ideas or events. This
strategy helps the reader to provide some order to the chaos.
7. Guess when you arent certain
Learners can use guessing to their advantages to:
Guess the meaning of a word
Guess grammatical relationship (e.g., a pronoun reference)
Guess a discourse relationship
Infer implied meaning
Guess about cultural reference
Guess content messages.
8. Analyze vocabulary
a. Look for prefixes (co-,inter-,un-,etc.) that may give clues.
b. Look for suffixes (-tion.-tive,-ally,etc.) that may indicate what part of
speech it is.
c. Look for roots that are familiar.
d. Look for grammatical contexts that may signal information.
e. Look at the semantic context (topic) for clues.
9. Distinguish between literal and implied meanings.
This requires the application of sophisticated top-down processing skills. The fact
that not all language can be interpreted appropriately by attending to its literal,
syntactic surface structure makes special demands on readers. Implied meaning
usually has to be derived from processing pragmatic information.
10. Capitalize on discourse markers to process relationships.
Many discourse markers in English signal relationship among ideas as expressed
through phrases, clauses, and sentences. A clear comprehension of such markers
can greatly enhance learners reading efficiency.
D. Extensive reading
Extensive reading is an approach to language learning, including foreign language learning,
by the means of a large amount of reading. Extensive reading can also be defined like:
Reading a lot at least one book every two or three weeks
Choosing a book that is interesting to you
No test on comprehension or vocabulary
Reading at your own pace
Usually read outside a classroom hours.
The idea behind extensive reading is that a lot of reading of interesting material that is slightly
below, at, or barely above the full comprehension level of the reader will foster improved
language skills. The material should be varied in subject matter and character. Student choose
their own reading material and are not compelled to finish uninteresting materials. Reading
material is normally for pleasure, information or general understanding.
E. The role of teacher (Extensive Reading)
The teacher as a role model who orients the students to the goals of the program
Explains the idea and methodology
Keeps records of what has been read
Guides students in material selection and maximizing the effect of the program.
For Instance: The teacher's role in the extensive reading procedure is to encourage and help
the students with their reading, by conferences during or after class time, and by checking and
commenting on written summaries that students do of their reading. Oral or written
summaries give students an opportunity to demonstrate that they are, in fact, doing their
reading. They also allow the teacher to determine if students are understanding their books at
an acceptable level. If not, the teacher's task is to guide them to more appropriate books.
F. Intensive reading
Intensive Reading (IR) occurs when the learner is focused on the language rather than
the text. For example, the learner may be answering comprehension questions,
learning new vocabulary, studying the grammar and expressions in the text,
translating the passage (sometimes called 'careful reading'), or other tasks that involve
the student in looking intensively (inside) the text. Most often all the students read the
same short text that the teacher decided.
G. The role of teacher (Intensive Reading)
1. Organiser : We need to tell the students exactly what their reading purpose is, and
give them their instructions about how to achieve it, and how long they have to do
this.
2. Observer : When we ask the students to read on their own we need to give them
space to do so. This means restraining ourselves from interupting that reading,
even though the temptationmay be to add more information or instruction. Whiloe
students are reading we can observe their progress since this will give us valuable
information about how well they are doing individually and collectively
3. Feedback organiser : When our students have completed the task, we can lead a
feedback session to check that they have completed the task succesfully. We may
start by having them compare their answers in pairs and then ask for answers
from the class in general or from pairs in particular.
4. Prompter : When students have read a text we can promptthem to notice language
features in a text. We may also as a controller and making them to certain features
of text constructio, clarifying ambiguities, and making them aware of issues of
text structures which they had not come across previously.
H. Principle in teaching reading
1. Exploit the readers background knowledge.
Background knowledge includes all of the experience that a reader brings to a
text: life experiences, educational experiences, knowledge of how texts can be
organized rhetorically, knowledge of how ones first language works, knowledge
of how the second language works, and cultural background and knowledge.
Reading comprehension can be significantly enhanced if background knowledge
can be activated by setting goals, asking questions, making predictions, teaching
text structure, and so on. If students are reading on an unfamiliar topic, you may
need to begin the reading process by building up background knowledge.
2. Build a strong vocabulary base.
Basic vocabulary should be explicitly taught to use context to effectively guess the
meanings of less frequent vocabulary. The vocabulary instruction enhanced by
asking these three questions (from Nation 1990, p. 4)
1. What vocabulary do my learners need to know?
2. How will they learn this vocabulary?
3. How can I best test to see what they need to know and what they now know?
3. Teach for comprehension.
In many reading instruction programs, more emphasis and time may be placed on
testing reading comprehension than on teaching readers how to comprehend.
Monitoring comprehension is essential to successful reading.
Part of that monitoring process includes verifying that the predictions being made
are correct and checking that the reader is making the necessary adjust-ments
when meaning is not obtained. Cognition can be defined as thinking.
Metacognition can be defined as thinking about our thinking. In order to teach for
comprehension, it is my belief that readers must monitor their comprehension
processes and be able to discuss with the teacher and/or fellow readers what
strategies they use to comprehend. By doing this, the readers use both their
cognitive and metacog-nitive skills.
4. Work on increasing reading rate.
One focus here is to teach readers to reduce their dependence on a dic-tionary.
Skills such as scanning, skimming, predicting, and identifying main ideas get
students to approach reading in different ways. Readers should spend more time
analyzing and synthesizing the content of the reading, and not focusing on moving
through the passage one word at a time. Part of the joy of reading is being able to
pick up a book and comprehend it, without having to struggle through the task of
reading.
5. Teach reading strategies.
To achieve the desired results, students need to learn how to use a range of reading
strategies that match their purposes for reading. Teaching them how to do this
should be a prime consideration in the reading class-room. A good technique to
sensitize students to the strategies they use is to get them to verbalize (or talk
about) their thought processes as they read. Readers can listen to the verbal report
of another reader who has just read the same material, and it is often revealing to
hear what other readers have done to get meaning from a passage.
6. Encourage readers to transform strategies into skills.
Strategies can be defined as con-scious actions that learners take to achieve
desired goals or objectives, while a skill is a strategy that has become automatic.
This characterization under-scores the active role that readers play in strategic
reading. As learners con-sciously learn and practice specific reading strategies, the
strategies move from conscious to unconscious; from strategy to skill.
7. Build assessment and evaluation into your teaching.
Assessing growth and development in reading skills from both a formal and an
informal perspective requires time and training. Both quantitative and qualitative
assessment activities should be included in the reading classroom. Quantitative
assessment will include information from reading comprehen-sion tests as well as
reading rate data. Qualitative information can include reading journal responses,
reading interest surveys, and responses to reading strategy checklists. (Brindley,
Chapter 15)
8. Strive for continuous improvement as a reading teacher.
The quality of the individual teacher is integral to success of second/foreign
language readers. Reading teachers need to be passionate about their work. They
should view themselves as facilitators, helping each reader discover what works
best. Integrating the key principles discussed above can lead to more effective
reading instruction in the second language classroom. The good read-ing teacher
actively teaches students what to do. To succeed, you need more than classroom
tips and techniques: you need to understand the nature of the reading process
(Anders, Hoffman, and Duffy, 2000).
I. Teachniques for teaching reading
a. Interactive
Involves the reader, the text and the context in which reading takes place.
b. Strategic
Readers have purpose for their reading and use a variety of strategies as they
construct meaning.
c. Adaptable
Readers change the strategies they use depending on the text and on the purpose.
J. Classroom reading activities
Classroom Reading Activities
Oral
Silent
Intensive
Linguistic
Content
Exstensive
Skimming Scanning Global
1. Oral and silent reading
Ocassionally, you will have reason to ask a student to read orally. At the beginning
and intermediate levels, oral reading can
a. Serve as an evaluative check on bottom-up processing skills,
b. Double as a pronunciation check, and
c. Serve to add some extra student participation if you want to highlight a certain
short segment of a reading passage.
For advanced levels, usually only advantage (c) can be gained by reading orally.
As a rule of thumb, you want to use oral reading to serve these three purposes
because the disadvantages of too much oral reading can easily come to into play:
a. Oral reading is not a very authentic language activity
b. While one student is reading, others can easily lose attention (or be silently
rehearsing the next paragraph!)
c. It may have the outward appearance of student participation when in reality it
is more recitation.
2. Intensive and extensive reading
Intensive reading is usually a classroom-oriented activity in which students focus
on the linguistic or semantic details of a passage. Intensive reading calls students
attention to grammatical forms, discourse markers, and other surface structure
details for the purpose of understanding literal meaning, implications, rhetorical
relationships, and the like. As a zoom lens strategy for taking a closer look at a
text, intensive reading also may be a totally content-related reading initiated
because of subject-matter difficulty.
Extensive Reading is carried out to achieve a general understanding of a usually
somewhat longer text (book, long article, or essays, etc.). Most extensive reading
is performed outside if class time. Pleasure reading is often extensive. Technical,
scientific, and professional reading can under certain special circumstainces, be be
extensive when one is simply striving for global or general meaning from longer
passages.
The advantages of extensive reading; student gain an appreciation for the affective
and cognitive window of reading: an entree into new worlds. Extensive reading
can sometimes help learners get away from their tendency to overanalyze or look
up words they dont know, and read for understanding.
K. Problem and solution in teaching reading
1. Language
Sometimes, some of the reader dont know half the words in a text, they
will have great difficulty in understanding the text as a whole. Apart from the
obvious point that the more language we expose students to the more they will
learn, there are specific ways of addressing the problem of language difficulty :
pre-teaching vocabulary, using extensive reading, and considering alternatives to
autenthic language.
a. Pre-teaching vocabulary
One way of helping students is to pre-teach vocabulary that is in the
reading text. This removes at least some of the barriers to understanding which
they are likely to encounter. However, if we want to give students practice in
what it is like to tackle authentic reading text for general understanding them
getting past words they dont understand is one of the skills they need to develop.
By giving them some or all of the those words we deny them that chance.
b. Extensive reading
Extensive reading frequently take place when student are on their own,
whereas intensive reading is often done with the help and/or intervention of the
teacher. Extensive reading especially where students are reading material written
specially at their level has number of benefis for the development of a students
language. What these commentators and others are claiming is that extensive
reading is the best possible way for students to develop automaticity that is the
recognition of words when they see them. The benefits of extensive reading are
echoed by the benefits for extensive listening: the more students listen, the more
language they acquire, and the better they get at listening activities in general.
c. Authenticity
Because it is vital for students to get practice in dealing with written text
and speech where they miss quite a few words but are still able to extract the
general meaning an argument can be made for using mainly authentic reading
texts in a class
2. Topics and Genres
Sometimes the students are not intersted in a topic because it is not appropriate or
because they are not familiar with the genre they are dealing with. To resolve
such problems we need to think about how we choose and use topics, and how
we approach different reading genres:
a. Choose the right topics
We should try and choose topics which our students will be interested in. We can
find this out by questionnaires, interviews or by the reactions of students in both
current and previous classes to various activities and topics we have used.
b. Create interest
We can get students enganged by talking about the topic, by showing a picture for
prediction, by asking them to guess what they are going to see or hear on the
basis of a few words or phrases from the text, or by having them look at headlines
or caption before they read the whole thing.
c. Active schemata
In the same way we create interest by giving students predictive tasks and
interesting activities, we want to activated their knowledge before they read or
listen so that they bring their schemata to the text.
d. Vary topics and genres
A way of countering student unfamiliarity with certain written and spoken genres
is to make sure we expose them to avariety of different text types, from written
instruction and taped announcements to stories to books and live, spontanious
conversation, from internet pages to bussiness letters, from pre-recorded
messages on phone lines to radio dramas.
3. Comprehension tasks
A key feature in the successful teaching of receptive skills concerns the choice
ofcomprehension tasks. Sometimes such tasks appear to be testing the students
rather than helping them to understand. Although reading and listening are
perfectly proper mediums for language and skill testing, nevertheless, if we are
trying to encourage students to improve their receptive skills, testing them will
not be an appropriate way of accomplishing this. Sometimes texts and the tasks
which accompany them are far too easy or far too difficult.
In order to solve these problems we need to use comprehension tasks which
promote understanding and we need to match text and task appropriately.
a. Testing and teaching
The best kinds of tasks are those which raise students expectations, help them
tease out meanings, and provoke an examination of the reading passage. Unlike
reading and listening tests, these tasks bring them to a greater understanding of
language and text construction. By having students perform activies such as
looking up information on the internet, filling in forms on the basis of solving
reading puzzles, we are helping them become better reader.
b. Appropriate challenge
When asking students to read and listen we want to avoid texts and tasks that are
either far too easy or far too difficult. As with many other language tasks we want
to get the level of challenge right, to make the tasks difficult but achievable.
Getting the level right depends on the right match between text and task. Thus,
where a text is difficult, we may still be able to use it, but only if the task is
appropriate. We can ask students to read Ulysses by James Joyce and ask them
how many full stops they can find. Despite the difficulty of the texts, both of
these tasks are achievable. Yet we might feel that neither is appropriate or useful.
4. Negative expectations
Students sometimes have low expectation of reading. They can feel that they are
not going to understand the passage in the book or on tape because it is bound to
be too difficult, and they predict that th whole experience will be frustating and
de-motivating. Where students have low expectations of reading it will be our job
to persuade them, through our actions, to change these negative expectations into
realistic optimism.
a. Manufacturing success
By getting the level challenge right we can ensure that students are successful. By
giving students a clear and achievable purpose, we can help them to achieve that
purpose. Each time we offer them a challenging text which we help them toread
to successfully, we dilute the negative effect of past experiences, and create ideal
conditions for future engangement.
b. Agreeing on a purpose
It is important for teacher and students to agree on both general and specific
purposes for their reading. If students know why they are reading they can
choose how to approach the text. If they understand the purpose they will have a
better chance of knowing how well they have achieved it.
