Developing learners’ reading

skills
Methods in teaching English as a
foreign language
 The nature of reading
• What is your definition of reading?
• What does it involve?
• Why do we start with listening and speaking
first before moving on to reading and writing?
• Do we need to delay reading authentic
material and only let students to read texts
that correspond to their language level?
• What did you as a language learner find
difficult in reading in English?
 The nature of reading
• Reading is a receptive literacy skill based on the automatic
recognition of discourse patterns and features.
• It involves focus on a written text.
• It is done with the purposeful intent to extract meaning from
a text by decoding the symbols in the text.
• The reader responds to the context, which makes it an
interactive activity. The reader interacts with the written text, and
indirectly, with the writer of the text. In this interaction the text is
analysed at different levels, starting from the smallest units –
individual words – to the text as a whole.
• In the process of comprehension the reader activates and uses his
or her background knowledge in order to interpret the new
information.
 Features of written discourse
• Permanence - the reader can re-read the passage he or
she did not understand the first time;
• Processing time - different readers need different
amount of time to process the text;
• Distance – physical and temporal;
• Orthography - difficulties due its deep nature;
• Complexity - longer clauses and more subordination
than speech;
• Vocabulary - a greater variety than in spoken English;
• Formality - prescribed forms and conformity to
conventions.
 Bottom-up reading
• Bottom-up processing of information starts with
recognising individual letters and words, key words in
utterances, followed by recognising word-order patterns,
key transitions (linking words), stress and intonation. This
leads to inferring meaning and anticipating what comes
next.
• During these processes the load on the short-term memory
is heavy as readers try to hold various parts of the message
in mind while working on meaning and deciding what is
necessary to retain.
• Overload can occur if there are too many unknown words
or too much unfamiliar information. As a result, substantial
part of the message can be lost and the reader can be
discouraged from reading further.
 Top-down reading
• The preferred approach to a reading text is top-down – from an
overview of the whole to looking for specific information and
details.
• It activates comprehension strategies which involve knowledge that
a reader brings to a text, as opposed to the information that is
available within the text itself.
• It is a type of reading which infers meaning from contextual clues
(pictures, title, teacher’s instructions) and the reader’s prior or
schematic knowledge. It is usually employed in gist reading.
• Whatever the reading task is, it is essential for the teacher to tell
students that it is not necessary to understand every single word,
or to look up every unknown word in a dictionary.
• It is important to achieve the aim of the reading task and to learn
to read relatively fast.
 Types of reading
• Reading for gist (skimming)
• Reading for detail and specific information (scanning)
• Silent reading – done for comprehension; checked
with true/false statements or questions;
• Reading aloud – practised for improving pronunciation
and for fun;
• Intensive reading – in class, requires focus and work on
tasks to find answers or do follow-up work
• Extensive reading – done at home for pleasure;
maximises students’ exposure to the language and
effortless acquisition of vocabulary and structures.
 The whole word method
• In English the letter and sound correspondence is
not direct and consistent. With words which
follow irregular patterns, the strategy used is
called the whole word method. It encourages the
rote learning of some ‘sight vocabulary’ that
children can immediately recognise when
reading. The method helps children to see and
remember words as visual images. Knowing a
large pool of such vocabulary can help with the
initially slow reading speed. Thus children can
concentrate on processing longer, unfamiliar
words.
 Difficulties in reading
• Lack of focused attention and concentration
• Inability to read in mother tongue or the official language
• Lack of reading habits
• Deep orthography of the target language
• A lot of unfamiliar words in the text
• Learning disorders such as dyslexia due to problems
identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to
letters and words (decoding).
• Use of inappropriate strategies, such as trying to vocalise
the words letter by letter, or finger pointing.
• Inability to retaining longer bits of information in short-
term memory
 Possible solutions
• Can you think of some possible solutions to
these problems?
 Pre-reading activities
• introduction or lead-in;
• getting students interested in the topic;
• providing some background (sociocultural) knowledge
which is necessary for comprehending the text;
• asking for predictions, expressing opinions and
attitudes, personalisation;
• pre-teaching or revising key vocabulary and structures;
• discussing pictures;
• giving instructions.
 Graded readers
• Graded readers are made specifically to provide
learners with extended exposure to TL. Some
might be simplified versions of famous stories
and novels.
• Their grammar and vocabulary are ‘graded’ to
different levels (e.g. A2, B1), for successful and
pleasurable reading experience.
• They might contain glossaries and exercises, but
make sure students don’t have to do a lot of
exercises and comprehension tests as they do in
intensive reading tasks.
 While-reading
• fast reading for getting the gist (skimming);
• checking the text against predictions;
• guessing the title;
• putting events in chronological order;
• second reading for details (scanning) and locating
specific information;
• matching pictures to text(s);
• making notes;
• underlining words or parts of the text which support
answers to a task;
• arranging paragraphs, etc.
 Post-reading
• answering comprehension questions;
• discussion of answers;
• comparing answers to predictions;
• discussion of the content/ meaning of the text;
• True/ False/ Not given;
• writing questions to the text;
• integration of reading with other skills, e.g.
writing;
• personalization,
• interactive tasks.
 Recommended reading
• Grellet, Francoise, (986), Developing Reading Skills, CUP
• Clark, M., (99), Young Literacy Learners, Primary Professional
Bookshelf, Scholastic
• Dunn, O. (999), Help Your Child with a Foreign Language, A Parents’
Handbook, Headway Hodder & Stroughton
Clark, M., (99), Young Literacy Learners, Primary Professional
Bookshelf, Scholastic
• Ur, P. 1996. A Course in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
• Richards, J., Lockhart, C. 1994. Reflective Teaching in Second
Language Classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Phillips, S. (99), Young Learners, OUP
• Ivanova, I. 2017. Becoming an English Language teacher: from
theory to practice. Shumen: K. Preslavsky University Press