FOREWORD24 students in a fifth form (16 years) were interviewed about their difficulty not only

to read a text in English, but also to understand it.

To the question« why can’t you understand a text written in English ? »

2/ 3 of the class have admitted that despite having studied English for 4 years at the rate of 3 hours per week, they felt that, though the recognition of some words they had met the previous years, their vocabulary gap was such that it was impossible

to establish links between the words themselves to extract meaning.

Then, to the question « have you ever met difficulty in understanding a text written in French ?

1/3 of the class responded that they had already misunderstood words and/or misinterpretated what they had read even though the French vocabulary did not pose any problem.

We agreed that the difficulty of reading comprehension does not reside solely in the lack of vocabulary but probably in the absence of a method to tackle reading in

general.

READING COMPREHENSION

UNDERSTANDING A TEXT IN ENGLISH

To construct the meaning, let’s learn to deconstruct the text.

From analytical reading to reading pleasure

The barriers to the comprehension of a text

• The difficulties of concentrating throughout the reading in an attention to understand.

• Lack of vocabulary.• Lack of comprehension of the universe of references.• Lack of methods to understand a text.• Ignorance of the narrative structure and typology of a

text.• The difficulty in identifying the logical, chronological

connections. l

• The difficulty to infer, deduce, speculate.

Goal : To enable the student to understand how he works and the strategy he makes use of to understand a text.

QUESTIONNAIREfor the student

What may help me to understand a text wirtten in English ?

a. illustrations

b. its title

c. a lexical help

d. Some pre-reading activities (brainstorming) on the topic, author,

To approach the reading of a text, I’d rather

a. read silently

b. read out

c. the teacher reads it

What seems most difficult when I approach an unknown text ?

a. The words

b. the grammar

c. the syntax

d. the lack of knowledge on the topic

• 1st reading

• 2nd reading

What do I do faced with an unknown text ?

a. I spot the words I know.

b. I spot the words I don’t know.

c. I spot the words that seem important to me.

d. I ignore the words/sentences I don’t understand.

HOW DO I READ ?

a. Very slowly trying to understand every sentence.

b. Very quickly paying attention only to main events and/or words I can recognize.

c. By making annotations and underlining important sentences.

What do « the important words of the text » mean to me ??

a. grammar (verbs, auxiliaries)

b. The words that help me to understand the text.

c. The words I don’t know.

d. I can’t recognize them.

HOW TO APPROACH READING

• The way of reading depends on the reader’s reasons to read. The reading techniques vary depending on the objectives.

• The key is to make the student aware that there are different techniques to approach a text, understant it, starting from what he knows.

The different techniques

• Reading aiming at a global compréhension (origin of the doc, topic : skimmingskimming ranging from the title –anticipation activities – hypotheses - deductions - inferences)

• search for informations (search reading)search reading)

• identification of specific elements (scanningscanning)

• reading aiming at discovering the author’s message. (responsive readingresponsive reading)

PRE-REQUISITE TO READ INDEPENDENTLY

- Inter personal skills

- Know how

- skills

Inter-personal skills

• I must be able to be concentrating

• I must be self-confident and willing to read even if I don’t know all the words

• I accept to follow the methodological advice that was given.

KNOW HOW

• I must be able to :

- anticipate from the title, first paragraph, illustration.- identify words or key-sentences- draw the main ideas- cut the sentences into meaning units- connect different pieces of information.- Identify logical links,- Identify the composition of words, derivation methods,- Use the dictionary,- analyze the characters’ behaviour - perceive the implicit

I appeal to my lexical and grammatical knowledge.

SKILLS

- Tenses and aspects- linking words - Personal pronouns - Possessive adjectives- Prepositions - Nouns and compound adjectives, etc…

They help to make the student confident before approaching a text he does not know and allow him to deploy the vocabulary he knows to approach the unknown.

Examples:

- Work around the title or paratext (non-languistic elements: illustrations, sources ...)

- Work around a word to illustrate the theme (brainstorming and / or heuristic diagram).

This activity of anticipation will help the student to make assumptions in questions like : « what do you think the text is about ? »

PRE-READING ACTIVITIES

HEURISTIC DIAGRAM

Before approaching the reading, students have to accept the idea that it is not necessary to understand every word in a text to understand their meaning, but they can guess some of these words according to the context, drawing links.

GLOBAL COMPREHENSION

• TimeTime : information on : - time - space time

• placeplace : place(s) mentioned in the text.

• CharactersCharacters : - name(s) of the main characters - name(s )of minor characters

Identifying essential information is a basic principle in approaching a Identifying essential information is a basic principle in approaching a text. text.

COMPREHENSION SHEET

- Look at the picture : what can you see ?- What is the title of the text ?- How many paragraphs are there ?- What may the text talk about ?

WHO WHAT WHERE WHEN

READING COMPREHENSION

a. Read the text :

what kind of document is it ? Justify your answerAn extract from a novel – an newspaper article – an extract from a play

• Look and anticipate :

• Read and select information :

b. Fill in the grid below

Main characters’ identity cards

Name :

Firstname :

Age :

Occupation :

Physical description :

Psychological portrait :

Other features :

DETAILED COMPREHENSION

Paragraphs placecharacters

Who? What do they do ? What do they feel ?

Facts

1.

2.

3.

4.

detaileddetailed comprehensioncomprehension

Who tells the story ?

- His/her name / role in the story / relations with the other characters he/she describes.

NARRATION

Who sees what happens ?

What are the narrative techniques ?

- 1st/3rd person Narration - Direct or Indirect speech - Inner speech

WORK ON THE LEXICON

• In unknown words, decomposition of the word (identifying a familiar root).

• Work on derivation and composition.

• Deduce the meaning of unknown words through clues given by the context.

• Identification of transparent words

Unknown word

grammatical clue

Context (previous /following word)

Grammatical category of the unknown word

Word composition

Prefix

Root suffix

Hypothesis about the meaning of

the word

Verification in the dictionary

starving Ing (verb-noun-adjective) ?

Our (p)

Poor country(s)

adjectiv starved affamé

GRID : Lexical helpGRID : Lexical help

Paragraphs

1

2

3

4

5

Extract the details

Identify the keywords and key sentences.

Express the main idea with your own words.

DETAILEDCOMPREHENSION

clé du texte présentant le sujet

LINKWORDS LINKING WORDS LINKING WORDS

ARGUMENTEXAMPLE

ARGUMENTEXAMPLE

ARGUMENTEXAMPLE

LINKING WORDS

ARGUMENTEXEMPLE

• This chart can make the student aware that a text is structured, organized (eg newspaper articles, essays ...)

Schematic presentation of the textSchematic presentation of the text

Key sentence introducing the Topic.

• The students will have learnt to:

Work from his skills in his native language.

Rely on para-textual clues to identify the nature of the document and formulate hypotheses.

Identify significant elements (syntactic, morphological, lexical, cultural), enabling him to reconstruct the meaning of the text.

Infer the meaning of which is unknown from what he knows.

•

- Rely on extralinguistic clues.

- Segmenting the text to identify key ideas, logical articulation of the text.

To correlate element of information.

Pick out information clearly      expressed or implied and be able to interpret it.

CONCLUSION

Following the questionnaire submitted to students, it is clear that they need methods and tools to approach the reading of a text, whatever it is.The task of the teacher will bring students to learn to ask the right questions to develop reading skills and therefore understanding.

The Questions should seek to highlight the organization of the text but also its contents.

REMARKS

• The study of a text requires several types of questions:

- Questions of literal comprehension.- Questions requiring the reorganization of

a text or its re-interpretation.- Questions requiring inference.- Questions used to assess the text.- Questions involving personal reflection.

REMARKS