Anca Cehan 1

Catedra de Limba şi Literatura engleză EFL Methodology year II English majors

DEVELOPING READING SKILLS In many foreign language teaching situations, reading receives a special focus.

There are several reasons for this. First, many foreign language students often have reading as one of their most important goals. They want to be able to read for information and pleasure, for their career, and for study purposes. Second, written texts serve various pedagogical purposes. Extensive exposure to comprehensible written texts can enhance the process of language acquisition. Good writing texts also provide good models for writing, and provide opportunities to introduce new topics, to stimulate discussion, and to study language.

Generally speaking, we read for two main reasons: pleasure and the need for information. We read because we want to get something from the text – a message – facts, enjoyment, ideas, or feelings. For our pupils, reading in English is also a means of improving language itself. Some of the language read will stick in their mind as part of the process of language acquisition. Reading also provides models for writing, opportunities to practise and develop the reading skill, and to gain cultural insights and understanding. Reading is also essential in the teaching of literature.

In discussing reading, we will consider the text, one’s reasons for reading, reading styles, and what the reader brings to the process of reading.

The aim of this unit is to help you build awareness and understanding of current theories of reading and an ability to translate these theories into practical applications for the classroom.

By the end of the lecture, you will be able to:

• use recent information about reading that relates to classroom instruction • set up a variety of classroom reading tasks • integrate reading activities with the development of one or more other skills • identify the various sub-skills involved in the reading process • select and apply appropriate classroom activities to develop the reading

sub-skills • apply in your classroom ideas, suggestions, examples of reading techniques

that are consistent with theoretical principles • assess reading techniques, comparing and contrasting them with other

activities that have been found to be successful, practical and relevant. Key Concepts: text authenticity, cohesion, coherence, intensive reading,

extensive reading, skim reading, scan reading, top-down processes, bottom-up processes, reader response.

1. Difficulties Related to Reading in a Foreign Language Here are a few dilemmas concerning the development of the reading ability

formulated by Grabe (278 – 283): 1. How can any reading approach be relevant to all different contexts? Foreign

language contexts are more complex than L1 ones: they include all the contexts for L1 instruction and add the foreign language dimension.

2. Learning theories, whether sociohistorical or cognitive should be given careful attention, as should affective and motivation theories.

3. Formal aspects of language and genre structure contribute to readers’

Anca Cehan 2

developing comprehension and inferencing abilities. Awareness of text structure is a critical aspect of reading comprehension. And learners who are aware of text structure have better comprehension abilities.

4. A large vocabulary is critical, not only for reading, but for all L2 language skills, for academic abilities and for background knowledge. Students in L1 academic contexts learn an average of 40,000 words by the end of secondary school, and learn approximately 3,000 new words each year in school. How will an L2 student develop such a large vocabulary and compete with average L1 academic students? Moreover, most academic vocabulary is learned incidentally through reading and discussion about reading material. This further complicates the L2 reading task since there are fewer opportunities for incidental contexts. In L2 contexts, the best way to develop such a large vocabulary is to read extensively. Reading fluency requires that a reader know at least 95% of the words encountered in a text for minimal comprehension, and these words need to be recognised automatically with minimal conscious effort. But that sort of vocabulary knowledge requires knowledge of 12,000 – 20,000 different words. Students will only develop such a large automatically recognised vocabulary from consistent, extensive reading. Fluency is closely tied to a large reading vocabulary and extensive reading.

5. In both L1 and L2 reading instruction situations, the social context of the students’ home environment strongly influences reading development; in particular social class differences do appear to have an indirect effect on reading development. The most basic response to this is to encourage students to read extensively.

6. We learn to read by reading a lot, yet reading a lot is not the emphasis of most instruction in L2 contexts. Both teachers and students feel that there are ‘more important things to do’ in EFL contexts.

7. Although it is important that L2 students increase reading fluency, develop their vocabulary and engage in extensive reading, these issues are not sufficient for reading comprehension. A critical component for comprehension is the ability to use appropriate reading strategies and to know when to use them and in what combinations, depending on different reading purposes and tasks.

2. The Text There is a variety of text types. These can be grouped into categories, known as

genres, such as:

• functional or immediate reference information texts • enjoyment and correspondence • literary texts • journalistic literature and topical information texts • leisurely and incidental information texts • professional, specialised or technical texts

• miscellaneous, etc.

Could you group the following texts according to the genres mentioned above? Use the table provided below.

personal letter, literary studies, magazine articles, reports, editorials, recipes, car repair manual, operating instructions, brochures, cartoons in newspaper, picture captions, textbooks, novels, tales, essays, diaries, biographies, rhymes, postcards, notes, telegrammes,

Anca Cehan 3

stop press, advertisements, headlines, television listings, comic strips, cartoons, guidebooks; dictionaries, catalogues, telephone directories, directions, puzzles, timetables, maps, legends (of maps, pictures), posters, signs (e.g. road signs), business letters.

Genre Text Types

Functional or immediate reference information texts

Literary texts Professional, specialised or technical texts

Enjoyment and correspondence Leisurely or incidental information texts

Journalistic literature and topical information texts

Miscellaneous

Although you should encourage your pupils to read and get familiar with as many different types of texts as possible, not all of them can be used in any classroom. Your decisions about what texts to use will depend on who your pupils are and what they need reading for. A balance has to be struck between the types of reading texts and the pupils’ capabilities and interests.

2.1 Authenticity of Text and Task There has been a lot of discussion about the texts that are suitable in the

classroom. The greatest controversy has centred on the authenticity of texts. Authentic texts are written by and for fluent native speakers, while inauthentic texts are specially designed for learners. In a really authentic text, nothing of the original is changed, either in terms of structure and vocabulary or presentation and layout. Recent textbook materials try to preserve as many of the initial features of an authentic text as possible so that the pupils can anticipate meaning by using non-linguistic clues.

Some teachers believe authentic texts cannot be used with beginner pupils. Actually, there is some authentic material that even beginners can understand to some degree, such as menus, timetables, signs, and simple instructions. Getting your pupils accustomed to reading authentic texts from the beginning does not necessarily mean a more difficult task for them. However, the use of authentic texts with beginner pupils may be frustrating and that is why more accessible, simplified texts are often used instead.

Simplifying a text may mean either replacing difficult words or structures by those already familiar to the pupils, rewriting it in order to make its organisation more explicit, or giving a simplified version of the contents.

The difficulty of a reading activity depends as much on the text itself as on the task set for the pupils. That is why, your selection of the activity is as important as the selection of the text.

The reading tasks must be realistic in terms of both language use and pupils’ abilities. They should also be flexible and varied. Some may consist in questions of various types. Other texts may lend themselves to non-linguistic activities (e.g. tracing a route on a map, or matching drawings and paragraphs). Anyway, you should encourage your pupils to use different reading strategies (e.g. ‘Now skim this text quickly and get the main idea’; ‘You’ll have to study this text carefully to look for…’). However, it is also important to remember that many texts are to be read for pleasure and that some activities might spoil this pleasure.

Anca Cehan 4

Here is a short paragraph made up of well-formed, temporally accurate and meaningful sentences. Do you think this text is authentic? Why (not)?

I don’t know what to do for my holiday. It will start at the

beginning of October. I saved enough money for a really nice trip. Last year I went to the Black Sea coast. It will be too late to go to the mountains. I worked hard all year. I really need a break.

2.2 Text Structure A text is not a random collection of sentences. A text that communicates

successfully has unity: the sentences and paragraphs that make it up are related in a meaningful way to each other. In order to comprehend the message of the text, the pupils have to be aware of these relationships and of certain features of text structure.

• Cohesion Cohesion refers to the way a text holds together by particular linguistic means.

These include pro-forms (e.g. pronouns, a few verbs like have, will, do) connectors, reference, substitution, ellipsis and vocabulary. It is essential for the pupils to understand how a text is made up, the web of relationships that is built among the ideas. If the pupils fail to understand this, they may also fail to understand the structure, the communicative value of the text, and its function.

In the classroom, questions involving cohesion can serve as a comprehension-checking device, for they enable you to see if the correct interpretation has been made.

Could you identify some of the cohesion markers in the following extract from Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods?

“Consider this: Half of all the offices and malls standing in

America today have been built since 1980. Half of them. Eighty percent of all the housing stock in the country dates from 1945. Of all the motel rooms in America, 230,000 have been built in the last fifteen years. Just up the road from Gatlinburg is the town of Pigeon Forge, which twenty years ago was a sleepy hamlet – nay, which aspired to be a sleepy hamlet – famous only as the hometown of Dolly Parton. Then the estimable Ms. Parton built an amusement park called Dollywood. Now Pigeon Forge has 200 outlet shops stretched along three miles of highway. It is bigger and uglier than Gatlinburg and has better parking, and so of course gets more visitors.”

• Connectors: • Reference: • Ellipsis: • Vocabulary:

Anca Cehan 5

• Coherence Coherence refers to the way in which sentences and groups of sentences in a text

make sense in relationship to each other. Sometimes the writer indicates the relationship between sentences by the use of connectors, such as: but, moreover, and yet, in contrast, etc. Some other times the pupils will have to infer the writer’s purpose and the relationship between the sentences.

Some texts achieve coherence through other means, too. In telling a story, for example, or giving a report, the writer usually proceeds by telling what happened next. In descriptive passages, coherence may be achieved by the writer describing different aspects of the same object, person or scene.

The sentences below are both cohesive, but one has a problem of coherence. Which is incoherent? How can you explain the problem?

a. Yesterday I got up late and had to leave in a hurry. b. Yesterday I got up late and it will have to fly away.

• Sequences The sequence of sentences and paragraphs indicates relationships between ideas

and information. For instance, “They were watching television when we got home” suggests that ‘we got home’ is more important than ‘they were watching television’. “When we got home they were watching television” suggests that ‘they were watching television is more important’.

• Grammar Grammar also has a text function. If someone says “I was driving very fast. I had

overslept, you see”, we probably understand that ‘I had overslept’ is an explanation for ‘I was driving very fast’. This is partly because of the sequence, partly because of ‘you see’, but also because we expect the past perfect to be used to provide explanations.

3. Reading Styles A crucial factor in reading is purpose. This determines the way we read. In real life

we may want to glance quickly through a sports article to see who won, or to go quickly through a telephone directory to find someone’s telephone number. On the other hand, a legal document requires much closer attention, perhaps several readings, because we need to grasp the information in detail. We read different texts with different purposes and at different speeds. In some cases we read silently while in others aloud.

• Reading aloud and silent reading Reading is normally a silent activity and it should be encouraged as such in the

classroom. You can sometimes read aloud fragments, especially for beginners, but the pupils should be asked to read aloud as rarely as possible. Reading aloud may have some value as a means of testing pronunciation, but it does not help comprehension. Also, excessive practice in reading aloud tends to prevent the pupils from developing efficient silent reading strategies. Moreover, reading aloud is a highly specialised skill and very few pupils will need this.

Other kinds of reading found in the classroom include silent reading and following the text in the book while the teacher or individual pupils read aloud. Silent reading should be encouraged in most cases, though you may sometimes need to read parts of a text aloud.

Anca Cehan 6

• Extensive reading Extensive reading consists of reading (longer) texts, usually for one’s own

pleasure. It 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. The emphasis is thus on the information content of the text. Extensive reading is a fluency activity involving global understanding, in which the pupils do not check every unknown word or structure.

There is one major condition for the success of an extensive reading activity: the text must be enjoyable. The main criteria for choosing extensive reading materials are length, appeal, variety and easiness.

The length of the text must not be intimidating. Beginners, especially, need short texts that they can finish quickly, to avoid boredom or discouragement. The texts must be appealing: they must look attractive, be well-printed (bigger print for elementary pupils) and have (coloured) illustrations.

There must be a variety of texts to suit the pupils’ needs in terms of content, language and intellectual development. The level of the extensive reading material must be easier than that of the textbook used in the classroom. Otherwise, the pupils will not read for pleasure or fluently.

An extensive reading programme is a supplementary class library scheme, attached to an English course, in which pupils are given the time, encouragement, and materials to read pleasurably, at their own level, as many books as they can, without the pressure of testing or marks. Thus, the pupils are competing only against themselves, and it is up to the teacher to provide the motivation and monitoring to ensure that the maximum number of books is being read in the time available. The watchwords are quantity and variety, rather than quality, so that books are selected for their attractiveness and relevance to pupils’ lives, rather than for literary merit.

The following characteristics are among the most important:

• Students read large amounts of material • Students usually choose what they want to read • Reading materials vary in terms of topic and genre • The material students read is within their level of comprehension • Students usually take part in post-reading activities • Teachers read with their students, thus modelling enthusiasm for reading • Teachers and students keep track of student progress An extensive reading programme can be the most effective way of improving both

vocabulary and reading skills in general. The more reading your pupils will do, the more skilful they become at reading as there is compelling evidence that extensive reading can have a significant impact on learners’ language development. Not only can extensive reading improve reading ability, it can also enhance learners’ overall language proficiency (e.g. spelling, grammar, vocabulary, and writing). In addition, extensive reading, with its emphasis on encouraging learners to read large amounts of meaningful language, is in line with current principles for foreign language pedagogy. Experts now agree that some of the most important principles include providing a rich linguistic environment, respecting and capitalising on learners’ contribution to the learning process, and giving more emphasis to fluency than to accuracy.

Which kinds of texts are suitable for intensive reading, which for extensive reading and which for either strategy?

Anca Cehan 7

The only way to become a good reader is by reading. If the average educated native speaker can recognise about 50,000 words of the mother tongue in print, this is not an objective that the foreign English student can reach without a great deal of reading.

Extensive reading is seen as having many advantages:

• enhanced language learning in such areas as spelling, vocabulary grammar, and text structure

• increased knowledge of the world • improved reading and writing skills • greater enjoyment of reading • more positive attitude toward reading • higher possibility of developing a reading habit.

The effectiveness of extensive reading may be enhanced by such means as students engaging in activities in which they talk and write about what they have read and will read. This talking and writing can help make the reading more comprehensible and may provide a means for students to ‘infect’ each other with the joy of reading. Talking and writing also push students to move from the receptive language competence needed for reading to the more demanding productive competence required for speaking and writing.

Extensive reading differs from intensive reading.

• Intensive reading Intensive reading is reading (relatively) short texts to extract specific information.

For instance, we read poetry or legal documents intensively, focusing on the words used. In the classroom, intensive reading is usually an accuracy activity. Students

normally work with short texts with close guidance from the teacher. The aim of intensive reading is to help students obtain detailed meaning from the text, to develop reading skills – such as identifying main ideas and recognizing text connectors – and to enhance vocabulary and grammar knowledge. It is a way of focusing the pupils’ attention on language rather than content. This kind of reading can contribute immensely to improve the pupils’ language competence. However, intensive reading does not always contribute to the development of reading skills.

Intensive and extensive reading should not be seen as being in opposition, as both serve different but complementary purposes.

• Skimming and scanning Skimming and scanning are necessary for fast and efficient reading. Skimming involves reading for an overall understanding of the text. The reader is

quickly running one’s eyes through a text to get its essence, its general idea or gist. Reading a few sentences, recognising a few words and expressions, a few main point(s) and the function(s) may be enough. However, skimming involves some interpretation. For instance, a reader may skim the review of a book to see if the reviewer thinks it is good or bad.

Practice in skimming will show your pupils how much they can find out simply by looking at the prominent elements of a text, by catching a few words or by reading fragments. To train your pupils in skimming, you can remove a few sentences from a text, or even whole paragraphs – making sure those parts contain only supporting details – and ask our pupils to supply the missing parts.

Scanning is quickly going through a text to find particular information. Readers

look quickly through the text to find words that answer their specific questions. For example, we may scan the TV times in search of a certain film, to see on what channel it is on and when it is scheduled.

Scanning is a visual skill more than an interpretive one. When you practice scanning in the classroom, make sure that you give your pupils clear instructions as to

Anca Cehan 8

what they need to find out. For example, if you ask them to scan advertisements for ideas on where to spend a holiday, they would need to find out about accommodation, prices, meals, contact names and addresses, etc.

Pupils will need practice in both skimming and scanning, as it is usual to make use

of both when reading a text.

Each of the following descriptions refers to one kind of reading. Write down the name of the kind of reading in the space provided:

a) You read a poem and enjoy paying close attention to the

poet’s use of language. You do …………………… reading. b) You need bibliography for a research assignment and

you look quickly through the books and articles that you find in the library to see whether they contain information you need. You do …………………… reading.

c) You are on holiday and you read an adventure story. There is no pressure on you to finish the book quickly. You do …………………… reading.

d) While waiting for an appointment with your dentist, you pick up a magazine and discover an article that interests you. You do not have time to read the article in detail but you try to extract as much information from it as you can. You do ………………... reading.

(after M. Parrott)

Intensive, extensive, scan and skim reading do not exclude one another. We often skim through a text to see what it is about before deciding whether it is worth scanning for specific information. In real life, our reading purposes constantly vary and we need various approaches to cope with our needs. That is why your pupils need practice in different ways of reading. Their choice of reading style will depend on the nature of the text and the purpose they have in reading it.

It is important to give your pupils practice in different reading styles. This is achieved not by telling them to skim, scan or read intensively but by setting tasks that encourage these styles. It is the task which provides the pupils with a purpose and enables them to practice and develop a style. Classroom activities should ensure practice in all reading styles so that your pupils do not use the same strategy for all texts.

4. The Aims of a Reading Programme In early reading instruction, the learners need to develop letter – sound

correspondences. As readers process texts relatively completely – read most words on a page – it means that learners should have many opportunities to encounter words, to read predictable texts, and to reread texts to develop word-recognition skills. The need to build a large vocabulary is developed by reading to learners, by having learners read extensively, and by focusing attention on key vocabulary. Fluency in reading rate is established by having learners read extensively and by practice with a combination of timed reading, paced reading, and rapid recognition exercises, and rereading techniques.

Reading for comprehension is the primary purpose for reading; raising learner awareness of the main ideas in a text and exploring the organisation of a text are essential for good comprehension. As a consequence, the use of graphic representations to highlight text organisation and to indicate the ordering of content information is an important resource for comprehension instruction. Teachers need to model reading skills and strategies overtly, facilitate student performance of these abilities in comprehending texts, and provide students with many opportunities for practice.

Do pupils read in the classroom for the same reasons as people do in the real

Anca Cehan 9

world? Away from the classroom, we may read

• to obtain information for some purpose or because we are curious about some topic

• to obtain instructions on how to perform some task for our work or daily life • to keep in touch with our friends by correspondence • to know where and when something will take place or what is available • to know what is happening or has happened (as reported in newspapers,

magazines, reports) • for enjoyment or excitement.

Before you continue reading, try to answer these questions: Do any of the reasons above match your classroom reading

aims? Do your pupils need to do all these things in English?

In some reading classes, the only function the pupils can see seems to be “English has to be learnt” or reading techniques have to be learnt. In such cases, the pupils’ motivation is low. If your pupils see no other purpose in reading other than that you make them do it, then reading lessons will be unsuccessful.

Some classes can focus primarily on the development of reading skills, while

others can include reading skills as part of integrative practice. Classroom reading activities are suggested by:

• The needs, interests and abilities of the pupils. You will need to emphasise the kind of activities your pupils will encounter in English. You must ask your pupils and yourselves what kinds of texts they read in Romanian and if the strategies and skills that they already possess in Romanian can be transferred to English reading tasks.

• The aims of the particular lesson. The reading activities should be harmonised with the aims and the other work that is practised during the lesson.

• The purpose for reading a certain text. Class activities should help your pupils to become active decision makers and risk takers. They should become independent readers who set their own goals and strategies for reading.

• The specific characteristics of the reading text. You often have to determine what kind of reading the text invites and develop activities and contexts that parallel the most realistic and appropriate approaches to a given text.

• Individual pupil needs. Individual pupils may require explicit instruction in different aspects of reading: skimming, scanning, understanding organisational clues, accessing prior knowledge, making hypotheses, etc.

Before reading on, make a list of the reading objectives you have set for your pupils so far. Then compare them with the objectives discussed below and think which of these you could use in the future.

First you must decide what your pupils need to get out of their reading, select motivating texts and set clear tasks. Sometimes the pupils have no particular interest in reading a text because the text is not motivating. Moreover, if the task is not very clear, it

Anca Cehan 10

may distract the pupils’ attention from the text or spoil their enjoyment. Your purpose in teaching reading is to train your pupils to read fluently, without

help, and for their own enjoyment. Your role is to facilitate this process by selecting texts suited to your pupils’ goals and interests and practising appropriate techniques. Your aims for the reading classes should include the promotion of the sub-skills of:

1. reading texts with comprehension 2. using various reading styles 3. learning (both content and language) through reading 4. reading critically Your aims will vary with the pupils’ age, interests, skills and knowledge, and the

time allotted to reading in your syllabus. Your pupils should be able to identify the purpose and the function of a text, its

main topic and the way the topic is developed through different paragraphs. In spite of the language problems that may arise from time to time, they should also be able to interpret individual sentences, using techniques for dealing with unfamiliar vocabulary. Remember, however, that not all texts need to be read for full comprehension.

Your pupils should be able to skim, scan, and read intensively and extensively, according to their purpose. In order to develop flexible individual reading styles, you should provide practice in a variety of text types. Many recent textbooks offer such a variety of text types and further variety can be provided by using supplementary materials.

A common reason for reading in the classroom is to learn English. A reading text is often used as a vehicle for presenting and practising grammatical structures and lexical items. This is perfectly acceptable as long as both you and the pupils are aware that it is not a reading lesson. Texts for this type of activity tend to be selected because they provide lots of examples of a particular structure. The problem is that texts are often artificially created round a structure, resulting in unnatural language.

While reading, your pupils will meet a great deal of new language and new content. The pupils should be able to pick out the relevant information, evaluate arguments and evidence, and distinguish between main points and details.

Lessons should address specifically the problems your pupils have. The following could reasonably be lesson aims for reading lessons:

• to increase pupils’ awareness of how a clear purpose can make reading more effective

• to present strategies for dealing with individual unfamiliar words • to increase pupils’ awareness of different reading styles • to provide practice in intensive reading or in scan reading • to present various aspects of British culture enabling them to make useful

predictions. The areas of language knowledge which have an effect on pupils’ ability to read

effectively are usually addressed in separate lessons. The following could well be such lesson aims:

• to introduce and provide practice in collocations (e.g. nice and easy, out and about, peace and quiet).

• to provide practice in ‘mixed conditionals’ focusing attention on the meaning of each clause.

• to present contrast conjunctions (e.g. though, however, although) • to present a way of dealing with unfamiliar words by breaking them down into

parts • to provide practice in recognising foregrounded information by looking at clause

orders in sentences

Anca Cehan 11

If you prefer you can state your aims in a more learner-centred way:

• to help the pupils increase their understanding of how they can make correct inferences using background knowledge

• to help pupils use their extensive background knowledge to make correct inferences, etc.

• to enable them to consolidate their understanding of the function of conjunctions (e.g. however, although, though) and of their place in the sentence.

5. Reader and Text: an Interactive Relation Traditionally, reading was seen as a ‘passive’ skill and the reader as the ‘recipient’

of information; the text was seen as an object. This viewpoint has been replaced by a ‘text as process’ one, by acknowledging the close interaction between the reader and the text.

Reading is now seen as a complex information-processing skill. Recent approaches to reading emphasise the interactive relation of reader and text in which meaning is created. In pedagogic terms, reading means reading and understanding. Reading is seen as an active, purposeful process, related to problem solving. It constantly involves the reader in guessing, hypothesising, predicting, checking and asking oneself questions. The reader is an active participant in the reading process, co-ordinating a number of sub-skills and strategies to facilitate comprehension.

5.1. Sub-Skills Involved in Reading Due to its complexity, reading is often analysed into a set of component sub-skills

(both lower and higher level), and knowledge areas:

• Recognition • Knowledge of the language • Knowledge of formal text structure • Content and background knowledge • Cognitive processing • Metacognitive knowledge and skills monitoring The lower sub-skills involve rapid, precise and unconscious processing, such as

allowing readers to recognise words and grammatical forms rapidly and automatically. The higher skills enable them to comprehend, synthesise, interpret, and evaluate the text.

• Recognition sub-skills These consist of the abilities of recognising the sounds and the script of a

language, deducing the meaning and use of unfamiliar words, understanding information both explicitly stated and implicit.

Your pupils must be able to recognise the English script, the combinations of letters in the spelling of words, and able to recognise words. They should not waste time working out each word or group of words, even if they may not know all of the words in the text they are reading.

• Knowledge of the language This means understanding conceptual meaning, the relations within the sentence,

the communicative function of sentences, the relations between the parts of a text, and cohesion devices.

Your pupils will need strategies for dealing with unknown words. Reaching for the dictionary is not always a good idea. Explain to your pupils they will meet three kinds of

Anca Cehan 12

unknown words: key words, words which can be ignored and words that can be guessed. The words that are not significant for a general understanding of the text can be

ignored. Key words, however, need to be understood; you either pre-teach them, or recommend the use of a dictionary. In the third category there are words whose meanings can be inferred from the context, and your pupils should be given practice in doing this. They can be convinced of the value of guessing from context if you provide simple texts in which nonsense words are used. Consider the following sentences:

a. When their car broke down, the whole family had to strack home – a

distance of two hundred metres in the rain. b. After their walk the children were so zlopped that they needed a hot bath

and then they went straight to plenk. c. The following gart they woke up feeling all right.

Can you guess what English words the above nonsensical words replaced?

It is quite easy to guess the meanings of the nonsense words in these sentences,

and for general understanding it does not really matter whether gart is “morning” or “day”. Discovering the meaning of unfamiliar items making use of contextual clues (syntactic, logical and cultural) is called inferring. When you use a new text, you do not always need to explain the difficult words and structures beforehand. You can encourage your pupils to guess the meaning of unknown items, based on word-formation or context. Efficient readers generally read in groups of words, without looking at everything in a given piece of writing, and going for the overall meaning of a text.

• Knowledge of text structure This involves knowledge of how a text is organised, of the rhetorical structures and

conventions, of specific logical patterns. Your pupils must know the language of the text they are reading: the content

words and what they mean, though perhaps not all of them. Also, they must know the syntax and the effect of structural words, of word form, and of word order. A competent reader of English is aware that a sentence like “She shouldn’t have been there at that time” cannot stand alone and must refer to a situation already mentioned in an earlier part of the text. The identity of ‘she’ must already be known and the place and time signaled by ‘there’ and ‘at that time’ must have been specified already. Exercises in which pupils are asked to search for and underline or circle cohesive pairs in a text are recommended.

It is also important to train your pupils to look first at the basic sentence pattern (subject + verb) and then at the other elements and their contribution to sentence meaning. To practise this, you can ask them to divide passages into sense groups and analyse the important elements.

Another important ability is that of recognising and interpreting discourse markers, such as then, next, after this, which show the sequence in which events occur. Other markers, such as for example, all in all, as already noted, indicate that the writer is exemplifying, summing up or referring to a point made previously. However and moreover, signal that the writer is making an adjustment to a previous statement or adding further evidence. You need to teach your pupils to recognise the various devices used to link sentences and ideas. You may offer them exercises in recognising the function of connectors, finding equivalents, completing texts with the missing link-words, transforming disconnected sentences into text by joining sentences and adding connectors.

Understanding the meaning of individual sentences is important, but insufficient. Your pupils should be able to recognise the purpose of the text as a whole, to see how it is

Anca Cehan 13

organised, and to understand the relationship between sentences. They should be able to follow the writer and see how the sentences and the paragraphs are related to each other, and make sense of the text.

• Content and background knowledge This involves prior knowledge of content, background or culture. All readers bring

their ‘knowledge of the world’ to a text: life experience, familiarity with a particular topic and with different text types, but also knowledge of a particular culture or way of life.

Whether knowledge of the world will help your pupils to understand the text will depend on the nature of the text and their knowledge. The cultural background of your pupils, if different from that of the writer, may cause additional difficulties in understanding a text. If you want your pupils to be able to read a text effectively, you have to provide such knowledge or enable them to access it in some way before the reading. However, you do not need to prepare your pupils for everything that they will encounter in the text. Very often reading also means learning.

Look at this short newspaper note from The Observer, 25 March, 2001.

Blair rejects Marbles plea Tony Blair yesterday rejected long-standing demands by

Greece for the return of the sculptures removed from the Parthenon 200 years ago. In an interview with the Athens daily ‘To Vima’ he said the Elgin Marbles ‘belong to the British Museum … which does not intend to return any part of the collection to its country of origin’. Greece had hoped to have the pieces returned by 2004, when it will host the Olympics.

What kind of knowledge is necessary to understand this?

You also need to encourage higher level interpretation sub-skills, as reading

involves the formulation of constant guesses or predictions that are either rejected or confirmed later. The reading activities should cultivate the pupils’ ability to recognise the purpose of the text as a whole, text organisation, and to think ahead, hypothesise and predict text development.

• Cognitive processing sub-skills This involves hypothesising, the drawing of inferences, and the resolution of

ambiguities and uncertainties; prediction, evaluation of information, and synthesis. Predicting is guessing based on grammatical, structural, logical and cultural clues.

Predictions are crucial in anticipation and skimming. You can train your pupils in predicting by giving them unfinished passages to complete or by stopping after each sentence and asking them to say what is likely to come next (e.g. ‘What do you think will happen next?’, ‘What do you think the next words will be?’ or ‘What do you think the next sentence will be about?’) To help them, you can give three possible continuations and ask them to choose the one they think is most likely to follow. Another idea is to remove all punctuation from a text and ask the pupils to put it back.

Try your hand at devising prediction questions related to a paragraph in a textbook material. Ask one question after the title and then one question per clause, if possible. Ask as many questions as you can. Here is a short text:

The Statue of Liberty In the water around New York City is a very small island called

Anca Cehan 14

Liberty Island. On Liberty Island there is a very special statue called the Statue of Liberty. It is one of the most famous sights in the world.

(fragment from Folse, Keith, 1993, Intermediate Reading Practices, Ann Arbor, p. 164)

Anticipating is inherent in the process of reading, which is a permanent ‘dialogue’

between the reader and the text. The readers usually start reading a text prepared to find answers to their expectations. These expectations are as important as what they actually draw from the text.

To give your pupils an incentive for reading, before starting reading a text, you can ask them to look for answers to specific questions. You can also make them ask questions themselves. You can use key words, the title, and the accompanying pictures to talk about various ways in which the text may develop, e.g. ‘Look at the pictures and guess what the text is about’.

• Metacognitive knowledge and skills monitoring This is knowledge about cognition and language, recognising text structure and

organisation, using a dictionary, taking notes, and so on. Skills monitoring involves previewing, recognising problems with information presented in the text, adjusting strategies.

Previewing involves the use of the table of contents, the appendix, the preface, and the headings in order to find the information needed. It is used in skimming, scanning and as a study skill.

Pupils need to be made aware that there is not just one way of reading as they do

not always recognise this. Their instincts are to read every reading text thoroughly and try to understand every word. This will not improve their reading ability, because this is not the way people read in real life.

Your first task is to persuade your pupils that there are different ways of reading

for different purposes and that they need to practise different reading techniques.

What type of processing, lower or higher level, is involved in the following reading tasks:

1. Choose the most suitable heading from the list A - I for

each part 1 - 7 of the text. 2. What does it in line 12 refer to? 3. Seven sentences have been removed from the article.

Choose from the sentences (A - H) the one which fits each gap. 4. Read the text and take down notes under the following

headings…. 5. Choose from the list (A - H) the sentence that best

summarises each part (1 - 6) of the article. 6. Choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits

best according to the text: What was the dance like? A formal C informal B boring D confusing

1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6.

Anca Cehan 15

5.2 Models of Reading: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Processes “Mircea is a conscientious student. When he is told he will be tested (…),

he looks up every unknown word in the dictionary in an effort to fix the information in his memory. Despite his extended preparations, he doesn’t do well on the test, though he says he spent hours preparing. Lia, on the other hand, excels on the exam, but she has approached the text in a very different way. Before she reads the chapter, she skims through it, looking at subheadings and graphics so as to give herself a general idea of what the text will be about. As she reads, she connects the material in the chapter to what she already knows. She frequently asks herself questions about the text, looking back or ahead to link one part of the text to another. When she is puzzled by the content, she searches for clues in the context, tries to paraphrase, or considers what she knows about the text structure. In short, Lia is reading like an expert, while Mircea is relying on just one technique. The difference between the two is in their use of reading strategies.” (Joy Janzen, 287)

Reading strategies are “plans for solving problems encountered in constructing meaning (Duffy, 1993, p. 232). They range from bottom-up vocabulary strategies, such as looking up an unknown word in the dictionary, to more comprehensive actions, such as connecting what is being read to the reader’s background knowledge. Research has demonstrated that strategy use is different in more proficient and less proficient readers. More proficient readers use different types of strategies, and they use them in different ways.

The top-down model recommends that readers should start with the global understanding and move towards details rather than the other way round. This means that you need to offer your pupils relatively little practice in intensive reading and a lot of practice in anticipating the content of texts, guessing, increasing reading speed, and practice in skimming.

Thus, when constructing or using comprehension exercises on a given text, it is preferable to start with the overall meaning of a text, its function(s) and aim rather than working on specific details or vocabulary. The activities that help the pupils in gaining or accessing background knowledge also facilitate top-down processing. Among these there are pre-reading discussions, reading within a topic area, extensive reading, and sustained silent reading. All these involve the pupils in reading large amounts of text for general comprehension.

• Procedures for developing top down reading skills If you want to apply a top-down reading approach, you can choose from among

several procedures: present typical text patterns (e.g. a typical essay paragraph pattern is “Topic - Restriction – Illustration”; a typical advertisement pattern is “Problem – Solution – Evaluation”) while pupils read topic sentence or introduction, help them to predict what might come next ask pupils to use white correction fluid to cancel unfamiliar words - this may help them to work out the approximate meaning from context. help pupils to predict next utterance, word or phrase by referring them to discourse markers: not only... helps predict but also.., and another thing helps predict additional information, opinions, etc. or referring them to grammar markers: e.g. ‘When I got home I discovered...’ helps predict the past perfect.

However, the importance of lower-level processes should not be underestimated, as fluency of reading is especially important. Less proficient readers often have difficulty in recognising the English words rapidly and accurately and spend their time attending to the graphic form. Knowledge of syntax and vocabulary is also critical.

It seems that below a certain language proficiency threshold in English, it is

Anca Cehan 16

unrealistic to expect your pupils to be able to transfer and use effectively the reading comprehension processes they use in Romanian. Language plays a critical role in reading abilities, and reading is fundamentally a balanced language and thinking process.

• Procedures for developing bottom-up reading skills These procedures fall into two main categories: a) helping pupils to cope with

unfamiliar vocabulary and b) helping them develop text analysis skills.

a) developing vocabulary decoding skills teach suffixes and prefixes and ask your pupils to work out the meanings of unfamiliar words with such suffixes and prefixes help your pupils recognise words ‘families’ by getting them to complete word grids:

noun adjective verb description descriptive describe suggestive persuade

present compound words and ways of guessing their meanings from components (e.g. bus ride, hairband, lipstick, etc.)

b) developing recognition of text features present grammatical ‘reference’ words and show how they refer backwards and forwards to other words and phrases in the text (e.g. personal pronouns, demonstratives) do the same with typical lexical reference words. for example, you can put a circle around a lexical reference word and show, with an arrow, what it refers to present linking words (e.g. if, so, because, though, etc.) ask your pupils to put together a text whose paragraphs have been scrambled, discussing why they have made their decisions. You should engage your pupils in activities that combine top-down and bottom-up

strategies in reading. In practice this means discussing the topic of a text before asking your pupils to read it, arousing expectations, and eliciting connections between references in the text and situations known to the pupils.

Fluency in reading requires skill in both top-down and bottom-up processing.

Fluent readers employ lower and higher level reading sub-skills simultaneously. They possess a large receptive vocabulary and knowledge of syntactic and rhetorical structure. They interact with the text to create meaning. They approach it with prior knowledge (of what the text is, of what they expect it to mean, of how it is to be read) and cognitive skills, combined in developing predictions about its content and development. While reading, fluent readers may re-read fragments of the text rapidly to confirm or reject these predictions. If the predictions are confirmed, they continue reading with an increasing store of information on the topic. If the predictions are not confirmed, the readers return and re-read more carefully.

6. Reader Response To make your pupils active in the reading process, you will have to ask for a

response from them. Their response can be either linguistic or non-linguistic.

Anca Cehan 17

• Linguistic responses Linguistic responses can come in the form of answers to comprehension

questions. These can take a variety of forms: yes/no, true or false, multiple choice, grids or charts to be completed, and open-ended questions. Answering comprehension questions orally round the class is a very common technique used for developing reading comprehension. A variety of different question forms will enable your pupils to use their different skills in appropriate ways.

An alternative way of using questions is to ask the pupils to think up and ask the questions themselves. Their questions will show their current understanding of the text, their current perception of what is difficult and important in it. This understanding will change and develop as they continue reading.

Asking questions may be not always a very successful activity for large classes. As (usually) only one pupil answers a question, the rest of the class does not need to pay attention. Thus, it may be difficult for you to see whether your pupils have really understood a text. To maximize the pupils’ participation, you can divide the class into groups and give each group a different fragment to read. In their groups the pupils discuss their interpretations and then compose the questions they want another group to answer. The questions do not need to have only one answer. When they have completed their discussion and agreed on the questions, the pupils pass the fragment and their questions to another group to answer. Thus they try out possible solutions to the problems they identify in the text. They can call you in when they need you. Such an activity requires repeated readings of the text and stresses the process of understanding. Also, listening, speaking, and writing are naturally integrated in such class interaction.

• Non-linguistic responses Many activities that do not involve verbal responses can also prove your pupils’

understanding of the text: comparing text and image by matching passages of the text and diagrams; rendering the information into the form of a diagram; performing an action, finding a solution, making a decision using the information from the text.

What other things can your pupils do with the information from a text to prove their understanding of it?

• •

• Procedures for encouraging response to a reading text 1. Give your pupils a set of comments (What rubbish! That's interesting, I didn’t

know that, etc.). The pupils have to write the comments in the margin while they are reading.

2. Give them a set of headings which they must apply to appropriate paragraphs. 3. Give them a set of sentences which they must fit into the text at appropriate

places. 4. Ask them to invent their own paragraph headings and their own sentences for

insertion. 5. Get them to role-play author and reader: give the ‘reader’ a set of questions;

the ‘author’ has to re-read the text and try to reply. (e.g. When you wrote... ..., did you mean… or… ?)

Anca Cehan 18

7. Reading in English vs. Reading in Romanian There are both similarities and differences between reading in a foreign language

and reading in the mother tongue. The differences concern the acquisition of the respective foreign language, the training background, language processing and social context. For instance, most foreign pupils who study English, begin reading in English with different knowledge from native readers. Before they begin reading in school, English children already have a large vocabulary store (5,000 to 7,000 words) and a good intuitive sense of the grammar. The typical Romanian children who learn to read in English have not yet learnt a lot of vocabulary, nor have they acquired a complete sense of the grammar of English1

• Letter-sound correspondences for beginning reading and the transfer of a few correspondences from Romanian to English

. However, a number of useful sub-skills which can be transferred from L1 to L2 reading:

• Word recognition and the processing of words in a text • Recognition of vocabulary • Reading rates for processing • Graphic representations for comprehension instruction • Value of extensive reading The differences between the L1 and L2 and between L1 and L2 reading instruction

explain why the pupils encounter many difficulties caused by language processing differences. Transfer effects, as in the case of ‘false friends’ (e.g. library, terrible, sensible, etc) can influence vocabulary recognition. Orthographic differences, unfamiliar syntactic structures, word order, and other structural differences between English and Romanian mislead your pupils, particularly beginners. The pupils’ incomplete knowledge of the language may cause serious difficulty with some texts. In fact, a fundamental difference between the native readers and the foreign readers is that the former use the language to help them read, whereas the latter use reading to learn the language.

What are, in your opinion, the advantages of your pupils over the native readers of English as far as learning reading is concerned?

Research on foreign language reading has provided a number of insights for reading development and instruction, which make reading in L2 different from reading in L1:

• The importance of discourse structure and graphic representations • The importance of vocabulary in language learning • The need for language awareness and attending to language and genre

form • The existence of a foreign language threshold in reading • The importance of metacognitive awareness and strategy learning • The need for extensive reading • The benefits of integrating reading and writing • The importance of Content-Based Instruction (CLIL)

1 See also section ‘Difficulties Related to Reading in a Foreign Language’.

Anca Cehan 19

8. The Three-Phase Approach to Reading Activities R. White suggests three stages and a general procedure for a reading lesson: he

recommends the use of pre-, while- and post-reading activities. The procedure relies on the pupils’ knowledge of language and knowledge of the world and uses this as a basis for involvement, motivation, and progress. It also leads to the integration of language skills.

Pre-reading activities are meant to introduce and arouse interest in the topic, to motivate the pupils by giving them a reason for reading and to provide some language preparation for the text. In real life, we usually have a purpose in reading: something we want to find out, to check or clarify. We also have a purpose in reading when we read stories for pleasure: we want to find out how the story develops, ‘what happens next’. Moreover, we always have some idea of what we are going to read about and as we read we address the writer questions in our mind. Based on these, we may be able to make a number of predictions or guesses. Headlines, chapter headings or book titles often make us think about the text before we begin to read.

In the classroom, it is important to give the pupils some reason for reading or problems they want to find the answer to. These may consist in questions for them to think about as they read. (The answers will be discussed afterwards.) These questions are called guiding / signpost questions: e.g. “What would you like to know about…? Write down at least five questions, which you hope the text will answer” or “You are going to read a text about…. Here are some words and phrases from the text. Can you guess how they are used in the text?”

Another type of pre-reading activity may be true / false questions: the pupils are given sentences that refer to the text, and they guess whether they are true or false. Alternatively, they are given a summary of the text with gaps; their task is to guess what words should go in the gaps. They may also be given the topic of the text and may be asked to write a list of things they know and things they do not know about the topic. If the text puts forward an opinion, the pupils discuss the topic beforehand and give their own point of view.

Although you are not supposed to teach every word or structure in the text that you think your pupils are not familiar with, you should ensure that your pupils would be able to do the text tasks without being hindered by language difficulties. On the other hand, language preparation can be carried out by the pupils themselves.

The use of visuals, such as photographs, maps, diagrams, the drawing up of lists, and the setting or answering of questions (oral or written) may all be part of pre-reading.

While-reading activities usually start from a general understanding of the text, and

then move to smaller units: paragraphs, sentences and words. The larger units provide a context for the smaller ones. The activities aim at helping the pupils understand the writer’s purpose, text structure and content.

The traditional comprehension questions, placed either at the end, at the beginning or inserted at various points within the text, are a typical example of a while-reading activity. Completing diagrams or maps, making lists, taking notes are other types of while-reading work.

Post-reading activities enable the pupils to consolidate and reflect upon their reading and to relate it to their own knowledge, interests, or views. Post-reading activities may deal with reactions to the text and to the while-reading work. The pupils may be asked to say whether they liked the text and the activities or not, or whether they found them useful or not. Other post-reading activities are:

• writing an outline of a paragraph or longer text; • drawing a list of main ideas from the text and then working individually or in

pairs to locate supporting details; • matching, in pair or group work, a column with main ideas from a passage with

a column of details;

Anca Cehan 20

• underlining generalisations and supporting details or creating topic sentences for portions of the text;

• determining the function of each sentence in a paragraph or longer text (stating a generalization, supporting it, catching and holding the reader’s attention, etc.);

• choosing a main idea (or best title) for a passage from among several choices, or creating one on their own;

• doing a jigsaw reading in which the pupils are given different parts of a text, and working together to create a logical sequence. Each pupil is given a sentence or a passage from a text and they have to look for significant details that will give them clues to the development of the whole text. Using these text indicators (referring either back to something mentioned before or announcing something to come), each pupil has to interact with the others until they find out where their passage belongs in the text;

• role-play a story; • design a poster to advertise the text/the book; • read interesting/exciting/well-written parts aloud; • copy interesting words and useful expressions into a notebook; • write a letter to the author • share views about the text / the book with a small group of classmates. Exploring the relationship of ideas in a text can be carried out at almost any

proficiency level. Beginners can develop semantic maps that are entirely schematic, containing basic words or no writing, with pictures. Here is an example of such a semantic map, drawn around the concept of house:

Tasks addressed to more advanced pupils are more sophisticated. They are

usually based on complex thinking and engage the pupils with the language in different ways. Both texts and tasks approximate more closely to the kind of texts and tasks that the pupils tackle in Romanian. The tasks involve longer, multi-stage, integrative activities, entailing extended speaking, listening and writing. Some pieces of writing demand a personal response such as interpretation, application to other contexts, criticism or evaluation.

HOUSE

paper grass tree

garden play work desk

eat chair

vegetable

flower

bed table

wall kitchen

roof room bathroom

chimney

door bedroom

sitting-room

Anca Cehan 21

In which of the three phases, pre-reading, while-reading or post-reading, would you use the following activities:

1. Do-it-yourself questions: the pupils compose and answer

their own questions. ……………………………… 2. Responding: the text is a letter or a provocative article; the

pupils discuss how they would respond, or write an answer. ……………………………… 3. Signpost questions: a general question is given before

reading, asking the pupils to find out information central to the understanding of the text.

……………………………… 4. Continue: if the text is a story; the pupils are asked to

suggest what might happen next. ……………………………… 5. Provide a title: the pupils suggest a title or an alternative

title. ……………………………… 6. Summarise: the pupils summarise the content in a sentence

or two (in English or Romanian). …………………………………. 7. Preface: if the text is a story; the pupils are asked to

suggest what might have happened before. ……………………………… 8. Mistakes in the text: the text has, towards the end,

occasional mistakes (such as wrong words or omissions). The pupils are told in advance how many mistakes to look for.

……………………………… 9. Comparison: there are two texts on a similar topic; the

pupils note points of similarity or difference of content. ……………………………… 10. Gapped text: towards the end of the text, 4-5 gaps are left

that can only be filled in if the text has been understood. ……………………………… 11. Re-presentation of content: the text gives information or

tells a story; the pupils re-present its content through a drawing that illustrates the text, colouring, marking a map, lists of events or items described in the text, a diagram – grid or flowchart – indicating relationships between items, characters or events.

……………………………… (after Penny Ur, 1996, A Course in Language Teaching, Practice and Theory,

CUP)

The three-phase approach should not be carried out mechanically on every occasion. Sometimes you may wish to get your pupils to work on the text directly. At other times post-reading activities may not be suitable.

Summary As a foreign language skill, reading is very important; in fact, one may argue that it

is the most important, especially for those pupils who may never actually have to speak English. However, in the regular classroom reading should not be separated from the other

Anca Cehan 22

skills, since in real life there are few cases when reading is not linked to these. The unit offers a classification of reading texts and refers to the importance of

some text characteristics for efficient reading. A number of reading styles are described, while the idea that the purpose of reading determines the reading style chosen is underlined. Formulations of aims for reading activities and types of reading activities that cultivate various reading sub-skills are also suggested.

Further Reading

Grabe, William. 2002. “Dilemmas for the Development of Second Language Reading Abilities” in Richards, Jack C. and Renandya Willy A., 2002. Methodology in Language Teaching. pp. 276 – 286. Cambridge: CUP.

Grellet, Françoise, 1981, Developing Reading Skills, CUP Janzen, Joy. “Teaching Strategic Reading” in Richards, Jack C. and Renandya Willy A., 2002. Methodology in Language Teaching. pp. 287 – 294. Cambridge: CUP. Nuttall, Christine, 1982, Teaching Reading Skills in Foreign Language, Heinemann Renandya, W.A. and Jacobs, G.M. “Extensive Reading: Why Aren’t We All Doing It?” in Richards, Jack C. and Renandya Willy A. 2002. Methodology in Language Teaching. pp. 295 – 302. Cambridge: CUP. Richards, Jack C. and Renandya, Willy A., 2002. Methodology in Language Teaching. Cambridge: CUP. Silberstein, Sandra. 1993, Techniques and Resources in Teaching Reading, OUP