READING TECHNIQUES

1. Preview
2. Question
3. Take notes
4. Summaries
5. Review and reflect

1. Preview
Preview the text to be read by skimming it. Skimming is the technique of allowing your
eyes to travel rapidly over a page, stopping here and there to register the main idea. When
skimming, you should follow the procedure below, adapting it to your purpose

• Read the title.

• Note the writer's name.
• Note the date and place of publication.
• Read the first paragraph completely.
• Read sub-headings and first sentences of remaining paragraphs.

2. Question
Effective reading is active reading. To turn reading from a passive into an active exercise,
always ask questions.

To do this, you must be clear about the purpose of your reading. If you are reading a text
which you will be critiquing in detail, your questions will be different from those you
would ask if you were reading a number of texts for background information.

The object of the preview and questioning steps is to determine the writer's thesis, that is,
her/his main idea and purpose in writing.

3. Take notes
Some reasons for taking notes are:

• to maintain attentiveness as you read,

• to focus your attention,
• to familiarize yourself with primary and secondary material on a given subject,
• to analyses the assumptions and rhetorical strategies of the writer,
• to provide you with a summary of the material.

Some hints for taking notes:

• Always record bibliographical details of the text from which you are taking notes.
• Write on one side of the paper only.
• Leave a wide margin for comments and cross-references.
• Use headings, subheadings, and diagrams.
 • Keep notes brief but full enough to still make sense to you in six months' time.
Make sure they're legible.

4. Summarise
A summary is a collation of your notes, recording the main points the writer makes.
Making a summary from your notes has two main benefits.

• It allows you to test yourself on your understanding of the material you have been
reading - sometimes it is only when you try to put the writer's ideas into your own
words that you uncover difficulties.
• It provides you with a compact account of the text for further reference.
 GAP FILLING TECHNIQUES
This is very common technique sometimes called "fill-in the blanks". The pupil is given
a text where some of the words have been left out, and is asked to copy the passage and
write in the missing words.

For beginners, a list of possible words to use should be written at the top of the text.
Pupils choose the correct words as they write the complete passage. There are two ways
to manage this activity. Write the composition on the board with gaps to fill or write the
compositions on sheets of paper or cards.

For individual work the teacher will need to make as many cards as there are children.
You can also have children work together in pairs, or as a group using the same card. To
make this a self-checking activity, write the correct composition on the back of the card.
As the year goes on, make more different story cards, and use them over and over with
different children each time.

How to attempt:

Here are some guidelines.

1. Each gap/blank should have only one word missing for beginners. Later you can
expect them to fill in more than one word in a gap.
2. Gaps should not be too close together or children cannot think what should go in
them.
3. Use only vocabulary and sentence patterns that they have already learnt in oral
English and reading.
4. The gaps for beginners should consist of content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives
and adverbs) not structural words (prepositions, conjunctions, articles). Later,
they are expected to be able to fill in any kind of word. Example: Word list:
town, buy, where, met, tea. Little Sandra went to town to buy some tea. On the
way she …. a woman who asked her …. she was going. She answered, "I am
going to ….. to …… some ……

(ii) Multiple choices exercises are similar to gap-filling, except that for each space
several choices are given. The multiple choice technique can be used for two different
purposes.

1. To give sentence writing practice as the pupils write all of the possible versions of
each sentence.

2. Multiple choice exercises can also be used to practice grammatical points when
only one correct alternative is given. It can also be used to make the pupils think
of the meaning of what they write and develop a sense of appropriateness.

Example:

1. The children (practise/practises) their writing at home.

2. Mother took (her/their) shoes off before she came into the house.
iii) The limited substitution table

The limited substitution table can be used in different ways, much like the multiple-
choice exercise. If all the choices in a box are correct, you can require that the pupils
make as many different sentences as possible.
The technique is to have only one grammatically correct word in each box, which gives
less writing practice but requires more thinking and gives practice in using correct
English grammar.

(iv) Sentence sequencing

In this type of exercise, a paragraph that has a logical sequence of events is written with
the sentences out of order (jumbled). The pupils are then asked to re-arrange them in
their proper order (sequence) and write the paragraph. Here are examples.

o Drop a small stone into the middle of the bowl.

o Does it get carried to the side of the bowl.
o Fill a bowl nearly to the top with water.
o Observe the movement of the match.
o Float a match on the surface.
o Observe the small waves.

(v) Sentence connecting

To do this exercise, pupils must first have learnt to correctly use English conjunctions
(and, or, but, because, that, which) to connect two clauses. The sentences with the
linking words (conjunctions) and in eliminating the unnecessary words so as to end up
with a correct compound sentence. Sometimes they will have to switch the sentences
around.

Remember to use only the sentence patterns and words that pupils have learnt in oral
English and in their reading lessons. This exercise can be very complicated because the
English language has both compound and complex sentences, which use different kinds
of connecting words (conjunctions).

Compound sentences have two or more main (independent) clauses connected by and,
or, but. Complex sentences have a main clause and dependent (subordinate clauses)
connected by words such as which, that, who.
Here are examples of compound sentences.

1. Mary went to town. She bought some tea.

Mary went to town and bought some tea.

2. She walked into a food shop. She saw a man walk in behind her.
She walked into a food shop and saw a man walk in behind her.

Here are some examples of complex sentences.

1. He looked at a table. The table was near the door.

He looked at a table which was near the door.

(vi) Chalkboard composition

This writing exercise begins by one of these introductory activities.

1. An experience. Children go on a nature walk or a field trip; play a game; make

something; a resource person visits the classroom and gives a talk or demonstrates
something i.e. story-telling, singing, dancing, a game, how to make something,
etc.

2. A picture or an object. The teacher shows the class a picture or an object and they
observe it carefully.

3. A topic. The teacher writes a topic on the board and tells the children to think
about it. Examples: Holidays, Useful Animals, How people travel, Things that
scare us, and so on.

After the introduction, you, the teacher, lead a discussion about the subject, asking
specific questions to get answers in a logical order. Write the answers on the chalkboard
to build a paragraph or two.

Then, the pupils read the composition aloud and you give the writing assignment, which
can take these forms. Pupils copy, write it filling gaps made by the teacher or write it
later from memory (in which case you will not expect it to be exactly word-for-word as it
was written).

(vii) Punctuation practice

The easiest way to do this is to use paragraphs from the reading book that children have
already learnt to read. But you can use any written work that has sentence patterns and
vocabulary that children know.

(viii) Dictation

A dictation exercise should be specifically structured to practice a language feature you

have just taught. Dictation can be used in the following ways.

To practice listening comprehension: The teacher dictates sets of minimal pair words, or
sentences with minimal pairs and the pupils write what they hear. Be sure to use
sentence patterns that they know, and words that are easily spelled.