The way we treat reading in the classroom is thus

Bringing diametrically opposed to the way we carry out this

the Outside World
into the Classroom:
Ways of making reading lessons
less of a tedious task.
AMOS PARAN*
Reading outside the classroom – and inside
Think about the last time you read a text that was not a
student essay: a newspaper article, a novel, a political
statement for an election, a professional journal.
Presumably, you read the text because it interested you.
(For example, just before writing this paragraph, I was
reading book reviews in the Sunday papers – and
exercising a choice about which reviews looked
interesting).
At some point, during or after reading, you probably
discussed it with a friend or partner, perhaps giving a
short summary. Or you may have read a line aloud, or just
chuckled to yourself. In any case what you did was
engage in an ongoing, continuous reaction to what you
were reading. Maybe you were bored by the third line and
stopped reading. Later you may have acted on some of the
information: if this was a professional text, you may have
written down one or two important points, or made mental
notes. You may have gone out and bought a CD that was
reviewed favourably.
Compare this with what your learners had to do the
last time you used a text in the classroom. You probably
introduced the passage with a pre-reading activity, asked
the learners to read the text, and then did a number of
comprehension exercises. You might also have done some
vocabulary exercises with them, which had nothing to do
with the actual text, but focused on useful vocabulary in
it. You then probably assigned some homework task on
the text before the lesson finished.
activity in our real life (see table below).
What message, then, are we sending to our learners
when we use texts in the classroom? The underlying
message, I believe, is that reading is something that you
do in order to learn a language. Learners engage with a
text as a linguistic object, rather than as a vehicle for
information which matters to the learners (a distinction
first made by Johns and Davies 1983).
Now you might say that this does not matter, and that
classroom life does not necessarily strive to b e a mirror
or real life. However, one of the complaints that I often
hear teachers make is that student do not read outside the
classroom, either in their L1 or L2. In such a context, I
believe the subconscious messages that we are sending
our learners about reading are vitally important, and that
what we should be doing in the classroom should mimic
the real process of reading.
Some principles for using texts in the
classroom
The approach I am suggesting here relies on a number of
propositions.
• Reading is a communicative act. Although the
communicative approach to language teaching
has become synonymous with speaking and
conversation, it has as much to do with reading.
For example, I mentioned above that learners
almost never discuss a text with someone who
has not read it, though this can be remedied
using jigsaw techniques.
• Fluent reading is fast and automatic. Readers do
not pause to guess the meanings of words, and
they do not predict what the next word is going
to be. Words are recognised and their meaning is
accessed automatically and rapidly. (See Rayner
and Pollatsek 1989; for a fuller discussion of this
within an EFL perspective, see Paran 1996).

Reading outside the classroom Reading in the classroom

Who chooses? The reader themselves The teacher, not the reader
How read? Not in a linear fashion, often skipping In a linear fashion from beginning to
and often quitting reading in the end. Not reading is not an option.
middle.
Follow up Reported or discussed to some extent, Content of text almost never
often with someone who may not have discussed with anyone else, least of
read the text themselves, but often with all someone who has not read it.
someone who has.
Mode of follow up Usually spoken; often an action. Often written
Purpose of reading To gain knowledge about the world To dissect the text linguistically

ETAS Journal 20/2 Spring 2003 26

 • An attempt to reach some sort of authenticity of
task is important, for the reasons which I have
outlined above.
• Many students probably read more in their L1
than teachers think – but they might read
different sources. For example, they might be
reading much more electronically, and our
teaching of reading needs to take into account
this shift in literacy.
Implications for the classroom
In what way, then, does what I have said impact on what
teachers actually do in classrooms? Below I list a number
of teaching behaviours which, practiced systematically,
will over time have a positive effect both on our students’
attitude to reading as well as on their ability to
comprehend what they read.
a) Choosing interesting texts
Ask yourself what you last did with a text that you
thought was boring and had nothing to tell you: you
probably stopped reading midway. Always try to start
with texts that are on topics which are interesting and
relevant to your learners. From there, you can move to
texts about topics which have value in themselves. You
will thus be moving slowly from the known to the
unknown, and through this, building the learners’ interest
in the world around them.
b) Making learners want to read a text
One of the differences between reading outside and inside
the classroom is the issue of choice. Because students
have not chosen to read the text you are discussing in
class, it is important to make them want to read it. A pre-
reading activity thus might focus on what they know
about a topic, and more to what they do not know about it,
and what they would like to know about it. This then also
provides a purpose for reading. (See Williams 1984 for
more discussion of this technique).
c) Focusing on reactions
The first question that a teacher should be asking about a
text when the students have finished reading is what their
reaction was. Did they find anything surprising? Was
there anything that they didn’t know? Did they like the
people being described? We react constantly to what we
read (just as you are constantly reacting to this article, if
you are still reading it!) and we should be capitalising on
this with our students.
d) Focusing on meaning
The language learning questions needed in order to make
your learners understand the text should never take centre
stage. They should be incidental to what you are trying to
ETAS Journal 20/2 Spring 2003
do with the text, which is discuss it and what your
learners think ab out it. Is it related to their lives? How?
We now know that language is learnt best through a
combination of focusing on meaning (sometimes
conceptualised as negotiating meaning) and a focus on
form. In our reading classes, I think we often neglect the
former.
e) Offering choices to learners
This is probably on e of the hardest tasks for a teacher,
since it means that we need to be prepared with a large
number of texts for learners to choose from. One way in
which we can do this I through asking the learners to
choose their own materials: we invest much more when
we do something that we have chosen.
In this we must also include the choice of not reading.
No one ever reads everything they have begun. Allowing
learners not to read something they have started may have
benefits in that they may be more willing to read in other
cases. This probably works better where extensive reading
is concerned, but I would also urge teachers to think about
ways in which this could be applied to intensive reading.
f) Narrow reading
In narrow reading learners read a series of texts about the
same topic; outside the classroom we do this all the time
by choosing what we read or following a news story on a
particular topic. The same effect can be achieved in the
classroom, through a careful choice of texts; the benefits
are a reduction in the vocabulary load (Hwang and Nation
1989) and probably also an increase in the speed and ease
of reading because of repetition of content. I have noticed,
for example, how much easier it is for me to read the
explanations in museums in Germany and Austria after I
have been there for a few days!
g) Underuse texts
Coursebook writers often tend to milk a text for what it is
worth and devise a large number of activities for it. This
is often dictated by economic needs: fewer exercises
means a larger number of texts, more copyright fees,
longer books and higher production costs. Again, we very
rarely spend so much time on one text outside the
classroom. We should learn to do the same in the
classroom: take what we can from the text’s content, and
then proceed to the next one.
27
h. Present texts and activities that learners can do
There is evidence to suggest that learners need to know
about 95% of the words in a text in order to be able to
comprehend it (Laufer 1989). But since we often use texts
in order to teach vocabulary, that means that we want
texts to include a large enough number of new words to
make it worthwhile. This can result in a frustrating
reading experience for learners. My own belief is that
learners should read more texts, but that those texts
should be pitched at a level that is comfortable for them to
read.
i. Use electronic resources more
One way in which choice can be exercised easily is
through using electronic sources and asking learners to
locate texts of their own choosing (within certain
parameters) on the WWW. This also capitalizes on the
new conceptions of literacy that I mentioned above.
Staying with inauthentic exercises
Above, I suggested a number of teaching principles and
strategies that take as their basis the way we read outside
the classroom, and a wish to emulate that. But
‘inauthentic’ activities do have value in some cases, just
as playing scales has value when learning to play the
piano.
a) Read aloud to your learners.
An important part of reading is the link between the
printed form of the word and its phonological code, its
sound. To help learners make that connection, they can
listen to the teacher or an audio-tape of the text while
reading. This particularly benefits medium or low ability
learners, who may not have made the connection between
the printed words and their phonological forms, or for
whom intonation, stress and pausing might clarify the
relationships between clauses and phrases in the text.
b) Re-reading
Having said above that we should try not to over-use a
text, there are also benefits in re-reading a text a number
of times, mainly in developing automaticity. Thus, quick
scanning exercises after an initial reading, or re-reading
with an audio-tape in other cases, may be beneficial to
learners.
c) Focus on thinking skills
Many of the activities we ask our learners to do after
reading a text are either comprehension questions, which
do little apart from testing memory, or language activities.
ETAS Journal 20/2 Spring 2003 28
I would suggest that the post-reading tasks we give
our learners should focus on a variety of thinking skills.
For example, make a list of ideas mentioned in the text
and ask the learners to indicate which of these are main
themes or ideas, and which are secondary idea.
Another possible activity is to provide the learners
with three or four summaries of the text, and ask them to
rate them according to their quality. This can b e made
progressively difficult so that over the course the
differences between the summaries are reduced. The
learners will then become aware gradually of the qualities
of good summaries. This then prepares the learners for
writing their own summaries.
Another important type of exercise is distinguishing
between fact and opinion, or between opinion and
supported opinion. Helping learners see the difference,
and how much of what they read is opinion rather than
fact, can help them become more critical of what they
read, and understand the ways in which argumentation
proceeds in a written text.
Conclusion
I have argued for an approach to reading that is based on
an analogy with our everyday, real-life reading. Although
you may not agree with all the points I have made, I hope
that readers will try out at least some of the ideas
discussed here: I firmly believe that the balance of
activities in the reading classroom should, in the final
count, be in favour of those activities that help our
learners apply what they have read to their lives outside,
and that mirror what we normally do when reading
outside the classroom.
References
Hwang, K. and P. Na tion. 1989 Reducing the Vocabulary
Load and Encouraging Vocabulary Learning through
Reading Newspapers. Reading in a Foreign language Vol
6 No. 1 pp. 323-335.
Johns, T. and F. Da vies. 1983. Text as a Vehicle for
Information: the Classroom Use of Written Texts in
Teaching Reading in a Foreign Language Reading in a
Foreign Language Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 1-19.
Laufer, B. 1989 What percentage of Text-Lexis is
Essential for Comprehension? In: L auré n, C. and M.
Nordm ann. (eds.) Special Language: From Humans
Thinking to Thinking Machines. Clevedon: Multilingual
Matters. pp. 316-323.
Para n, A. 1996. Reading in EFL: Facts and Fictions. ELT
Journal Vol 50 No. 1pp. 25-34.
Rayner, K. and A. Pollatsek. 1989 The Psychology of
Reading Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall
* Amos Paran, Institute of Education, University of London
ETAS Journal 20/2 Spring 2003 29