CAMBRIDGE DELTA

LSA 1

SKILLS

READING

‘Helping elementary learners practice prediction strategies, read to extract specific

information and guess meaning of lexis from the context.’

CANDIDATE’S NAME: PANAGIOTIS PARASKEVOPOULOS

CENTRE NUMBER: GR 108

WORD COUNT: 2325

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Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................2
Language Analysis.................................................................................................................2
Skills needed by elementary learners to tackle such a text......................................................3
Issues / Problems..................................................................................................................4
Suggestions / Solutions.........................................................................................................6

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Introduction

Reading is considered a highly complex cognitive activity which involves the application of
top-down and bottom-up processing where the ‘reader continually shifts from one focus to
another’ (Nuttall 2005: 16-17) so as to engage in a kind of dialogue with the text - what ‘has
become known as interactive reading (Nuttall). Consequently, it is of the utmost importance
for learners to be taught how to apply a variety of strategies which should make them more
efficient readers.

So, the topic of my assignment concerns helping learners at an elementary level practise a
number of necessary strategies such as predicting the content of a text and activating
schematic knowledge, reading to extract specific information and guessing the meaning of
lexis from the context.

The rationale behind my topic has to do with the fact that many reading texts in elementary
coursebooks tend to treat texts as linguistic objects [TALOs] (Thornbury 2005: 121), e.g.
using texts with the aim of introducing or illustrating a grammar point rather than
approaching a text as

vehicle for information [TAVIs] (Thornbury). As a result, elementary learners can be quite
often deprived of the opportunities to engage with texts like informative articles (Council of
Europe, Waystage 1990: 49) more actively as readers, thus failing to develop into efficient
readers.

Language Analysis
As mentioned above, learners at an elementary level or Waystage (Council of Europe) are
expected to be able to extract information from a variety of texts among which are
‘informative articles … from newspapers and magazines’ (Council of Europe). Of course, at
this level, learners are mainly exposed to simulated texts of this type but this should not
constitute a problem because ‘the authenticity of the text may be of less importance than
the authenticity of the tasks the learners are engaged in when using texts.’ (Thornbury: 110)

Informative articles or texts are non-fiction writing written with the intention of informing
the reader on a certain topic. They contain certain features which the learners should be
aware of because they can facilitate understanding. Some common characteristics are the
following:

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  Titles and often headings and sub-headings (when the text is longer) in bold type.
The titles are usually elliptical, catchy, they might make use of puns etc. and try to
engage the reader with the text.
 Bold prints and italics are used to signal that a word or phrase is important or that it
can be found in the glossary
 Infographics that include tables, diagrams or graphs, which can be used to organise
large amounts of information into a small space or summarise and compare
information.
 Illustrations and captions which help the reader understand ideas and information
that were unclear to him.
 In terms of structure, they usually follow a typical organisation: a summarising first
paragraph followed by more detailed information in the following paragraphs and a
kind of conclusion or even a reference to the reader, e.g. to give food for thought.

Skills needed by elementary learners to tackle such a text

Elementary level learners need to practice a variety of reading strategies and skills to be able
to approach informative articles or texts more effectively.

Making predictions about the content can activate schematic knowledge like background
knowledge of the topic and should be considered both as an aid and a sign of understanding.
For example, the title of an article could help the reader form predictions about the possible
content of the text or even questions he wants to have answered by the text. Prediction, of
course, is not limited to just guessing content from a title but it ‘also helps us make sense of
sentences’ (Nuttall) and works at a paragraph level as well since as we read we keep forming
anticipations taking into account the co-text and, of course, we continually confirm or revise
our guesses.

Using schematic knowledge also involves procedural knowledge that pertains to genres
which follow certain conventions. So, knowledge of how certain text types are structured or
laid out can provide the learner with important clues to approach a text more effectively.
For example, learning to pay attention to the title of an article and knowledge of its typical
organisation can make it more intelligible for the learner. Also, making use of any specific
conventions relating to the particular genre like presenting information in any kind of
graphic representation is a necessary skill so as to decode meaning and extract information
more effectively.

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Skimming and scanning are another important set of skills available at the reader’s disposal.
Skimming a text, which could be seen as an extension of predicting (Thornbury: 119), is a
skill that should not be confused with general rapid reading (Williams 1986: 96) in the sense
that the reader glances quickly through the text to get the gist of it and verify or reform his
initial impressions. By scanning we mean reading the text very quickly so as to find some
specific information we are looking for, something very common when we go through
various texts like dictionaries, maps, advertisements but which can be employed while
reading an article with the purpose to find some specific information like a date, a name etc.

Skimming and scanning might be important skills to develop but readers need to read
intensively in more detail usually under the right guidance of the teacher with the aim of
comprehending not just what the text means but how this meaning is constructed. (Nuttall:
38) As Thornbury says ‘[g]ood skimmers are often poor readers’ (Thornbury: 119). So, it is
the application of these different but complementary reading skills when employed
appropriately that characterise a flexible reader and facilitate understanding.

Besides the above-mentioned reading skills, learners need to practise various word-attack
skills like inference which is ‘one of the ‘fundamental cognitive mechanisms’ at our disposal
(Grabe 2009: 80). Firstly, we can infer lexical meaning from syntactical clues since the
grammatical function of words can give us clues that facilitate understanding. Also, learning
to guess the meaning of words from the context is a skill that characterises efficient readers.
In fact, we are able to acquire a lot of vocabulary by ‘getting a rough idea of a word’s
meaning from the context in which it occurred’ (Nuttall: 72). Finally, another skill that makes
for efficient reading is the ability to ignore words that do not affect comprehension and just
distract us from focusing on the main ideas or information in a text.

So, successful, selective application of all the above skills should enable readers to approach
a variety of texts with confidence and tackle them efficiently.

Issues / Problems
Elementary level students might find it difficult to make use of strategies that they probably
employ in their L1 because of the overload of information they encounter. So, this might
generate a series of problems when tackling an informative article, for example.

Some of the problems could be the following:

1. Learners might not be employing appropriate prediction strategies by not paying due
attention to the title of an article, for example, and jumping straight to the text without

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 resorting to contextual knowledge they might have. Such an approach will deprive them
of the opportunity to engage with the text in an interactive way and they will not collect
the right ammunition to start attacking the text. A possible cause for this might be that
the learners have not been trained to do that.
2. A corollary problem is that the learners may lack familiarity with the organisational
features of a particular genre and tend to approach texts in a uniform way. For such
readers, the texts look like an accumulation of words that somehow have to be decoded.
Conventions like layout, headings, paragraphing, the use of infographics which are
supposed to facilitate meaning become just an additional linguistic obstacle which needs
to be overcome. For example, if they are unaware that an article usually consists of an
introductory paragraph which summarises the main idea of the text, followed by
paragraphs which provide more details, it will be much more difficult for them to
comprehend it. The same applies if they ignore conventions like graphical information
which summarises the main points of an article.
3. Learners also have the tendency to read without using the appropriate reading
strategies to tackle the text based on their purpose for reading despite the fact that they
might be employing them in their L1. For example, instead of skimming the text for
getting the gist or scanning to find some specific information like a date or a name they
tend to read slowly and intensively, which, of course, makes reading an arduous
ineffective task and can lead to disappointment and aversion to reading and the learning
process in general.
4. Learners tend to read word for word ignoring or being unaware that they should be
reading in chunks of meaning, something which they instinctively do in their L1. A
possible cause for this is that they tend to consider all the words equally important being
unable to distinguish between function and content words. Associated with this or a
consequence is the tendency to focus on words and phrases they do not know. As a
result, the text turns into a confusing maze of words from which it is difficult to escape.
5. Closely related to this is the inability on the part of the learners to try to guess the
meaning of unknown words which are necessary to promote understanding. Also, they
tend to stick to the meaning of words they know but which are encountered in a new
function or meaning, which again compounds the problem of comprehension. A possible
cause for this is that they have not been shown how they can do this and tend to rely on
their teacher, dictionaries, or electronic translators.

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Suggestions / Solutions
These are some suggestions for using strategies to tackle the above-mentioned problems
that elementary learners typically face:

1. Learners can be shown how to make use of titles to activate schematic knowledge. Of
course, sometimes titles of magazine or newspaper articles can be cryptic or even
misleading but the important thing is for the learners to be actively engaged with the
text so as to start processing the text more effectively. For example, an activity where
the learners are asked to match various titles with texts can make them realise the
usefulness of such a strategy. Another activity could ask students to match headings
with the paragraphs of the text to show them that this applies to parts of the texts as
well and not just the whole test. Of course, such activities need to be tailored to the
specific needs and level of the learners. For example, asking learners to produce
elementary learners to produce their own paragraph headings might prove challenging.
In this case, a matching exercise might be more appropriate. Finally, another interesting
activity which takes advantage of the developments in technology is to use word clouds
to start thinking about the text and form predictions. Of course, learners need to be
trained in the conventions of a world cloud so that they understand what it’s function is.
2. As for the lack of familiarity with the various conventions of genres, learners need to be
exposed to a variety of text types so as to familiarise themselves with their typical
features. This should enable them to approach genres by applying appropriate schemata
relating to them, which paves the way for better understanding. For example, when
dealing with an informative article awareness of their layout conventions should
facilitate processing of the text. Of course, learners must be exposed to various samples
of a particular genre so that they become aware of various types of structural
organisations which will eventually produce more flexibility. Another activity could be to
show them how information in texts can be organised in different formats based on the
genre. For example, popular magazines tend to use tables and infographics to
summarise information whereas a quality newspaper article contains more dense
information.
3. As for developing flexibility by applying the appropriate strategies of skimming and
scanning, learners need to practice these in appropriate tasks. Regarding skimming,
for example, students can be given various headlines to match with articles (Grellet
1999: 69). Another relevant activity is to provide a text and a list of topics and learners
have to find which topic the text deals with (Nuttall: 50). When it comes to scanning an

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 appropriate task is to give learners a page with similar texts like advertisements and ask
students to find specific information by reading quickly. Other useful texts that lend
themselves to this kind of reading are TV programs, train timetables, etc. (Grellet: 84-
86). Of course, scanning tasks can be delivered orally by asking students to look at a
particular page and find specific information. For example, they can be asked to find
how many times a particular word appears in the text or the page.
4. Regarding the tendency of learners to pay equal attention to all the words they can be
given tasks to practise getting the gist of a text without understanding every word. For
example, they could be given to read a gapped text and asked to answer some simple
top-down questions. At an elementary level learners could be asked to read a gapped
text where the missing words are function words to make them realise that we should
not focus too much on words that do not carry much content.
5. As regards the learners’ inability to guess the meaning of words that might be necessary
for comprehension, a variety of activities could be employed to practise this word-attack
skill. For instance, students can be given a nonsense word in a various sentences which
make the meaning clear (Nuttall: 72). Alternatively, the nonsense word could be
included in a short text and students could be given real words which the students are
familiar with and try to choose the best alternative (Nuttall: 74).

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Bibliography

 Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language, Christine Nuttall (Macmillan 2005)

 Beyond the Sentence, Scott Thornbury, (Macmillan 2005)
 Reading in the Language Classroom, Eddie Williams (Macmillan 1986)
 Reading in a Second Language, William Grabe (CUP 2009)
 Developing Reading Skills, Francois Grellet (CUP 1999)