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Guide to Reading Skills for Teachers

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Guide to
Reading Skills
for Teachers

Prof. Reima Al-Jarf

 TEACHING READING TO
TRANSLATION STUDENTS

I. INTRODUCTION
How can I make sure that what I am doing in my
English class is relevant and appropriate for my students
in their content areas?

An ESP course is purposeful and it aims at the successful

performance of occupational or educational roles. It is
based on a rigorous analysis of students' needs and
should be ‘tailor-made'. Any ESP course may differ from
another in its selection of skills, topics, situations,
functions and language. It is likely to be of limited
duration. Students are more often adults but not
necessarily so, and may be at any level of competence in
the language: beginner, post-beginner, intermediate ...
etc. Students may take part in their ESP course before
embarking on their occupational or educational role, or
they may combine their study of English with
performance of their role, or they may be already
competent in their occupation or discipline but may
desire to perform their role in English as well as in their
first language.

Because the needs of the learners are paramount in an

ESP course, one must analyze what the learners need to

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be able to do before attempting to design a syllabus. A
needs analysis considers the needs expressed by the
learners themselves, by the teaching establishment, by
the user institution or by all three.

Reading skills can be identified by defining the reading

tasks needed in a translation situation, by listing those
skills that are basic of all reading levels (basic decoding
skills), by delineating the reading level of printed
materials at the various levels and defining reading skills
as the ability to read those graded materials.

When teaching English to translation students, the

following questions should be considered:
 The purpose for which the students are learning
English.
 The setting in which students will be using it.
 The role the students will assume as well as the
roles of their interlocutors.
 the communicative events or situations in which
students will participate.
 The language functions

II. WHAT DO WE READ

 literary texts such as: novels, short stories, tales,
essays, anecdotes, biographies, diaries.
 plays.
 poems, limericks, nursery rhymes.
 letters, postcards, telegrams, notes.

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  newspapers, magazines (headlines, articles,
editorials, letters to the editor, stop press,
classified ads, weather forecasts, radio/TV theatre
programs.
 specialized articles, reports, review, essays,
business letters, summaries, precis, accounts,
pamphlets.
 handbooks, textbooks, guidebooks.
 recipes.
 advertisements, travel brochures, catalogs.
 instructions (warnings), directions (how to use),
notices, rules and regulations, posters, signs,
forms, graffiti, menus, price lists, tickets.
 comic strips, cartoons and caricatures, legends (of
maps, pictures).
 statistics, diagrams, flow/pie charts/timetables,
maps.
 telephone directories, dictionaries, phrasebooks.

III. WHY DO WE READ

 for pleasure.
 for information (in order to find out something or
in order to do something with the information we
get).

IV. HOW DO WE READ

 Skimming: quickly running one's eyes over a text
to get the gist of it.

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  Scanning: quickly going through a text to find a
particular piece of information.
 Extensive reading: reading longer texts, usually for
one's own pleasure, This is a fluency activity,
mainly involving global understanding.
 Intensive reading: reading shorter texts, to extract
specific information. This is more an
accuracy activity involving reading for detail.

V. ASPECTS OF READING

5.1 The perceptive aspect

It is concerned with word identification which
includes the word recognition and word meaning.

5.1.1 word recognition

 identifying letters, words and word groups.
 sequencing and alphabetizing.
sound-symbol association.
 recognizing sight words.
 recognizing word families.
 identifying forms of words such as inflected
forms, identifying prefixes and identifying
suffixes.

5.1.2 Recognition of word meaning which

includes:
 reading from left to right.
 recognition of punctuation marks.

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  recognition of the lexical meaning of words.
 recognize the structural meaning of words such
as:
o recognition of the structure words such as
the definite and the indefinite article,
prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliaries,
determinatives, interrogative adverbs,
adverbs of degree, negative particles.
o recognize inflections, i.e., grammatical
devices that indicate number, gender,
tense, mood, voice, and comparison.
o recognize types of word order.
o ability to read in thought groups.
o ability to look up meanings of new words in
a dictionary.
o guessing meaning of related words.
o guessing meaning from context.

5.2 The cognitive aspect

It is concerned with the abilities involved in
thoughtful responses on the part of the reader to get the
meaning of the text. It is concerned with reading
comprehension. Reading comprehension has many
levels. They range from the simplest level of literal
comprehension to the most complex level of creative
comprehension.

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5.2.1 Word Identification
Word identification is an essential first step in the
reading process of deriving meaning from written
context. This is because the reading process is
dependent on written words that are arranged in
grammatical patterns (the visible surface structure). The
visual items must be identified in order for meaning to
be derived through them. Consequently word
identification is the base on which reading proficiency is
built. It is important to recognize that word identification
is not the overall whole reading process, it is only one
part of the overall process of deriving meaning from the
printed page.

Word identification involves assigning literal

(denotative) and affective (connotative) meanings and
functions to words in written sentences.

There are three aspects to word identification: the

written form of the word, the word name and the word
meaning.

5.2.2 Whole Word Techniques (Word

Meaning)

Word configuration
 Whole word features such as word length, word
shape, upper coastline, lower coastline.

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  Word detail features such as capital letters,
hyphens, apostrophes, and periods, position of
letters in words, repetition of letters in words,
characteristics of individual letters in words.

Using semantic clues

 Using implicit clues that are inherent in the
written context such as the topic, words
preceding/ and or following the unfamiliar words
in the same sentence; words in sentences
preceding and/or following the sentences in
which an unfamiliar word appears; and commonly
used expressions such as idioms, colloquialisms,
figures of speech, proverbs and other familiar
sayings.
 Using explicit clues such as synonyms, antonyms,
definitions and explanations, descriptions, and
examples.

Using syntactic clues such as:

 Sentence patterns such as statement sentence
patterns, question sentence patterns, command
pattern, request pattern, instruction pattern ... etc.
 Word order sequences.
 Mandatory agreement.
 Structure word markers.
 Derivational suffixes and inflectional endings.
 Punctuation and typographic devices such as
apostrophes, exclamation points, hyphens,

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 question marks, periods, quotation marks,
virgules, brackets, colons, commas, dashes,
parentheses, capitalization, italicization.

5.2.2 Structural analysis (Word Structure

Techniques)

Morphemic analysis
 Recognize roots, prefixes, suffixes, noun and
adjective marking suffixes, verb-marking suffixes,
inflections, noun inflections-plurality, noun-
inflections-possession, verb inflections, adjective
and adverb inflections, morphemic combinations,
contractions.

Phonic clues
 Grapheme-phoneme, letter-sound, spelling sound,
spelling pronunciation, correspondences, i.e.
connecting the details of spelling with the details
of phonology.
 Vowel grapheme-phoneme correspondences.
 Consonant grapheme-phoneme correspondences.
 Consonant blends (dr, tr, sl, st, bl).
 Consonant digraphs (ph, ch, sh, ck, th, )
 Silent consonant combinations: ( mn, knock,calm,
gh, rh).

Syllabication and accenting

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  Estimate number of syllables in word forms.
 Recognize divisions between words as in:
root/root division as in rain/coat.
prefix/root division as in mis/spell.
root/inflectional ending division when
inflectional ending
consists of more than one phoneme as in
tall/er, sew/ing, grant/ed.
root/suffix division a in kind/ness.
suffix/suffix division as in lone/li/ness.
suffix/inflectional ending division when
inflectional ending consists of more than one
phoneme as in kind/li/est.

 Accenting principles: in monomorphemic words,

in multimorphemec words, in compounds, in
sentences.

5.3 The Affective aspect

It includes emotional responses to what is read,
attitudes to reading in general, and reading interests.
Personal feelings are based on the readers' beliefs,
values and other elements of his background
experience..

VI. READING SKILLS AND SUBSKILLS

6.1 PROCESS OF READING

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 Comprehension involves the cognitive and the
linguistic interaction between the author and the text
being read and the reader. The author brings her own
ideas and language to the text and the reader brings his
own ideas and experience to the reconstruction of the
author's text. The result is a psycholinguistic process in
which the reader is actively involved in gaining meaning
from the text whether that meaning is explicit or
implied. The reader uses different sources of information
that she already has to construct the functional meaning,
lexical meaning, syntactic meaning, morphological
meaning, prepositional meaning, discoursal meaning
and rhetorical meaning. She uses her knowledge of
decoding, vocabulary meaning, syntax, cohesion,
passage structure, her ability to make inferences, and her
background knowledge about the topic to help her
connect the new information in the text with what she
already knows about the topic. lack of information in any
linguistic or experiential part may cause comprehension
difficulties. comprehension is a cognitive activity in
which the reader processes different types of
information to acquire knowledge about the topic
presented in the text. the process target object is
comprehending using those process skills that help the
students process those expository passages and hence
comprehend their literal meaning. The process skills of
comprehension can be further subdivided into using
their decoding skills, vocabulary skills, syntax skills,
background knowledge, text structure skills, and skills of

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making textually implicit inferences to help them
comprehend the literal meaning of a text.

6.1.1 Decoding Subskills

Decoding refers to word identification or word
recognition rather than higher levels of meaning. The
decoding subskills are: Sight word recognition, phonic
analysis, structural analysis.

Sight word recognition

Phonic analysis
It is the identification of written words by their
sounds. The process of phonic analysis involves the
association of speech sounds and the blending of these
sounds into syllables and words. It includes identification
of speech sounds, letter combinations (blends, digraphs,
and diphthongs), syllables, (morphemes and accents),
spelling patterns, similar beginnings and endings of
words, letter sounds related to their initial, medial and
final positions within words, and positions of the mouth,
lips, teeth, and tongue t sound out letter combinations.

Structural analysis
It involves identifying words by breaking them into
their appropriate units. it includes identifying derivatives,
roots, prefixes, suffixes, and hyphenated words), see
relationships among word from, common origin words,
identifying identical endings denoting plurals,

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comparatives, identifying compound words,
contractions, possessives and syllabication.

6.1.2 Vocabulary Subskills

Teaching the lexical meaning of words, phrases and
sentences by teaching the lexical meaning of words or
semantic clues.

Lexical meaning
Lexical meaning is the denotative or dictionary
meaning of words and phrases using the following
structural relations; hyponymy (animal-camel),
homonymy (bear-carry, bear-tolerate, bear-conceive),
synonymy (sofa - couch), antonymy (fast-slow)
reciprocity (buy-sell) and entailment (my son entails-I
have a son).

Semantic clues
Semantic cues or contextual clues refers to obtaining
the meaning of an unknown word through the
examination of the surrounding context. the student
uses the context to determine as exactly as possible what
the author means. The student uses a larger unit to
determine the meaning of a smaller unit. The following
clues may be used; direct explanation of a new word in
the text through definition, background experience of
the student, typographical indications in the text such as
punctuation, parenthesis, comma enclosure and
appositives, subjective clues through mood and tone,

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pictorial representation in the text, substitute words such
as a synonym, antonym, homonym, or homophone,
heteronym or homograph, pronoun, comparisons and 0r
word elements.

Dictionary and glossary usage

 Use dictionary or glossary in a textbook effectively
in locating the pronunciation and meaning of
unknown words.
 Apply alphabetical sequence.
 Use guide words
 Use the pronunciation key
 Choose the correct dictionary definition for use in
the context of the unknown words.

6.1.3 Syntax subskills

Syntax refers to using one's knowledge about
intonation, types of word order, function words and
word form changes to derive meaning.

Structure words
Structure words such as the definite and the
indefinite article, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliaries,
determinatives, interrogative adverbs, adverbs of degree,
negative particles.

Grammatical Classifications
Eliciting or telling what part of speech a word is, what
tense, or voice a verb is, what number or gender a noun

13
is … etc.

Morphological clues
It refers to derivation, inflection, and compounding
clues. recognizing affixes and roots to arrive at the
meaning of words, identifying the number, gender,
person, tense, mood, and voice of verbs by noting the
inflectional endings of verbs, training students to
identify the meaning of two of more nouns treated as a
unit, and/or identify the meaning of a word formed by
combining two or more words.

Structural clues
Refer to using one's knowledge of the rules and
patterns of the language to identify an unknown word
from the way it is used in the text. recognizing the
various types of word order such as; recognizing two
possible positions for the indirect object after certain
verbs, the location of adjectives, pronouns, tense
markers the use of capital letters, the multiple function
of the word 'that' as determiner, a clause introducer and
a pronoun.

Ambiguous sentences
Phrasing
Perceiving the constituent parts within a sentence as
chunk units and reading by phrases.

Understanding the underlying meaning

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 Relationships between the surface structure of
sentences and their underlying meaning such as:
A. deriving different meanings from sentences that
are exactly the same. e.g.: 'I had three books
stolen' may mean: 'I had three books stolen from
me', 'I had three books stolen for me. 'I had three
books stolen when someone interrupted my
burglarizing'.

B. see differences in sentences that seem to be the

same as in; "the cow was found by the farmer"
and "the cow was found by the stream".

C. see similarities in sentences that do not look the

same as in: 'the cow was found by the farmer' and
'the farmer found the cow'.

Simple sentence types

Understanding basic simple sentence types.

Sentence expansions
Teaching students to identify and understand
expanded sentences in the reading text if she teaches
the types of sentence expansions:
 complex sentences: (when the sled started to go
too fast, Jon jumped off quickly)
 complementation: (he gave the children biscuits
to feed the dog).

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  left embedding: (John, a friend of my brother Paul
and I will go to the baseball game).
 modification by adjectives and adverbs: (the tall
man walked slowly).
 modification by phrases: (the man with a dog
walked slowly).
 modification by clauses: (the man who was six feet
tall walked slowly).
 coordination of phrases: (with a whip and with a
chain he tamed the lion).
 coordination of independent clauses: (where we
went and what we saw was told to nobody).
 coordination of sentences: (we saw a large
steamer and later that day we saw a large
sailboat).
 coordination of verb: the man was walking along
the street.
 coordination of object of preposition: the man
with a dog barking and jumping walked slowly.
 coordination of object of verb: the man called the
dog who just scampered away

6.1.4 Background knowledge subskills

Background knowledge refers to students'
experiences which precede a learning situation or the
reading of a text. it refers to the students' familiarity
with the facts, information, and ideas contained in a text.
Background knowledge has three components:
background knowledge in the content area, prior

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knowledge that the text is about a particular content
area, and degree to which the lexical items in the text
reveal the content area. In a foreign language setting,
cultural ideas constitute another component of students'
background knowledge. understanding cultural
differences help students come to a deeper
understanding of the full meaning of the text. the
teacher should fill in the needed background
information to make the text topic familiar and explains
cultural differences.

6.1.5 Text structure subskills

Text structure refers to the structural characteristics
of the text such as coherence, hierarchical organization,
and propositional density. students should comprehend
the text structure if she helps them identify
organizational clues, paragraph types, central ideas, and
organization outline and perceive paragraph
organization.
organizing concepts (understanding longer discourse)
 class relations
 example relations
 property relations
 causal relations
 sequence
 time relations
 comparison

Organizational clues

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 Refer to the signaling devices or sentence connectors
that indicate a particular pattern of organization such as:
a) listing: the following, in addition, also, another.
b) sequence: first, second, meanwhile, afterwards,
while.
c) cause-effect: since, because, as a result, therefore,
consequently.
d) comparison/contrast: however, yet, nevertheless,
although.

Paragraph organization
Students should identify the introduction, middle and
conclusion of a paragraph.

Central ideas
Students should find a statement in sentence form
which gives the explicitly stated or implied major topic
of a passage or the topic sentence of a paragraph.

Making an Organization Outline

Students analyze the text into main ideas and
supporting details in outline form.

6.1.6 Inference Subskills

In the textually implicit inference, the reader finds a
semantic, grammatical or logical (causal) relations
between the propositions or events that are expressed in
the text. In scriptally implicit inference, the reader uses
her knowledge or experiences to find relations between

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propositions or events. no semantic, grammatical or
logical cues are involved here. Students should be able
to use the following inference subskills:

6.1.7 Anaphoric Relationships

a) Pronouns (I my mine me you yours, this that
these, who, that, each, what whose, whoever,
some , any, none, someone, one, anyone... etc.:
"Mary has a friend. She plays with him every day".

b) Locative pronouns (here, there): Mary lives in

Chicago. She has been living there for five
years.

c) Temporal (now, then, before, after, later, earlier,

sooner ...etc.): I'm supposed to stay in during
recess, but i want to go out and play then.

d) Deleted pronouns: The students scheduled a

meeting, but only a few attended.

e) Class inclusive anaphora: John was awakened by a

siren. he thought the noise would never stop.

f) Arithmetic anaphora; John and Mike are brothers.

The former is a doctor, the latter is a lawyer, the
two live in the same town.

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 g) Inclusive anaphora: "someone was pounding on
the door. This surprised Julie".

h) Deleted predicate adjectives:

 John is absent. so is Henry.
 The men came home late. Both were tired.
 Have some milk. There isn't any.
 do all monkeys eat bananas? Most do.
 I like many fruits, but apples are the best.
 Which blouse for you like? The green suits
you well.

i) Pro-verbs: "John went to school. So did Jim".

j) Synonym: "There's a boy in the tree. I hope the

lad doesn't fall".

k) Subordinate: I heard a dog barking. The animal

must have seen a cat.

Forward and Backward Inferencing

 Forward inferencing: if a car runs out of gas, the
car will stop.
 Backward inference: Mary's brother is tomorrow.
john is making a cake.

Establishing a context for the text

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Students should identify the context or the topic of the
text.
 He spilled the gravy and mint jelly on her dress.
(meal context)
 Mary had a little lamb. (nursery rhyme)

6.2 Product of Reading

The product target objective is comprehending the
literal meaning of expository passages written within the
3000 words and the sentence structures that the
students have studied. The product objectives of
comprehension can be further subdivided into more
specific tasks. Content objectives of comprehension are
subdivided into recognition, recall or verification of main
ideas, details, sequence of events (time order, space
order, logical order, order of preferences), comparison,
cause effect relationships, and character traits, that are
explicitly or implicitly stated in the text.

Literal comprehension
Comprehending the literal meaning of the text
content requires the students to recognize or recall ideas
information and happenings that are explicitly stated or
textually implied in the text read. Literal comprehension
also requires verification of ideas or ideas or information
explicitly stated in the text. Literal comprehension can be
analyzed into the following tasks:

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  Recognition or recall of main ideas requires
students to locate or identify, verify or produce
from memory the main idea of a paragraph,
details, sequence, comparison, cause-effect
relationships, character traits that are explicitly
stated or textually implied in the text.
 recognition/recall/verification of details
 recognition/recall/verification of main ideas
 recognition/recall/verification of a sequence
 recognition/recall/verification of comparison
 recognition/recall/verification of cause and effect
relationships
 recognition/recall/verification of character traits
 Reorganization
 Classifying
 Outlining
 Summarizing
 synthesizing

Interpretive (Inferential) Comprehension

Understanding the ideas and information (main ideas,
supporting details, sequence of events, comparison,
cause and effect relationships and character traits,
predicting outcomes, interpreting figurative language,
and inferring literal meanings from the author's figurative
use of the language.) that are implicitly stated in the text.
 inferring details
 inferring main ideas
 inferring sequences

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  inferring comparisons
 inferring cause and effect relationships
 inferring character traits
 predicting outcomes
 interpreting figurative language

Evaluative comprehension
Evaluating the writer's ideas whether they are explicit
or implicit. They judge his style and determine whether it
is consistent or effective, distinguish between fact and
comment or see that some books are better than others.
Students make the following judgments:
 judgments of reality or fantasy
 judgments of Fact or opinion
 judgments of adequacy or validity
 judgments of appropriateness
 judgments of worth, desirability or acceptability

Creative Comprehension
Students use their imagination and experience to
gain new insights, formulate fresh ideas and reorganize
their thought patterns. Some creative tasks are:
 Emotional responses to the content.
 Identification with the characters or incidents.
 Reaction to the author's use of language.
 Recognition of imagery.

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VII. STUDY SKILLS
7.1 Finding the main idea
 locate a topic sentence in a paragraph
 put a directly stated idea in a paragraph in her
own words.
 state an implied main idea of a paragraph in her
own words.
 state the main idea of a longer passage.

7.2 Significant details

 locate significant details in a paragraph when
necessary.
 locate the irrelevant details in a paragraph as an
aid in finding those that are relevant to a specific
idea.

7.3 Organizational skills

 outline a section or a chapter of a content
textbook using main headings and subheadings.

 take notes from a content textbook.

 summarize a section or entire selection from a

content textbook in her own words.

7.4 Following directions:

 Understanding directions.

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 Following directions in a sequence.

7.5 Location of information:

 Using text aids effectively such as the table of
contents, index, glossary, bibliography, notes,
pictures, diagrams, maps, graphs, tables, guide
questions, review questions, typographical aids.

 Locating information using reference material

such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauri,
atlases, and almanacs.

 Using library resources such as Dewy Decimal

system, the Library of Congress, the card catalog,
Reader's Guide and others.

7.6 Graphic aids

 Interpreting maps, charts, tables, and diagrams.
 Relating maps, charts, tables, and diagrams to
printed information.

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