Teaching Reading Skills

Ms. Berivan M. Ahmed

2021
Aims:
•Introduce methods and strategies for developing
learners’ reading skills

Learning objectives (By the end of the session,

participants will have):
•explored how we process written information
•identified a variety of approaches to reading
depending on the purpose of the reading activity
•explored procedures and activities for developing
learners’ reading skills.
Types of reading

◼ Extensive reading
▪ Reading for pleasure and general improvement where
the student chooses their own source of material
▪ May include ‘language learners literature’ (Day and
Bamford 1998 cited in Harmer 2007)

◼ Intensive reading
▪ Concentrated reading focussed on achieving a
specific goal - usually done in class
▪ May use ‘authentic’ or published materials
1.How we read
Bottom-up approach

‘ …the reader builds up a meaning from the

black marks on the page: recognising letters and
words, working out sentence structure. We can
make conscious use of it when an initial reading
leaves us confused.’
(Nuttall 1996:17)
2. How we read
Top-down view

‘…..we draw on our own intelligence and experience

– the predictions we can make, based on the
schemata we have acquired – to understand the text’

‘A reader adopts an eagle’s eye of the text when he

considers it as a whole and relates it to his knowledge
and experience. This enables him to predict the
writer’s purpose, the likely trend of the argument
and so on, and then use this framework to interpret
different parts of the text.’
Nuttall (1996:16)
Bottom-up Top-down
3. Interactive Models of Reading

◼ Combines top-down and

bottom-up processing
◼ The best readers
integrate both processes
Comprehension ◼ Involves extensive and
intensive reading

Anderson (cited in Nunan,

2003)
ClassroomTeaching: Reading
Sequencing a reading Lesson

Pre-reading While Reading Post Reading

Lead-in: T T sets reading tasks Follow up activity
establishes context depending on the e.g.
and pre teaches key text type and
vocabulary Speaking activity,
reason for reading
Role play, writing
………
Coursebook Reading

Look at the page provided.

◼Identify the purpose of each task (a-h) in the
coursebook
◼Are they pre-reading, while-reading or post-
reading tasks.

◼Think of an alternative follow-up task you

could use.
Pre-reading: making sense of texts

◼ Readers and writers must have things in common for

communication to take place: they should share basic
assumptions about the world and how it works

Area of shared assumptions

Writer Reader
(Nuttall, 1996)
Activating schema

◼Schema (pl. schemata) is a ‘mental structure’

(Nuttall 1996:7) or ‘our pre-existent
knowledge of the world’ (Cook 1989:69)
◼Activating schemata helps readers to access
a text as they will have appropriate
expectations of what they will come across
(Harmer 2007)
◼For an overview of criticism of schema theory
see Grabe in Richards and Renandya (2002)
Schemata can be activated through:
• Background knowledge of the text topic
• Knowledge about the medium (e.g. the
stance of a particular newspaper)
• Familiarity with the culture the text comes
from
• The interpretation of key words and phrases
in a particular context
Activating Schema in practice

◼Look at the text provided. How might you

activate learners’ pre-existing knowledge to
help them read this text?

◼Look at the examples on the back. Which do

you prefer and why?
Reading Strategies

◼ Skimming (reading for gist)

Reading for general understanding
◼ Scanning
reading to find specific information only and
ignoring the rest of the text e.g. looking at a bus
Timetable

◼ Detailed reading
Reading to get the maximum level of detail from a
text
Reading purposes and strategies

◼Look at the chart. Identify the reasons for

reading and the ways of reading for these
different texts.

◼How does the purpose of a text influence the

way it is read?

◼What are the implications of this for

classroom teaching?
 Text Reason for reading Way of Reading
Type
Pleasure Information Detailed Skimming Scanning for
reading for gist specific
information
Instruction yes Yes
s for new
TV
Text Yes Yes Yes
message
Newspape Yes Yes Yes
r report
A short yes Yes Yes
story
Journal Yes yes yes Yes
article
TV guide yes Yes
While-Reading: Tasks

Skimming Activities (gist reading)

◼Identifying the tone of the text
◼Identifying the audience the text is for
◼Write a title for the text
◼Match the text to a picture

◼What types of texts do we skim read?

While-Reading: Tasks

◼Reading for detail may include:

Comprehension questions
True/false questions
Multiple choice questions
Cloze exercises (fill in the gap)
Read for mistakes
Follow instructions
Ordering a text

◼What types of texts do we read for detail?

Post-reading: Tasks

◼Discussion-based activities
◼What happened next? Continue the story
◼Students write a letter from, or a
conversation between characters in the text
◼Students each assume a role of a character in
the text and act out all or part of the text
◼Students create tasks such Q&A etc (possibly
for other students)
Possible sequence for a reading
lesson
Lead-in: T
establishes context T sets gist Sts complete
and pre teaches reading task reading task
key vocab’

Sts complete
T sets reading T directs
reading for
for detail task feedback
detail task

T directs Follow up
feedback activity
Intensive reading – letting the
students in

◼Students are more likely to engage with a

text if they can respond to it in a personal
way and can bring their own knowledge and
feelings to it
▪ Do you like the text?
▪ Students create their own comprehension tasks
▪ Jigsaw reading

Harmer (2007)
But beware!
◼ Do your activities teach reading or test reading?
▪ Asking students to read a text and answer questions
on it is simply testing reading
▪ Teaching reading involves helping them to read
more effectively and may include:
▪ Focus on lexis
▪ Working out meaning or grammar of words
▪ Understanding organisation of text
▪ Identifying gist
▪ Inferring attitude
▪ Following development of an argument
▪ Ability to summarise a text
▪ AND SO ON………………..
Evaluating Coursebooks

◼Look at a coursebook. Choose 1 chapter.

▪ Do the reading activities teach or assess reading?
▪ To what extent are the texts likely to interest the
learners?
▪ To what extent are the tasks relevant to real life?
▪ To what extent are the activities used as a
springboard to other skills?
▪ To what extent do the materials provide
opportunities for cultural awareness?
References

◼ Harmer, J. (2007a). How to teach English 2nd ed.

Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd
◼ Harmer, J. (2007). The Practice of English Language
Teaching. 4th ed. Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd
◼ J.C., Renandya, A. (2002). Methodology in English
language teaching: an anthology of current
practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
◼ Nuttall, C (1996) Teaching Reading Skills in a
Foreign Language. Oxford: MacMillan