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MA

TESOL

This week we will.........

identify skills needed to be a good reader


discuss the importance of activating schema
evaluate activities for the activation of schema

think about the aims of using texts in teaching


discuss the relationship between what we read and how we
read
discuss dierent activities for teaching 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 specic

goal - usually done in class


May use authentic or published materials

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)

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 eagles 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
writers purpose, the likely trend of the argument
and so on, and then use this framework to interpret
dierent parts of the text.




Nuttall (1996:16)

Comprehension

Combines top-down and


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



Anderson (cited in Nunan,
2003)

Read the text and write it out in English.


What skills were involved in reading and

understanding the text?

How good readers read (1)

Good readers make use of dierent kinds of


clues:

Clues of meaning (semantic)


Clues of word order and grammar (syntactic)
Visual clues recognising letter patterns such
as -ight (graphic)
Phonic clues sounding out letters

How good readers read (2)


Good readers:

bring their knowledge of the world to inform their


reading
understand and interact with what they read
move backwards and forwards within the text
recognise many common words and parts of words
use the sound system to make out unfamiliar words
use context to monitor meaning.

Pre-reading


While Reading


Post Reading

Lead-in: T
establishes context
and pre teaches key
vocabulary

T sets reading tasks


depending on the
text type and
reason for reading

Follow up activity
e.g.
Speaking activity,
Role play, writing

Read the text.


What is it about?
What makes it dicult or easy to understand?

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)

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)

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 for gist (skimming)


Reading for general understanding







Reading for specic information (scanning)
Looking at the text in detail e.g. for
information or specic language points

Close reading
Careful reading of the whole text

Reading for inference
Working out what is not explicitly stated

Look at the chart. Identify the reasons for

reading and the ways of reading for these


dierent texts.

How does the purpose of a text inuence the
way it is read?

What are the implications of this for
classroom teaching?

Text
Type

Reason for reading


Pleasure

Instructions
for new TV
Text
message
Newspaper
report
A short
story
Journal
article
TV guide

Information

Way of Reading

Close
reading

Skimming
for gist

Scanning for
specic
information

Text
Type

Reason for reading


Pleasure

Way of Reading

Information

Close
reading

Instructions
for new TV

yes

Yes

Text
message

Yes

Yes

Yes

Newspaper
report

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

yes

yes

A short
story

yes

Journal
article

Yes

TV guide

yes

Skimming
for gist

Scanning for
specic
information

Yes

Yes
Yes

Skimming Activities (gist reading)


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

Scanning and/or close reading might involve:


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

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)

Many teachers teach reading by giving


students texts and asking them comprehension
questions about
Critics argue that this does not teach reading, it
tests reading
Using a text = teaching learners to read

Nation (2009: 26) suggests,

The teacher should ask How does todays teaching make


tomorrows text easier?.

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
eectively and may include:
Focus on lexis
Working out meaning or grammar of words
Understanding organisation of text
Reading for gist / detail
Inferring attitude
Following development of an argument
Ability to summarise a text
AND SO ON..

Teachers should always be able to explain the


reason for doing a particular task or activity.
They should, as a minimum, be clear about the
goal of each lesson. A......useful mnemonic,
LIST, provides a means of considering goals:
L Language
I Ideas
S Skills
T Text


(Macalister, 2010)

(Macalister, 2010)

I dont know all the words.


Active, receptive and throwaway
vocabulary
Understanding when to ignore dicult
vocabulary
Why am I reading this?
Do I need this word or can I get the gist without it?
Have I got what I wanted?

(Nuttall, 1996:63)

3 strategies for dealing with words which

impede understanding

Structural clues (grammar and morphology)


Inference from context
Using a dictionary

(Nuttall, 1996)

The sploony urdle departed





(Nuttall, 1996:69)

Which words classes could sploony and urdle belong to?



Think of three real words which could replace urdle in this
context.

For each suggested substitute word for urdle, think of a
possible meaning for sploony that would t the context.

1.

She poured water into the tock.

2.

Then, lifting the tock, she drank.


Unfortunately, as she was setting it dwn
again, the tock slipped from her hand and
broke.

3.

4.

Only the handle remained in one piece.


(Nuttall, 1996:72)

Why might some teachers discourage

students from using a dictionary?


What guidelines might teachers give for using
dictionaries?
Decide which words need to be looked up
Train students how to understand information

given in a dictionary
Consider how often and when dictionaries are
used in class/at home

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
Macalister, J. (2011). Today's teaching, tomorrow's text:
Exploring the teaching of reading. ELT Journal, 65(2),
161-169. doi:10.1093/elt/ccq023
Nation, I. S. P. 2009. Teaching ESL/EFL Reading and
Writing. New York: Routledge.
Nuttall, C (1996) Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign
Language. Oxford: MacMillan

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