How to work with Readings

Students need to develop the reading skills that will enable them to not only
comprehend texts in English, but also obtain what they need to deliver a
specific answer.

Step 1: Engage the student.

The purpose of engaging the student is to introduce the theme or topic of the
reading through a "warm-up" that can engage the student, for example, by
using visuals. If you use visuals, you can ask a question such as, "who do you
think lives here?" The teacher should elicit responses from the students.

Remember that lessons should be student-focused, so the majority of the

talking should be done by the students.

Step 2: Pre-teach new vocabulary. 

When preparing reading activities, decide the vocabulary that is difficult or

essential to understand the story. Decide how you will teach the new words or
key words. You don't have to teach every word that you think the student may
not know, just those that are key.

This part of the lesson shouldn't take too much time.

Step 3: Ask a focus question. 

Students should have questions when they work with readings so they can get
the gist of the text as well as detailed information through questioning.

Write a question about a detail that is three-quarters of the way through the text
for ESL beginning reading exercises.

These are some reading strategies that you can use with your students — at
any level to cover these three steps:

1. Previewing
Previewing is absolutely essential for students to get a sense of what the text is
about. Elements that are usually helpful for previewing are newspaper headlines or
titles; images or photos; and signal words or format. For example, if the article has
words like first, second, third, etc… at the beginning of each paragraph or is a
numbered list, students will get the sense that the text lists steps or is a roundup article.

Reading Exercise: Choose the main tittle or, if any, subtitles in the reading. Before
reading the article, ask students what they think the article will be about, based on the
headline.

2. Contextualizing
It is always helpful for students to learn to place the text within a context. Is the news
article centered on something that happens everywhere in the world, or just in one
specific location? Is this something that affects you, the reader, or other people in the
world? Does the main character in the story go through something you can relate to, or
something you have no experience in? These are great questions for students to think
about as they read.

Reading Exercise:  Imagine you have a text about Education in Britain. Before

reading, discuss the educational system in their country: How many years of grade
school are there? How many years of high school? Students read about what it’s like to
go to school in Britain and compare it to their country.

3. Asking and Answering Questions

What questions come to mind when you preview an article? How will the main
character solve this problem? Students need to come up with questions they would like
answered in the text and pay attention to how they are answered.

Reading Exercise:  After reading the title, ask students to come up with three
questions they expect the article will answer and then read to see if they find the
answers.

4. Summarising
After the reading, students should be able to summarise what they’ve read. This may
be a short oral summary or a full paragraph. Summarizing includes a very important
skill: getting the gist. What was the main point in the story? Summarizing is not retelling
everything that happened as it happened, and students need to not only tell the
difference, but also learn to give back information in a clear concise manner. When a
student can summarize a given piece of reading material in their own words, they’ve
definitely developed an excellent understanding of the material’s main concept and
message.

Reading Exercise:  Get the students in pairs o small groups. Give each pair/group a
different section of the text to read and have them present their summaries in front of
the class. Ask them to summarize in just one sentence or two the whole text. You can
have students share their summaries with one another in groups.

5. Skimming
Skimming and scanning are usually considered speed-reading skills because they are
not used for intensive reading. They are essential skills nonetheless, and students
need to know that sometimes intensive reading is not necessary.

Skimming a text involves running your eyes over it quickly to get the main idea. It also
allows you to identify which parts of a long text you might want to read more closely.
This skill is particularly useful, for example, for students who have to read long texts in
short time. By skimming, they can still follow the gist and stop when they find
something of particular interest to them.

Reading Exercise: read the reading aloud and tell the class they have five minutes to
skim it again and report what is it about.

6. Scanning
Scanning, on the other hand, allows you to quickly search a text for a particular piece
of information. Basically, it’s just a quick read-through. Scanning is ideal when students
need to find a phone number in a directory, the date of a historical event or the time
their train is leaving. This is a great follow-up activity after skimming, enhancing your
students’ comprehension of the reading even further.

Scanning is allowing your students more time to review the reading material, but
without letting them to stop over every word. The goal behind scanning is to give your
students the ability to pick up the specific details and combining them with the general
information they discovered while skimming.

Reading Exercise:  Divide the class into groups and give each group 2-3 questions to
answer or let them make the questions. Each group must scan the text to find the
information they need to answer the questions. You may want to set a timer for this
activity to be extra effective.

7. Predicting
Predicting is a way of giving your students more creative freedom. Saying new words
and phrases from the text out loud will reinforce this language in their minds.
Also, they can ask questions to clarify what’s going on if they missed something. They’ll
likely even pick up a few textual details they may have missed from their classmates
during conversations.
Reading exercise: Choose an individual paragraph and allow your students to discuss
what will happen in the next one. This will open up discussion and get them really
thinking in English. In order for them to discuss their predictions with their classmates,
they’ll have to have a basic level of comprehension and they’ll practice their speaking
skills.
8. Discussing
The exceptional reading comprehension methods above can all be combined with
discussion-based activities that’ll allow students time to develop other sub-skills in ESL
development.
Reading exercise: Prepare easy questions to ask them as a class after reading. For
upper intermediate or advanced, think up a couple of controversial questions that’ll
really get students engaged. Multiple choice questions will let them think through what
you’ve said and choose best possible answers. Students can then discuss, as a class,
why they’d choose one particular answer as opposed to another.

Conclusion

Whatever the material, it’s important to make sure it’s relevant to your student’s
interests and English goals and needs. Keep in mind that just reading can be boring for
some, so keep an interactive dialogue going before and after each reading period.
Don’t let reading go too long—just long enough for your students to grasp the general
and specific concepts in the text. Make it fun and enjoyable to have more enthusiastic
and confident students!
EXTRA READING ACTIVITIES

EXPAND THE TEXT

With short, simple texts, get students to add an adjective in front of every noun / an
adverb to every verb etc. 
For slightly longer texts - before class write (10) extra clauses or sentences that can be
inserted into the text. Write these up in jumbled order on the board and get students to
add them in the most appropriate places.

REDUCE THE TEXT

Get students to reduce the text to EXACTLY (100) words OR reduce the total number
of sentences by (50%).

RECONSTRUCT THE TEXT

Before class, write a list of key words from the text in jumbled order on a sheet of
paper. Make one copy for each group of students. 
In class, give out the text to all the students. Get them to read it through. Now ask them
to turn over the text. Hand out the jumbled keywords. Ask students to put the keywords
back into the correct order WITHOUT LOOKING AT THE TEXT. When they get stuck,
allow them to reread to the text (but first get them to cover up the jumbled words
again.)  When all the students have got the words in the correct order, take the text
away. Get students to reconstruct the text (orally or in writing) from the key words.

MATCHING

Before class, get a heavy black pen and cross out the first sentence of each paragraph.
In class, write the missing sentences up in jumbled order on the board and get students
to add them back into the text in the correct place. 
Note: choosing the first sentence of a paragraph is particularly useful as these often
summarise the main idea of the paragraph. Students can use these sentences to help
them understand and structure the text.

TRANSFORM THE TEXT

Students must transform the text in some way, for example:

 Retell a story in the first person not the third person

 Retell a story from the perspective of a different character in the story

 Present a news story as a TV news item instead of a newspaper item.

DEDUCTION

Copy the text onto a piece of A4 paper. Tear off a column (say 4cm wide) down the left
hand side of the copy and a similar sized column off the right hand side. Photocopy
and hand out the remaining “middle” part of the story. Students must work together to
deduce the whole story from the bits they have. Hand out the original story for
comparison at the end.
TEXT QUIZ

Hand out the chosen text to the class. Give them time to read it, check new words etc. 
Now get the students in groups to prepare (15) questions about the text which another
group will have to answer from memory. Questions should be factual. When the groups
are ready, cover up all copies of the text, then get groups to swap their question sheets
and answer each other’s questions. The group that answers the most questions
correctly wins.

WORD COLLOCATIONS

Before class, find (15) useful COLLOCATIONS in your chosen text. Write the first word
of each partnership down the left-hand side of a piece of paper. 

E.g. Solve ………… 
Now get the students to complete the sheet that you prepared by finding the partners
for each word. 
As a follow-up, students can test each other by covering up one of the columns on their
sheets and trying to remember the missing word partners.

REACTIONS

Before class, prepare a list of sentences along the following lines: 

What I found most interesting about this text was….. 
boring 
shocking 
amusing 
irritating  
incredible 
etc. 
In class, allow students time to read the text and check out any problems. Then ask
them to complete all / some of the sentences from your list. When they have finished,
put them in groups to discuss their reactions.

TALK ABOUT THE TEXT

One of the things we often do in real life is tell someone else about a story / news item /
magazine article etc that we read. To do this in class, all you need is a text and a group
of students. Get the students to read the text. Now ask them to describe the text and
their reactions to it to their partner. Get them to start like this: 
“I was reading this (story) the other day and it was really interesting. What it said
was…..” 
Variation: have two or more texts and get different students to read and talk about
different texts.