TEACHING READING

TEACHING READING
Presented by

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
I. Reading skills and strategies
II. Principles behind the teaching of reading.
III. Guidelines for teaching reading
IV. Follow-up activity
Choose a text in Tieng Anh 12 nang cao
and design a lesson plan.

I. Reading skills and strategies
1. Scanning: Students read the text in order
to find some specific information. When
reading, they do not have to read every
word and line.
e.g. instructions on how to find a house
2. Skimming: Students read the text quickly
in order to get the gist or the general idea
or global meaning.
e.g. reading a magazine article

3. Reading for detailed comprehension:
Students read the text and try to get all the
details, concentrating hard on specifics.
e.g. instructions on how to find a house
4. Predicting: Students predict what the text is
about before reading and continuing to
predict what will come next while reading.

5. Guessing: Students guess the meaning of
unknown words from the context.
6. Using a dictionary: Students use
dictionaries (both monolingual and
bilingual) to look up new words to facilitate
reading.
7. Inferring: Students read the text and try to
work out the writer’s opinions, implications,
and attitudes.

II. Principles behind the teaching of
reading.

Principle 1: Reading is not a passive kill. It is an
incredibly active activity. Both teachers and
students must understand the meanings of words,
the arguments and work out if they agree with
each other. If not doing so, they only scratch the
surface of the text and quickly forget it.

Principle 2: Students need to engaged with what
they are reading. If they are not interested in
reading the text, they cannot benefit much from the
text.

II. Principles behind the teaching of
reading (continued)

Principle 3: Students should be encouraged
to respond to the content of a reading text,

not just to the language. The meaning, the
message of the text is important so teachers
should give students an opportunity to
respond to that message, to express their
feelings about the topic. This will make them
be engaged with the reading text and the
language.

II. Principles behind the teaching of
reading (continued)

Principle 4: Prediction is a major factor in
reading.The book cover, the headlines, the
photographs, the word-processed page can
be used as hints to make a student’s brain
start predicting what he/she is going to read.
Predicting what is coming will help students
become better and more engaged readers.

II. Principles behind the teaching of
reading (continued)

Principle 5: Match the task to the topic.
Teachers should choose good reading tasks for
students to read. The most exciting passage is the
one with appropriate questions, imaginative and
challenging tasks.

Principle 6: Good teachers exploit the reading
text to the full.

Teachers should integrate the reading text into
interesting class sequences, using a variety of tasks
to help students read and comprehend the text
thoroughly.

Top-down and bottom-up processing

In top-down processing, the reader gets a general
view or idea of the reading text by absorbing the
overall picture/ reviewing what he knows about the
topic to interpret the message he is reading.

In bottom-up processing, the reader focuses on
individual words, phrases or cohesive devices and
achieves understanding by stringing these detailed
elements together to build up a whole.

III. Guidelines for teaching reading
A. Pre-reading (Presentation)
Teachers work on the general topic in order to get
students to think about what they already know
and in order to establish a reason for reading.
Teachers might
- help students by giving them a context and by pre-
teaching some of the most difficult language. (new
words/difficult grammar points/structures)

Guidelines for teaching reading
(continued)
- stimulate interest by setting the scene.

- encourage them to make predictions
about the contents of the text.
- give students a clear and authentic
purpose for reading the text.
- ask them one/two guiding questions.

Guidelines for teaching reading
(continued)
B. While reading (Practice)
Teachers use questions and tasks to practice
appropriate skills and to make students
aware of those skills.
Teachers might
- allow students to read silently, using different
skills and strategies.
- encourage speed in reading, give a time limit

Guidelines for teaching reading
(continued)
- allow students to co-operate and help each
other.
- check students’ reading comprehension
by using different
questions/tasks/activities.

Guidelines for teaching reading
(continued)
C.Post reading (Production)
Teachers consolidate the language materials
having been taught by a variety of

writing/speaking/ listening activities or tasks.

IV. Some suggested tasks/activities
used in the three main stages of a
reading lesson.
A. PRE-READING
–
Discussion
–
Lead-in
–
Guessing
–
Predicting
–
Questions and Answer Exchange

IV. Some suggested tasks/activities
used in the three main stages of a
reading lesson.(continued)
B. WHILE READING
–
True – False statements
–
Reading Cloze
–
Matching
–
Grid – Filling
–

Multiple – choice
–
Open – ended questions

IV. Some suggested tasks/activities
used in the three main stages of a
reading lesson.(continued)
POST - READING
–
Speaking based on the text (interviews,
discussions with the information gathered
from the text)
–
Writing based on the text (letter-writing,
summarizing with the information gathered
from the text).
–
Listening to something related to the text.

V. Types of reading texts (continued)
1. Students read small ads for holidays,
partners, things, for sale, etc. to make a
choice. They amplify the ads into
descriptions.
2. Students read jumbled instructions for a
simple operation (using a public phone box
etc.) and have to put the instructions in the
correct order.

V. Types of reading texts (continued)

1. Students read small ads for holidays, partners,
things, for sale, etc. to make a choice. They
amplify the ads into descriptions.
2. Students read jumbled instructions for a simple
operation (using a public phone box etc.) and
have to put the instructions in the correct order.

V. Types of reading texts (continued)
3. Students read a recipe and after matching instructions with
pictures; they have to cook the food!
4. Students are given a number of words from a text. In groups,
they have to predict what kind of a text they are going to read.
They then read the text to see if their original predictions were
correct.
5. Students have to match topic sentences with the paragraphs
they come from.
6. Students read a ‘fact file’ about a country, population,
machine or process etc. They have to convert the information
into bar graphs or pie charts.
(Harmer, 1999: 77-78)

The roles of the teacher

Organiser
Teacher needs to
-
tell students exactly what their reading
purpose is.
-
give them clear instructions on what to do

with the reading and how long to do with it.

The roles of the teacher (continued)

Observer
Teacher
-
gives students enough time to read the text on their
own.
-
avoids interrupting their reading even when there is
something (more information or instructions) to add.
-
observes their progress and work (in pairs/groups)
so as to decide to give them some extra time or
move to organizing feedback.

The roles of the teacher (continued)

Feedback organiser
- After reading, teacher checks that students
have completed the reading task(s)
successfully by asking them compare
answers in pairs, then asking for answers
from the class in general or from pairs in
particular.

The roles of the teacher (continued)

Prompter

- When students have read a text, teacher
can prompt students to notice language
features within this text.
- Teacher may also direct them certain
features of text construction, clarifying
ambiguities and making them aware of
unfamiliar issues of text structures.