Improving Reading Skills
It is not unusual for an English Language instructor to be faced with students who find reading not very enjoyable or a stimulating class activity. However, reading as a receptive skill provides a good model of language input that later on will drive language outputs such as speaking or writing. Therefore more attention should be paid to transform this skill into a more relaxing and motivating way to boost learners’ overall language skills.
Below I am sharing some stages and strategies that I use in my classes when teaching a reading text.
Step 1: Previewing/Prediction. This is done to establish the context and get student personally involved in the topic. In this stage students predict by reviewing titles, section headings, photo headings and key words. Brainstorm topic for ideas and vocabulary.
Step 2: Pre-teach vocabulary. In this stage it is important to teach some key vocabulary (not more than 7-8 terms) that can be vital for the understanding of the text. By doing so we can lower our students’ affective filters and therefore they can be more engaged in the reading task. In this stage some matching and cloze (fill in the blanks) exercises can be prepared so that the students can practice and review the language taught.
Step 3: Skimming/reading for gist. It is important that students know how to conduct a quick survey of the text to get the main idea, identify text structures and to confirm or question predictions. In this stage the task should be given before the reading text. It can be matching headings to paragraphs, put things in order, complete charts etc.
Step 4: Scanning is reading for more detailed information and for a deeper understanding of the content. The more students ‘go into a text’ the more they get out of it. In this stage students get another chance to read the text again but now for a different reason in order to develop further understanding. The task in this case can be answering to comprehension questions (T/F questions), practice guessing meaning of words from context or even work or extract structures from this context for later language work.
Step 5:Follow up tasks. Reading skills would certainly lead to the involvement of productive skills such as speaking or writing. Harmer (2007) has stated that ‘Good teachers will exploit the text to the full.’ Thus, a natural follow up to the topic e.g. a discussion, a role play, or writing a parallel text or a letter to the editor can be common language productive activities.
