Unit 10 Teaching Reading

1
Unit 10 Teaching Reading
Welcome
2
Teaching Objectives

• 1.The purpose of learning to read
• 2.The ways to read
• 3.The things people read
• 4.The skills involved in reading
• 5.The principles for teaching reading
• 6.Common types of activities in teaching reading.

3
I. The purpose of learning to read

• Reading is a very important skill for ESL
  learning
• Reading is an input skill
• Reading can help students to master other skills.

4
II. The ways to read

• Usually, there are two ways to read, reading
  aloud and silent reading which are different in
  many aspects. Obviously, reading aloud cannot
  replace silent reading as it involves only the
  skills of pronunciation and intonation, while
  ones real reading ability requires the reading
  skills of skimming, scanning, predicting, etc.

5
II. The ways to read

• Effective readers do the following
• 1.They have a clear purpose in reading
• 2.They read silently
• 3.They read phrase by phrase, rather than word by
  word
• 4.They concentrate on the important bits, skim
  the rest, and skip the insignificant parts
• 5.They use different speeds and strategies for
  different reading tasks
• 6.They perceive the information in the target
  language rather than mentally translate
• 7.They guess the meaning of new words from the
  context, or ignore them
• 8.They have and use background information to
  help understand the text.

6
III. The things people read

• ESL/EFL textbooks have a heavy load of literary
  texts (e.g. stories, tales) and non-literary
  passages (e.g. essays, diaries, anecdotes,
  biographies). Besides authentic texts, ESL/EFL
  textbooks also employ a lot of non-authentic
  texts, i.e. simulated texts. Though appearing
  authentic, these materials are written especially
  for language students with some
• language control.

7
IV. Skills involved in reading comprehension

• In order to achieve the two levels of reading,
  the reader needs the following skills
• Recognising the script of a language
• Understanding the explicitly stated
  information, conceptual meaning, the
  communicative value (functions) of sentences
• Deducing the meaning of unfamiliar lexical
  items
• Understanding relations within sentences,
  relations between sentences, references

8
IV. Skills involved in reading comprehension

• Recognising indicators in discourse, the
  organization of the text
• Making inferences.
• In order to make reading more efficient, students
  also need the following strategic skills
• Distinguishing the main idea from supporting
  details
• Skimming reading for the gist or main idea
• Scanning reading to look for specific
  information
• Predicting guessing what is coming next.

9
V. Principles and models for teaching reading

• Some principles for teaching reading
• Tasks should be clearly given in advance.
  Preferably, tasks should motivate students.
• Tasks should be designed to encourage selective
  and intelligent reading for the main meaning
  rather than test the students understanding of
  trivial details.
• Tasks should help develop students reading
  skills rather than test their reading
  comprehension.
• Teachers should help the students to read on
  their own.

10
V. Principles and models for teaching reading

• Two models for teaching reading
• 1.Bottom-up model
• 2.Top-down model
• Three stages
• pre-reading, while-reading, and post-reading.

11
VI. Pre-reading activities

• 1. Predicting
• --Predicting based on the title
• --Predicting based on vocabulary
• --Predicting based on the T/F questions.
• 2. Setting the scene
• 3. Skimming
• 4. Scanning

12
VII. While-reading activities

• 1. Information transfer activities
• Focus attention on the main meaning of the
  text.
• Be able to simplify sophisticated input so that
  is becomes the basis for output.
• Allow students to perform tasks while they are
  reading.
• Highlight the main structural organization of a
  textlpart of a text, and show how the structure
  relates to meaning.

13
VII. While-reading activities

• Involve all the students on clearly defined
  reading tasks.
• Precede one step at a time (i.e. students
  should do easier tasks before doing more
  complicated ones).
• When a TD task is completed, provide students
  with a model for oral and for written work.

14
VII. While-reading activities

• 2. Reading comprehension questions
• 1) Questions for literal comprehension.
• 2) Questions involving reorganization or
  reinterpretation.
• 3) Questions for inferences.
• 4) Questions for evaluation or appreciation.
• 5) Questions for personal response.

15
VII. While-reading activities

• 3. Understanding references
• Sometimes students have difficulty with
  certain texts because they are unable to follow
  clearly the use of references. All natural
  language, spoken or written, uses referential
  words such as pronouns to refer to people or
  things already mentioned previously in the
  context. Understanding what these words refer to
  is crucial for comprehension.

16
VII. While-reading activities

• 4. Making inferences
• Making inferences, which means reading
  between the lines, is an important reading
  skill. It requires the reader to use background
  knowledge in order to infer the implied meaning
  of the author.

17
VIII. Post-reading Activities

• 1. Discussion
• 2. Role-play
• 3. Gap-filling
• 4. Retelling
• 5. False summary
• 6. Writing

18
IX. Assignments

• 1.Read Chapter 5 of TLEBC.
• 2.Do all the exercises in the text.
• 3.Prepare a 5 minutes Reading Class.

19
Thank you ! Good bye !