Teaching Reading Skills: Strategies and Activities for Effective ESL Instruction
Teaching Reading
Reasons for Reading
There are many reasons to use reading in class:
- For study purposes or simply for pleasure.
- Reading has a positive effect on students’ vocabulary knowledge, on their spelling, and on their writing.
- Reading texts also provide good models for English writing.
- Good reading texts can introduce interesting topics, stimulate discussion, excite imaginative responses, and provide the springboard for well-rounded, fascinating lessons.
Different Kinds of Reading
Extensive reading refers to reading, which students often do away from the classroom. Extensive reading should involve reading for pleasure.
Intensive reading refers to the detailed focus on the construction of reading texts, which takes place usually in classrooms. The exact choice of genres and topics may be determined by the specific purposes that students are studying for.
Reading Levels
Ideally, we would like students to read authentic texts. There is some authentic written material, which beginner students can understand to some degree, for example, menus or timetables. But for longer prose, we may want to offer our students texts, which are written or adapted especially for their level.
Reading Skills
Students need to be able to do several things with a reading text.
- They need to be able to scan the text for particular bits of information they are searching for. They do not have to read every word and line.
- Students also need to be able to skim a text to get a general idea of what it is about.
- Reading for detailed comprehension should be seen by students as something very different from the skills mentioned above.
Reading Principles
- Encourage students to read as often and as much as possible. The more students read, the better.
- Students need to be engaged with what they are reading. We should try to help students get as much pleasure from reading as possible.
- Encourage students to respond to the content of a text, not just concentrate on its construction. The message of the text is important. We must give students a chance to respond to that message in some way.
- Prediction is a major factor in reading. Students have to predict the content of books before they read them.
- Match the task to the topic when using intensive reading texts. Once a decision has been taken about what reading text the students are going to read, we need to choose good reading tasks.
- Good teachers exploit reading texts to the full. Good teachers integrate the reading text into interesting lesson sequences, using the topic for discussion and further tasks. Provoke useful feedback.
Reading Sequences
Jigsaw Reading
Students read a short text which sets up a problem and then, in three groups, they read three different texts. When they have read their texts, they come together in groups where each student has read a different text, and they try to work out the whole story, or describe the whole situation. It is still a highly motivating technique.
Reading Puzzles
There are many other kinds of puzzles which involve students in motivating reading tasks. The teacher can give students a series of emails between two people which are out of sequence.
Following Instructions
Students read instructions for a simple operation and have to put the instructions in the correct order.
Poetry
In groups, students are each given a line from a poem. They can’t show the line to the other members of the group. They have to reassemble the poem by putting the lines in order.
Play Extracts
Students read an extract from a play or film and, after ensuring that they understand it and analyzing its construction, they have to work on acting it out.
Predicting from Words and Pictures
Students are given several words from a text. Working in groups, they have to predict what kind of text they are going to read.
Different Responses
There are many things students can do with a reading text. When a text is full of facts and figures, we can get students to put the information into graphs, tables, or diagrams.
Encouraging Students to Read Extensively
There are four factors that contribute to the success of this kind of extensive reading:
- Library. Students need to have access to a collection of readers. The library should have a range of different genres.
- Choice. Students should be able to choose what they read.
- Feedback. Students should have an opportunity to give feedback on what they have read.
- Time. We need to give students time for reading in addition to those occasions when they read on their own.