Unit 9 Teaching Reading Welcome

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.

I. The purpose of learning to read Reading is a very important skill for learning; Reading is an input skill; Reading can help students to master other skills.

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 one’s real reading ability requires the reading skills of skimming, scanning, predicting, etc.

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.

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.

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;

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

VIII. Post-reading Activities 1. Discussion 2. Role-play 3. Gap-filling 4. Retelling 5. False summary 6. Writing

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

Thank you ! Good bye !