Planning the Development of Reading Skills Modern Languages PGCE School of Education University of Nottingham

Questions to ask ourselves about our own L1 reading:  Why do we read ?  What do we read ?  How do we read ?

Why do we read in our first language ?  Through choice  For information  For pleasure  Through need  For academic purposes  Societal pressure (eg highway code for driving theory test, tax form etc)

What do we read ?  Material at or above our maturity level  Material at or above our cognitive level  Material in which we have an interest  Material we need for ‘life progress’

How do we read ?  By decoding the letters, words, sentences of the text and allowing meaning to emerge (= bottom-up process)  By applying what we already know - world knowledge, linguistic knowledge, ‘formal knowledge’ - to the text to help make sense of it (= top-down process)  By using both of the above processes as and when we need to (= interactive process)

Questions to ask ourselves about our learners’ L2 reading:  What are the implications of reading theory in practice ?  What types of reading do we use in the FL classroom ?  Do all learners read in the same way?  What are reading strategies ?  What are the characteristics of the independent reader ?  How important is task-type ?

What are the implications of reading theory in practice ?  Learners need to be thoroughly familiar with the written forms of the language they do already know - this speeds up the bottom-up process, as their recognition is then automatic  Learners need some world or cultural knowledge of the material the text is dealing with - this enables meaningful inferences to be made about unknown material in the text

What types of reading do we use in the FL classroom ?  Skimming: (could be used as a pre-reading device)  reading quickly to find out what a text contains  Scanning: (the most common form of FL reading)  reading quickly to search for something specific  Intensive reading: (could be used in problem-solving)  reading for detail, reading (nearly) every word  Extensive reading: (need to match interest and level)  reading for gist and / or pleasure

Do all learners read in the same way?  Some learners prefer to read individually and silently  Some learners prefer to read collaboratively and complete a task aloud  Some learners benefit from constructing meaning aloud through a translation / summary process  Some learners benefit from reading the foreign language text aloud before proceeding  Some learners work from the task back to the text  Some learners read the whole text before looking at the task

Reading Strategies -1  Recognising cognates (with own or other languages)  Inferring meaning from context  Using grammatical clues to construct meaning  Seeing units of meaning globally / clearly / objectively  Making predictions about what might follow

Reading Strategies - 2  Dictionary skills  Reading first for a global understanding, then for detail  Re-reading a section  Deciding to continue reading when something is not clear  Mentally reviewing a section

Characteristics of the ‘Independent Reader’  can recognise familiar words speedily  can concentrate so meaning is held ‘short-term’ to help process the next section  can predict what may be coming and think about the developing meaning of the text  can use clues and context to guess before using the dictionary  can call upon existing knowledge while reading  can learn new language and new information while reading

How important is the task-type-1?  The task can dictate the reading approach  Tasks which lead the process and which encourage skimming and scanning:  ‘true-false-impossible to say’  grid-filling  individual, factual questions (ie no inference involved)

How important is the task-type-2 ?  The task can dictate the reading approach  Tasks which allow more linear meaning- construction to lead the process:  global decision-making  individual questions which involve inference  correction of parallel text  problem-solving

Task for the week in school  Look at the course book materials for one of the classes you teach to establish the range of texts and tasks in use. How does this match against the range we have discussed today ?