While Reading

Review: The Pre-Reading Phase

Pre-Reading Activities Activate background knowledge Preview the text to build expectations From Aebersold and Field (1997)

1) Activate and Build Background Knowledge (Hand out ‘schema’ texts ) Aebersold and Field (p. 68) suggest three reasons for this stage: Recall existing knowledge, bring it to bear on the text Students anticipate what is coming up (Manson example) Appropriate introduction will introduce key vocabulary items

2) Preview the text to build expectations Previewing a text might include Looking at context for clues: The title Photos, captions Author, source, subtitle, subheadings, drawings Read the intro, and identify key issues Read the conclusion paragraph if present Skim the text Read first or topic sentences of each paragraph Scan parts of the text for specific info

Activity Our Future Stock

While Reading

Jo Ann Aebersold

A Strategies-based Approach Strategies are the key to learner success Before and while reading. Attempts to intervene during the reading process, at the moment that learners are deploying strategies Aims to make understanding of strategies explicit, for learners to reflect on their strategy use It is based on L1 and L2 research identifying the importance of strategy use in reading as a prediction of success

A Typical ‘While Reading’ Process Students look at a ‘cohesive’ section of the text A) Ss determine what the key words are in this section. Based on this, guess the main idea of the section (in one sentence) T checks answers, asking how students got those words (with the same section of text) Ss guess what is coming up in the next section WHAT STRATEGIES ARE BEING MADE EXPLICIT IN A? B?

Example : Modern Fathers have Pleasures and Problems What is the first coherent piece of text? What keywords would you identify that you hope students might uncover ? What is the main point of the section that you hope students might uncover ? Look at the lesson plan! Look at the teacher narrative

Example 2: Our Future Stocks Teacher explains that cohesion is often created in a text via related words Using an OHT, identifies key expression in the first sentence Identifies related vocabulary items in subsequent sentences Connects items by drawing lines so that the connection is clear/explicit Invites Ls to do the same with subsequent paragraphs

Monitoring Text Comprehension and Adjusting strategies Aebersold and Green advocate making strategy use explicit so that learners can identify which strategies they are using/not using Additionally, they suggest that exercises be provided which allow learners to check the success of the strategies they are performing Where strategies are absent or not effective, is are encouraged to identify alternative strategies.

Reflections It is an interference strategy that some teachers and learners must might invasive Is it strategy use gone too far? What about language building, lexis building? Language skills.