READING in ELT

• Is reading a passive or an active skill?
  not only a receptive skill, but an active one including;
  predicting/guessing
  checking
  asking questions
  working of cognitive process

ELT teacher in teaching of reading

• Designing and preparing meaningful exercises leading to assist communication between the writer and reader
• Flexible and varied activities
• Suitable reading comprehension activities
  questions
  multiple-choice questions
  true-false questions

SCHEMA THEORY

An interactive process between the readers’ background and the text itself
nincludes two parts;
1- bottom-up process: a form of information processing that is guided by input, and proceeds in subsequent stages. It is called as “data driven”. A teacher can move from grammar points and vocabulary to drive the learners to the point.

2- Top-down process: an information processing guided by higher level mental processes as we construct perceptions, drawing on our experiences and expectations. It is called as “conceptual driven”. A teacher can give some ideas to form generalizations about the topic to process the information

READING TECHNIQUES

1.SENSITIZING : designing activities and exercises for learners to improve their reading strategies, and activities studied in reading classes;
. synonyms and antonyms
. related words in the reading passage
. relations between parts of a reading passage by the help of lexical items
. fill in a chart or a table…

a) Inference:
requires to make use of syntactic, logical and cultural clues to discover the meaning of unknown words.

teaching via inference

1.The students can be asked to deduce the meaning of unknown words through contextual clues
2.They can be asked to provide the missing keywords(cloze type)
3.They can be asked to read faster and recognize words quickly
4.They can be required to recognize the word formation and derivation to deduce the meaning

teaching via linking sentences and ideas

• Understanding the function and value of connectors and linking words
• Completing the text with the missing linking-words
• Transforming a series of statements and prepositions into a coherent text by joining the sentences and adding connectors
• Recognizing and understanding reference to capture relations between parts of a text
• Giving a succession of sentences which the students should connect and write to produce a coherent text

2) FROM SKIMMING TO SCANNING

a)predicting:

• Making predictions and guesses in reading a text,
• Predicting, i.e where the sentences should stop,
• Predicting what certain words should be used in a certain sentence or paragraph for a certain context
• Finishing an incomplete passage.

b) previewing: is a technique involving using;
. the table of contents,
. the appendix,
. the preface,
. titles
. tables, charts…etc

c) anticipation:
. thinking about the theme of the reading text
. making use of the pictures, the title, the key words, ideas and the background knowledge to anticipate the content.


d) Skimming and scanning
skimming: reading for general comprehension

• skimming to recognize the key words and sentences to get an overall understanding of the text
• providing the untitled reading passage with a suitable title
• Looking for the main information

scanning: reading for detailed comprehension

• looking for specific information
• Looking over the text until we find what we are looking for ; may be a certain name, a date, or a certain thing.
  
  WHO TO TEACH READING

STAGE 1: Elementary:

Short passages
Vocabularies
Certain structure points
Reading aloud in normal speed and intonation
Silent reading
Pronunciation activity for the new words in the passage
True-false questions
Matching
Yes-no questions
Wh- comprehension questions

STAGE 2: INTERMEDIATE:

New vocabulary and structure points requiring to guess the meaning
Reading the passage at a normal speed, intonation, pronunciation
Clarifying some new vocabulary and structure items but leaving certain items for recognition Making individual reading
Asking questions leading comprehension

STAGE 3: ADVANCED

Advanced material including content words, complex grammer points, and cultural patterns of real life
Magazines, newspapers, shortstories, other literary pieces can be used as material
Silent reading is preferable
Full understanding of printed materials

The Three-phase Approach

A) Pre-reading:

Introducing and arousing interest in the topic
Motivating learners
Searching students’ preoccupations about the topic
Preparing the students for the context of the text
Helping to develop students’ reading strategies
Talking about the title
Commenting on the pictures
Drawing students’attention on the new vocabulary
Setting the scene

B) While-reading:

Helping to understand the writer’s purpose
Helping to understand the text structure
Clarifying the text content
Helping the students on judging and inferencing
Helping the students to examine the unknown words by giving clues
Helping students to discover cross-cultural diffferences
Helping them to develop their linguistic and sociolinguistic knowledge
Extracting the main idea
Skimming and scanning

C) Post-reading:

Reflecting upon what has been read
Relating the text to the learners’ interests
Being able to use what has already been learnt
Helping students’ reading skills for the development of other language skills
Helping them to integrate in the foreign culture
Answering some of the comprehension questions
Classifying information
Using classroom games (scrambled sentences, jigsaw reading)

JIGSAW TECHNIQUE

Heterogeneous groups of 4-5 ss
Group name.
“home teams” or “home groups”.
roles such as leader,illustrator,speaker and encourager.
Leader: mature.
Speaker: representator
Illustrator: is the one who makes illustrations to help them explain the text.
Encourager: motivator
“ expert teams” or “ expert groups”
Going back to the home groups.
Teacher’s role: facilitator
At the end of the session , the teacher gives a quiz on the material and the ss realize that this session is not for fun .

BENEFITS OF JIGSAW TECHNIQUE

having opportunity to teach themselves
having practice in self-teaching and peer teaching
having a chance to contribute meaningfully to a discussion

REFERENCES

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jigsaw_(teaching_technique)
http://www.esljigsaws.com/free-sample/
http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?catid=59858&docid=155087
Sarıçoban, Arif. The Teaching of Language Skills, Ankara: Hacettepe-taş, 2001.
http://www.readingmatrix.com/articles/tilfarlioglu_basaran/article.pdf

....Prepared by Hilal AÇIKYILDIZ, Ümmü DİKEN, İkbal Çağla İRİS