Day doc Tiang THCS

TEACHING READING
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Reading skills and strategies
Principles behind the teaching of reading.
Guidelines for teaching reading
Follow-up activity
Choose a text in Tieng Anh 12 nang cao and design a lesson plan.
I. Reading skills and strategies
Scanning: Students read the text in order to find some specific information. When reading, they do not have to read every word and line.
e.g. instructions on how to find a house
Skimming: Students read the text quickly in order to get the gist or the general idea or global meaning.
e.g. reading a magazine article




Reading for detailed comprehension: Students read the text and try to get all the details, concentrating hard on specifics.
e.g. instructions on how to find a house
Predicting: Students predict what the text is about before reading and continuing to predict what will come next while reading.




Guessing: Students guess the meaning of unknown words from the context.
Using a dictionary: Students use dictionaries (both monolingual and bilingual) to look up new words to facilitate reading.
Inferring: Students read the text and try to work out the writer’s opinions, implications, and attitudes.


II. Principles behind the teaching of reading.
Principle 1: Reading is not a passive kill. It is an incredibly active activity. Both teachers and students must understand the meanings of words, the arguments and work out if they agree with each other. If not doing so, they only scratch the surface of the text and quickly forget it.
Principle 2: Students need to engaged with what they are reading. If they are not interested in reading the text, they cannot benefit much from the text.

II. Principles behind the teaching of reading (continued)
Principle 3: Students should be encouraged to respond to the content of a reading text, not just to the language. The meaning, the message of the text is important so teachers should give students an opportunity to respond to that message, to express their feelings about the topic. This will make them be engaged with the reading text and the language.

II. Principles behind the teaching of reading (continued)
Principle 4: Prediction is a major factor in reading.The book cover, the headlines, the photographs, the word-processed page can be used as hints to make a student’s brain start predicting what he/she is going to read. Predicting what is coming will help students become better and more engaged readers.

II. Principles behind the teaching of reading (continued)
Principle 5: Match the task to the topic.
Teachers should choose good reading tasks for students to read. The most exciting passage is the one with appropriate questions, imaginative and challenging tasks.
Principle 6: Good teachers exploit the reading text to the full.
Teachers should integrate the reading text into interesting class sequences, using a variety of tasks to help students read and comprehend the text thoroughly.

Top-down and bottom-up processing
In top-down processing, the reader gets a general view or idea of the reading text by absorbing the overall picture/ reviewing what he knows about the topic to interpret the message he is reading.
In bottom-up processing, the reader focuses on individual words, phrases or cohesive devices and achieves understanding by stringing these detailed elements together to build up a whole.
III. Guidelines for teaching reading


A. Pre-reading (Presentation)
Teachers work on the general topic in order to get students to think about what they already know and in order to establish a reason for reading.
Teachers might
- help students by giving them a context and by pre-teaching some of the most difficult language. (new words/difficult grammar points/structures)

Guidelines for teaching reading (continued)
- stimulate interest by setting the scene.
- encourage them to make predictions about the contents of the text.
- give students a clear and authentic purpose for reading the text.
- ask them one/two guiding questions.







Guidelines for teaching reading
(continued)

B. While reading (Practice)
Teachers use questions and tasks to practice appropriate skills and to make students aware of those skills.
Teachers might
- allow students to read silently, using different skills and strategies.
- encourage speed in reading, give a time limit
Guidelines for teaching reading
(continued)
- allow students to co-operate and help each other.
- check students’ reading comprehension by using different questions/tasks/activities.

Guidelines for teaching reading (continued)
C.Post reading (Production)
Teachers consolidate the language materials having been taught by a variety of writing/speaking/ listening activities or tasks.
IV. Some suggested tasks/activities used in the three main stages of a reading lesson.
A. PRE-READING
Discussion
Lead-in
Guessing
Predicting
Questions and Answer Exchange

IV. Some suggested tasks/activities used in the three main stages of a reading lesson.(continued)
B. WHILE READING
True – False statements
Reading Cloze
Matching
Grid – Filling
Multiple – choice
Open – ended questions

IV. Some suggested tasks/activities used in the three main stages of a reading lesson.(continued)
POST - READING
Speaking based on the text (interviews, discussions with the information gathered from the text)
Writing based on the text (letter-writing, summarizing with the information gathered from the text).
Listening to something related to the text.

V. Types of reading texts (continued)
Students read small ads for holidays, partners, things, for sale, etc. to make a choice. They amplify the ads into descriptions.
Students read jumbled instructions for a simple operation (using a public phone box etc.) and have to put the instructions in the correct order.

V. Types of reading texts (continued)


Students read small ads for holidays, partners, things, for sale, etc. to make a choice. They amplify the ads into descriptions.
Students read jumbled instructions for a simple operation (using a public phone box etc.) and have to put the instructions in the correct order.
V. Types of reading texts (continued)
Students read a recipe and after matching instructions with pictures; they have to cook the food!
Students are given a number of words from a text. In groups, they have to predict what kind of a text they are going to read. They then read the text to see if their original predictions were correct.
Students have to match topic sentences with the paragraphs they come from.
Students read a ‘fact file’ about a country, population, machine or process etc. They have to convert the information into bar graphs or pie charts.
(Harmer, 1999: 77-78)


The roles of the teacher
Organiser
Teacher needs to
tell students exactly what their reading purpose is.
give them clear instructions on what to do with the reading and how long to do with it.

The roles of the teacher (continued)
Observer
Teacher
gives students enough time to read the text on their own.
avoids interrupting their reading even when there is something (more information or instructions) to add.
observes their progress and work (in pairs/groups) so as to decide to give them some extra time or move to organizing feedback.
The roles of the teacher (continued)
Feedback organiser
- After reading, teacher checks that students have completed the reading task(s) successfully by asking them compare answers in pairs, then asking for answers from the class in general or from pairs in particular.
The roles of the teacher (continued)
Prompter
- When students have read a text, teacher can prompt students to notice language features within this text.
- Teacher may also direct them certain features of text construction, clarifying ambiguities and making them aware of unfamiliar issues of text structures.