Teaching Reading: What, Why and How

We all know that “reading plays an important role in life. So what stands behind this phrase for adult EAL learners? Reading skills give EAL learners access to endless information encoded in written English texts and documents. And the master of the information is the master of the situation. So for adult EAL learners reading is not just one of four language modalities to be improved, it is the way to survive and to integrate successfully into Canadian society.

In order to make a reading lesson effective and meaningful the teacher should answer the following questions: what to read? why to read this? and how to read this?

What… The process of selecting reading texts should be focused on learners needs. The teacher should think about types of texts learners might need to read outside the classroom; learners’ language level and prior knowledge; learners’ interests, etc.

Why… There are dozens of reasons for reading in our life: from getting information to interacting with others, from reading for knowledge to reading for pleasure. In the EAL classroom the teacher should always know the answer to the question “Why do learners need to read this text?”, because it is a key to arousing learners’ motivation. In other words, adult learner will do only those things they find meaningful and applicable. For example, a class of newcomers will prefer reading job postings, while EAP learners will choose scientific articles.

How… Reading skills should not be limited by bottom-up reading. The teacher’s task is to show learners various ways of getting main ideas of texts. Learners should be taught not just to read, but to read fluently and to comprehend. For this purpose the EAL instructor should integrate pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading activities into reading lessons.

Pre-reading activities activate learners’ prior knowledge and allow to pre-teach vocabulary and concepts. Among pre-reading activities I’d like to point out brain-storming and mind-mapping. I think this stage must be active and noisy and somehow engage all learners. A lot of EAL games can be used to pre-teach vocabulary or to revise grammatical structures. Students in small groups can make presentations of “movie trailers”. The teacher can even organize “suggestions auction” and learners can “bid” this or that hypothesis related to the text.

While-reading activities allow learners to practice top-down reading strategies and improve their comprehending skills. By the way, the majority of tasks in the Reading section of IELTS test are based on while-reading strategies. Examples of while-reading activities may include: choosing a title for each passage, completing various charts and diagrams while reading, deciding whether the statement is true or false, filling in various forms and questionnaires, etc.

During post-reading activities learners can apply their critical thinking skills and analyze the information they have just received. The teacher can organize debates, can invite a guest speaker related to topics discussed in the text, learners may recollect main facts as a group, learners may reproduce the text from somebody’s point of view (for example, if the text was a medication specification, learners my act a role play between a pharmacist and a customer), etc.

Types of knowledge that learners use to make sense of a text

According to Hedge there are 6 types of knowledge that allow readers to guess the meanings of unknown words in the text. I find this idea quite interesting, so I have decided to check if it is really so and if it is applicable to the real life. 

In the lesson notes to Module 4 we were suggested to have a look at 2 websites in foreign languages (Czech (www.zvedavec.org) and Greek (www.agelioforos.gr). And it was really amazing to see yourself what complete beginners feel when they are asked to read a text.

I know neither Greek nor Czech. I am not familiar with the Greek alphabet, so it is impossible for me even to read a text. Czech is a Slavic language, so as a Russian-speaker I can understand meanings of a few words. Besides grammar rules of the Czech language are a bit similar to Russian, so sometimes I can identify syntactic functions of unknown words. That is why to maintain the experimental integrity I decided to add one more language: Finnish (www.hs.fi). I do not know it either and it is not close to any language I know, but at least its script is familiar to me.

So let’s have a look at Czech, Finnish and Greek news websites in the light of Hedge’s theory of 6 types of knowledge.

Type of knowledge	Definition	Czech (script is familiar, some prior knowledge of grammar and vocabulary)	Finnish (script is familiar, no prior knowledge of grammar and vocabulary)	Greek (script is not familiar, no prior knowledge of grammar and vocabulary)
Syntactic knowledge	The knowledge of grammatical relations of words within a sentence that allows a reader to guess a possible part of speech of the unknown word	“Láska k národu” Noun (subject) + preposition + noun (object)	-	-
Morphological knowledge	The knowledge of morphological rules and laws of morphological parsing that allows to identify a semantic field.	“a pomocí” “ na pomoc” Different grammatical cases of 1 word	-	-
General world knowledge	Extralinguistic knowledge that allows a reader to guess the meaning relying on his personal experience and intuition	My general knowledge of news websites structure allows me to understand, that “sobota” is Saturday and “únor” is February	My general knowledge of news websites structure allows me to understand, that “uutiset” is news	My general knowledge of news websites structure allows me to understand, that “Σάββατο” is Saturday and “Φεβρουαρίου” is February
Sociocultural knowledge	Knowledge of social and cultural peculiarities	The section “Zábava” contains the following subsections: Anekdoty, Humor, Kultura. Relying on my sociocultural knowledge I may assume that “Zábava” means entertainment.	-	-
Topic knowledge	The knowledge of a text theme may allow a reader to make suggestions concerning unknown words	-	-	-
Genre knowledge	The knowledge of a text genre may allow a reader to make suggestions concerning general ideas of what the text is about	Top texts on news websites are usually about political or economic issues	Top texts on news websites are usually about political or economic issues	Top texts on news websites are usually about political or economic issues

So, these 6 types of knowledge really work when you have some prior knowledge of a foreign language. In this case you can apply both systemic knowledge (# 1, 2) and schematic knowledge (# 3, 4, 5, 6). But when you are not familiar with a foreign language at all (and it doesn’t actually matter if you know its script or not), these 6 types of knowledge will not help you to read and understand texts. May be to some degree you can rely on the schematic knowledge, but just to identify some single elements, but not the general idea of the text.

Watching Others Teach

Today I watched dozens of teaching videos. Some of them I liked very much, others were not that interesting (I mean from an observer’s point of view of course). Here, in my blog I’d like to share with my reflections aroused by 2 clips.

The first one is about task-based teaching. Here it is: 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_BSyFo3IFs)

The activity is task-based, so the main objective is to teach students how to use the language outside the classroom, in the real world. But what I see in the video is an instructor giving handouts with precomposed dialogues, which actually ruin the very idea of the activity. Because students just do reading and gap filling. There is no improvisation in the air.

If I decided to give my students this activity I would do the following:

1. As a pre-task I would ask my students to make a list of features (location, facilities, pet policy, etc.) characterizing the apartment THEY are looking for or they’d like to have.
2. I would bring to class realia (for instance, ‘For Rent’ advertisements from local newspapers).
3. I would split the class into Landlords and Renters (instead of A’s and B’s). Landlords would have advertisements I had prepared (maybe even 2 or 3 for each) and Renters would have their own criteria for apartment selection.
4. Then I would definitely ask them to switch the roles, so that every student would have an opportunity to be both a landlord and a renter.
5. During post-activity discussion all of them would have a chance to speak out (name the apartment of their choice and explain why).

Task-based activities are always the best choice when we deal with EAL students. First of all, students value such activities because they really will need this knowledge in the real world. Secondly, if presented correctly, task-based activities leave much deeper imprints in students’ minds than any other activities, because human nature is very selective – we take only those things we consider useful and applicable.

The task based approach to language teaching is considered to be one of the most effective nowadays. And I can’t argue with that. The majority of EAL students in Canada are newcomers. And most of the things, which we experience during the everyday life, seem natural and simple to Canadian-born native speakers, but they are quite challenging for recently landed immigrants. Newcomers may have a lot of difficulty, not only because they are learning a new language, but because they are also learning a very different way of life.

The second video is about games in the EAL classroom. I really enjoyed this one:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtwDhKso2No)

I liked a great degree of students’ involvement the instructor managed to achieve, the positive atmosphere and competitive spirit. Students smile a lot and encourage each other.

Although I would add some activities involving more interaction between students.

I can’t tell what part of the lesson is this. If it is the very beginning of the lesson and the main aim is to revise material from the preceding lesson, then it’s really effective. I think the main “spice” of this video is in action. Students run and wack the white board, they clap to each other and so on. The instructor is also very energetic. Like morning exercises can make the whole day, energetic and fun warm up activities can make the whole lesson.

The main aim of the video is to depict how games may be used in the learning process. They are always very involving and thus effective. All adults enjoy playing games. Thus games in the EAL learning process let us mix business with pleasure. A Chinese proverb “Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand” proves a tremendous role of EAL games in the process of language acquisition.

Syllabus design

Syllabus Design (by David Nunan)

Grammatical Syllabus

Language is considered to be a set of rules, various combinations of which produce meaning;

LL has to master each rule in the order suggested by the syllabus;

Input control: LL is given one item at a time;

The approach dilemma: input control in the classroom vs. real-life language outside the classroom;

Shortcomings of grammatical approach:

It does not represent the complexity of the language;

The language is not necessarily acquired by LL in the order specified in the grammatical syllabus.

Notional-Functional Syllabus

The learning process is not described in terms of grammatical categories, but in terms of notions and functions.

Notions = general conceptional meanings; the context of communication (e.g. time, cause, duration, etc.)

Functions = communicative purposes (in a given context) achieved through the language (e.g. apologizing, asking for prices, giving compliments, etc.)

Content-Based Syllabus

Language is not presented directly, but through the content of other subjects. In other words, particular content is integrated within L teaching.

Ls acquire target language in the course of doing other things.

Task-Based Syllabus

Needs analysis precedes TB syllabus design. On the basis of needs analysis a list of communicative tasks is designed.

Target task = what learners have to do outside the classroom;

Pedagogic tasks are created to initiate a communication between learners in the target language (in the classroom).

Tasks can be reproductive and creative.

In reproductive tasks learners reproduce language following some model or pattern.

Creative language tasks are less predictable.

In his article Nunan also suggests an integrated approach to syllabus design that touches upon core components of each type of syllabus. 

Course Outline Examples

Course outline - example #1

:-)

Nice positive images, various informal fonts, the party announcement.

:-(

No information on presentation format, textbooks or other course materials.

Course outline - example #2

:-)

Creative class information presentation (Wh-questions), images relevant to course goals; motivating course description (‘ You can learn a lot in 1 month!’).

:-(

No information on the course title, the teacher’s contact information, timeframes for the whole course and/or each module, presentation format, textbooks or other course materials, assessment (assignments information, evaluation rubrics).

Course outline - example #3

:-)

Creative course description, no missing elements.

Activity 2 from “Teaching ESL in Canada”

Course description – example #1

:-)

The description mentions key elements of the course: the target audience, skills that are improved during this course, materials and presentation format.

:-(

The description does not mention learners’ language level.

The language is too academic and it might be too complicated for target learners.

So I would make the whole description less formal, I would add direct questions to learners and add more ‘you’ sentences. And I would underline the importance of the language improvement for service industry workers (something like “The better English you have – the better job you’ll get!”).

Course description – example #2

:-)

The style and syntax of the description is formal, although it is still quite easy-to-read. And it’s the main aim of any writing course: to learn how to express one’s thoughts clearly and in appropriate language. So the description reaches the desired effect. Besides it’s quite informative and covers main points of interest.

Course description – example #3

:-)

The language of the description correlates with learners’ language level.

:-(

The description is too general. I would add more specific details.