In the previous article I pointed out that reading takes place in the heads of the students and we have no physical evidence on the quality of understanding. Besides, in general people are reluctant to admit that they did not understand what was said or written.
For this reason I have always tried to make sure all my students know how to study a new text beforehand at home. Once the students start to think in English, there is no need for any translations. If the students come to classes unprepared there simply is not enough time for most of them to understand the text well enough to learn from it. I have found the teaching of study skills and strategies more and more important over the years. It is a wonderful asset in CLT classes.
In the mid-1980s I had a rather weak new senior high class and I discovered that seven out of 30 of those 16-year-olds did not understand the texts in our textbook at all. So I made them sit down and translate texts with me once a week while the others were working independently. I felt embarrassed and so did my students. I simply told them what I expected them to do at home and demonstrated how to do it.
In addition, I told them that they could leave the group and study with the others the minute they could prove they have no difficulties any more in translating a text into Finnish. It took five lessons and all seven students learnt how to get prepared for my lessons. After that we did not have to translate any of the texts. It was taken for granted that everybody has to understand the new texts at the beginning of the lesson.
Reading strategies to be applied in class
Provided the students have done their homework and studied the next chapter beforehand, we can quite quickly move on to the stage in the lesson where the understanding of the text is checked.
The change that CLT brought along was that I started to use the textbook chapters as a stepping stone to free speaking. Understanding the text and doing written exercises was not enough. I started to differentiate the activities in class which lead to the students checking understanding ORALLY in many ways in pairs and groups.
At its best reading comprehension is linked seamlessly to speaking freely in pairs or groups. There are many ways to do it. I have already discussed these matter in ‘Deepening understanding, Part 1’ but I will rephrase the main points here. Many of the strategies I discuss under deep-level reading in exams can be applied in reading ordinary texts too.
- ‘Question-answer’ technique (QA): if you use ready-made questions, have them on the screen and let the students answer them in pairs. After all we teachers.already know the answers so the only reason for asking these questions is to get the students talking; this is an intermediate stage on our way to free speaking. N.B. If we ask the students’ opinion about a text, it leads to free talking: To what extent do you agree with the ideas in the text? / What is the most interesting and boring part of the story and why?
- Replacing one-student-answering-the question-at-a-time with pair work means the activity level soaring towards 100 %. But CLT teachers are not pleased with this situation. Why not? Because the answers can simply be read from the text, which means the QA is ‘mechanical’ and our aim is to move via semi-communicative tasks to free speaking.
- However, there are other ways than questions to test reading comprehension and have the focus on free talking. I have discussed True-False tasks, Multiple Choice tasks, Explaining the story with the help of pictures or mind maps (= my favourites) and especially differentiation in reading skill in article Deepening understanding, Part 1.
- My way of realizing differentiation is very simple. For example, if the topic of a chapter is ‘Sports’ and we are on the verge of checking understanding of the text, every student chooses one of the 3 tasks and works with others who took the same level task. The tasks are: A) Answer the questions on the screen and work in pairs B) Explain about the content of the chapter in your own words , use the key words on the screen if needed. C) Have a discussion in pairs or in groups about your sport experiences and what sports means to you.
- Some students insist on doing A, B and C. Others A and C or B and C. It is all the same for me. All I demand is that they work actively all through the lesson. Not for me, but for themselves.
As you can see I have minimized the extra work for the teacher in this A, B, C style of invisible differentiation. Invisible in the sense of no stigma on any student. Now the students work at a level that suits and pleases them.
I can sense some of you are wondering ‘How can I be sure my students understand the text correctly?‘. A justified question. My answer is. You can never be sure of it since you can observe it only from outside. Your students will ask each other or you if they do not grasp part of the text. Mostly they simply rely on each other’s help.
Intensive and extensive reading
Intensive reading
In a narrow sense ’intensive reading’ is what we normally do with textbook texts: study them in detail trying to understand the content properly. Sometimes we may look at the vocabulary and the structures more carefully too. I suspect many teachers have never really stopped to think about the various stages and strategies that take place in reading.
- at first reading is based on translating the text into the mother tongue, aloud, silently in the head or like I do with weak readers: force them to write the translation in their notebooks or the translation of new words between the lines in the text, this goes on for a few weeks or months until the students realize they simply have to do it
- beginners’ reading pace varies a lot while they are reading a text and they tend to stop and go back and forth in the text, which is quite normal
- beginners are mostly provided with simplified texts in their books to avoid frustration due to the language being too difficult, still they should be encouraged to read authentic texts at least in their free time
- at an advanced level the students start to think in English, no translations are needed any more and authentic texts can be used as a source of information at least in projects
- advanced students should be taught how to make use of various strategies while reading texts, many of the strategies can be taught to younger students too
- however, there are always a number of students in all age groups who work through translation, which slows down the reading process a lot so teaching effective reading strategies is of vital importance for them in particular
In a wider sense ’intensive reading’ covers the study of many types of texts and genres often followed by a set of tasks to be done. There are two types of reading tactics depending on what kind of information we are looking for. Both ‘scanning’ and ‘skimming’ a text are very useful skills later on in working life too.
- We often ’scan’ texts to find a particular answer or a detail.
- On other occasions we ’skim’ the whole passage or text through to get an overall idea about the text.
Extensive reading
’Extensive reading’ means reading for fun, reading because we enjoy the content or the story as such. Present-day media offers everybody a massive number of sources for extensive reading: in addition to library books we can make use of the internet which is full of interesting texts. It does not really matter what the students read as long as they are interested in the articles or texts. This kind of internal motivation guaratees learning and takes place in a relaxing atmosphere. In brief, the more there is INPUT, the more the students learn.
It is a good idea to let the students sometimes read whatever they want in class and then tell others what they find interesting in the texts. Some read only short newpaper articles, others may leaf through a thick novel. Encourage all of them to keep on reading no matter what.
I hate to admit it but during my time at school song lyrics were the only extra thing I read on top of textbook chapters. The first book I read in English was the university entrance exam novel ‘Brigton Rock’ by Graham Greene.
These days one of my most popular sources for reading is ‘onlinenewspapers.com’ where you can find hundreds of newspapers in English and other languages from all over the world. And I let the students read whatever articles they want, take notes and then summarize the content orally to their group or occasionally for the whole class.
The more there is INPUT, the more the students learn. The main thing is that they enjoy the texts and the content. Internal motivation to read is best!