Lect 10 Receptive language skills_Reading

1. Building up Receptive Language Skills: Reading

Lecture 10

2. Plan

1.
2.
3.
4.
Overall goal in teaching reading
Flexibility in reading. Three different
speeds of reading
Skills in reading to be built in FLTL
Guided reading as a way to build reading
skills

3. Our overall goal in teaching reading

is to enable students to use and enjoy
reading and writing "to learn about and
interpret the world and reflect upon
themselves in relation to people and events
around them . . . and to explain, analyze,
argue about, and act upon the world"
(Hudelson, 1994, p. 130).

4. Problem solving task 1:

What is effective reading
in a foreign language?

5. Key 1:

ESL reading is understood in terms of
"matching the flexibility of the educated
native speaker as he performs all readingrelated tasks presented in his environment.

6. Problem solving task 2:

What do people read in their
native language?

7. Key 2:

These include reading and understanding
newspapers and popular magazines, personal
letters, business correspondence, official
documents such as driving license application
forms, stories, academic textbooks, and
scientific and technical reports.

8. The objective of an ESL reading course

is to produce efficient ESL
readers who, like educated
native speakers, have a
flexibility in performing all
reading-related tasks in their
environment. The key question
is:

9. Problem solving task 3:

What is the flexibility of
educated English native
speakers in reading?

10. Key 3:

Flexibility in reading includes
flexibility in speed as well as
comprehension. Native speakers
of English generally read at
three different speeds,
depending on their purpose, the
difficulty of the material, and
their background knowledge.

11.

The first type of speed is study speed (200-300
words per minute). This is the slowest speed, used
for reading textbooks and difficult materials such as
legal documents, when the reader desires a high
rate of understanding (80%-90% comprehension) as
well as good retention. In this type of reading the
reader studies the material carefully in order not to
miss a single point.

12.

The second type of speed is average reading speed
(250-500 wpm). This is the speed that educated
native speakers use to read everyday materials such
as newspapers, magazines, novels, and stories. At
this speed the rate of comprehension is lowered
(usually about 70%). They sometimes even skip over
paragraphs or pages that don't interest them.

13.

The third type of speed is skimming speed. This is
the fastest speed that native speakers use, when
they wish to cover the material in a hurry and high
comprehension is not required. Generally speaking,
the skimming speed of educated native speakers is
at least twice as fast as their average reading
speed. Some of them can skim more than 800 wpm.
At this speed they intentionally accept a much
lower comprehension (50% on the average).

14. Guided reading

The best way to build up reading skills is to
follow the schedule for guided reading,
working on a number of useful reading skills.

15. Problem solving task 4:

List skills in reading that have to be built in
FLTL.

16. Key 4:

1. Word-attack skills
2. Reading in meaningful units
3. Scanning
4. Skimming
5. Prediction
6. Recognizing organizational patterns
7.Distinguishing general statements from specific
details

17. 1. Word-attack skills

These skills enable the reader to
work out the meaning of unfamiliar
words and phrases without looking
them up in the dictionary.
There are two skills in this group:

18.

Using context clues: This includes
using the meanings of other
such as synonyms and antonyms in the
same sentence or paragraph, or the
meaning of the sentence or paragraph as
a whole, to predict the possible meaning
of unfamiliar words and phrases.
a.

19.

For example, in the sentence The Indians
cut their canoes out of tree trunks by
adze, the meaning of the word adze can
be deduced from the meaning of the
whole sentence. It must be a kind of
instrument for understanding, something
like an ax.

20.

b. Using structural information:
This refers to word formation.
Analysis of the stems and affixes
of words can help our students
get pie meaning of many
unfamiliar words.

21. antidisestablishmentarianism

It is a very long word, but its meaning is
not hard work out. We can see that the
stem is establish and that two prefixes
and four suffixes are added to it. The
meaning of the whole word can be
worked out by analyzing its component
parts. It may mean a kind of theory
against the advocacy of the principle of
changing the existing status that has been
established.

22. 2. Reading in meaningful units

One of the factors that determine reading speed
and comprehension is the number of words the eyes
can see at one glance. The more words students can
see and comprehend at one glance, the greater will
be their reading speed and the better will be their
comprehension.

23.

Students should be able to read in
meaningful units instead of isolated
words. A useful way to train students to
read in meaningful units is to break up a
sentence into sense groups and have
students focus their eyes on the middle of
each sense group arranged in separate
lines and try to see words on each side of
the middle line, e.g.,

24.

Successful improvement of your reading
depends upon
your eagerness
to improve
and your willingness
to practice

25. 3. Scanning

This is a useful skill to locate a specific item(s) of
information that we need, such as a date, a figure,
or a name. In scanning we focus our search only on
the information we want, passing quickly over all
the irrelevant material. The key to scanning is to
decide exactly what kind of information we are
looking for and where to find it.

26.

A useful way to teach this skill is to have
students search for some specific
information such as a definition, or the
name of a person or a place, asking them
to start at the same time and see who is
the first to find it. Then ask the student
who finds the information first to explain
how he or she has done it.

27. 4. Skimming

This is the technique we generally use to
determine whether a book or an article
merits a more careful and thorough
reading. Skimming may sometimes be the
prerequisite of reading for full
understanding. The difference between
scanning and skimming is that in skimming
we are not locating specific, isolated, and
scattered items of information; what we
are trying to get is the general, overall
idea(s) of the whole text.

28.

Therefore the key to skimming is to know where to
find the main ideas of different paragraphs, and to
be able to synthesize them into an organic whole by
way of generalization.
Since the main idea of a well-organized paragraph
is, in most cases, either in the first or the last
sentence, and the general idea of a text is usually
in the introductory paragraph or in the concluding
paragraph.

29. Problem solving task 5:

Fill in the gaps in the text
below:

30.

The best way to teach _______is to have students
read the first and last ________in full, and the first
and last sentences of the paragraphs in between,
and pick up _________ such as dates, figures, and
names while moving their eyes down the page. The
time assigned for ___________should be only a half
or a third of their ______reading speed.

31.

The best way to teach skimming is to have students
read the first and last paragraphs in full, and the
first and last sentences of the paragraphs in
between, and pick up the key words such as dates,
figures, and names while moving their eyes down
the page. The time assigned for skimming should be
only a half or a third of their average reading
speed.

32. 5. Prediction

33. Problem solving task 6:

Put the words on the right
into the correct gaps:

34.

According to the
psycholinguistic models
of_______, _______reading
depends, to a large extent, on
_________ correct ___________
with minimal __________. This
ability will greatly _____ our
reliance on visual information,
_______our reading speed, and
________our comprehension.
enhance
reading
efficient
reduce
sampling
making
predictions
increase

35.

According to the
Key 6:
psycholinguistic models of
reading, efficient reading
depends, to a large extent, on
making correct predictions with
minimal sampling. This ability
will greatly reduce our reliance
on visual information, increase
our reading speed, and enhance
our comprehension.

36. Problem solving task 7:

What can students base
their predictions on?

37. Key 7:

Students can learn to make predictions based on:
the title;
Subtitles;
their knowledge of the topic;
the linguistic context;
the non-linguistic context (diagrams, graphs,
tables, pictures, and maps)

38. 6. Recognizing organizational patterns

39. Problem solving task 8:

What are organizational
patterns?
Why is recognizing them an
important reading skill?

40. Key 8:

The logical structure of a passage is often
signaled by textual connectors, which are
expressions connecting ideas.
These textual connectors are the best
indicators of ideas, hence most important
for reading comprehension.

41. Problem solving task 9:

What is the best way to
teach organizational
patterns?

42. Key 9:

The best way to teach this is
to have students read
different passages with
different organizational
patterns and identify their
textual connectors.

43. Problem solving task 10:

Define the most
common organizational
patterns.

44. Key 10: The most common organizational patterns are:

cause-effect,
definition,
sequence of events,
spatial geographic,
thesis-example,
description,
generalization,
and hypothesis-evidence, each of which has its
characteristic textual connectors.

45. Problem solving task 11: Give examples of each pattern:

cause-effect,
definition,
sequence of events,
spatial geographic,
thesis-example,
description,
generalization,
hypothesis-evidence

46. Key 11: Examples of each pattern:

cause-effect,
Since… so; as… so
definition,
A can be defined as…
sequence of events,
First … then… next
spatial geographic,
Here… there…
thesis-example,
For instance…
description,
A can be described as…
generalization,
hypothesis-evidence
To sum up… Thus…
As can be seen from…

47. 7.Distinguishing general statements from specific details

48. Problem solving task 12:

What are general
statements?
What is more important:
general statements or
details?

49. Key 12:

General statements usually contain
main ideas, and specific details are
usually explanations and examples
that support the general statements.
Therefore, general statements are
more important to comprehension.

50. Problem solving task 13:

How can general
statements be introduced?

51. Key 13:

Very often general
statements are introduced
by signal words such as in
general, above all, in
conclusion, and it can be
seen that.

52. Note:

Students should learn to direct
their attention to these signal
words. They should also learn to
identify expressions of
probability, frequency, and
quantity that indicate different
levels of generality.

53. Problem solving task 14:

What expressions indicate
different levels of
generality, identifying
probability, frequency, and
quantity?

54. Give examples of:

Probability
Frequency
Quantity

55. Key 14: examples of:

Probability
Maybe, possibly,
Frequency
Often, seldom,
Quantity
probably
frequently, as a
rule, every day
A lot of, a great
number of, a good
deal of, lots, a
great amount of