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      TeachingEnglish
      Active Skills for reading
      Submitted by aardvark414 on 23 January, 2009 - 14:18

      How do I make this textbook interesting for my class?

      I've tried flash cards and adding a baseball type game for the class using flash cards.

      I've done the exercises with the class, but that gets dull real quick. I'm under pressure to "get through" the book ASAP, but there's the risk of leaving some students behind. I don't want them to get lost, but I do want them to interact with the material and learn it.

      Any ideas?

      ‹ reading comprehension How to make a boring session interesting? ›

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      Amir A. Ravayee's picture
      Amir A. Ravayee
      Reading Skills
      Submitted on 23 January, 2009 - 19:15

      Readers use a number of skills when reading, and their understanding of the context will depend on their expertise in these areas:

       

      Predictive skills – for example, predicting the content of an article or from a headline or introduction.

       

      Scanning -  We often read for specific information. For example, we look in a newspaper to find a specific information.

       

      Skimming. This is where we read for the gist of a text, we don’t focus on every single word but are just trying to get a general understanding of the content.

       Detailed information. Sometimes we read in order to understand everything in detail. Here we need to read in a concentrated manner to gain full benefit.  

      Deduction from context. Sometimes we need to be able to understand the meaning of individual words from the context.

       Problems with reading

      Sentence length, word length and a number of unfamiliar words can present problems to learners of English.

      Fortunately, there are ways of dealing with language difficulty.

       

      Pre-teaching vocabulary – One way of helping students is to teach the difficult words, before doing a reading activity.

       

      Careful selection of texts – If the teacher is careful he can choose a variety of authentic texts.

       Topics

      The topic of the text can also help to motivate the students. If the topic is not interesting it is will not engage the students with material.

       Create interest

      If the teacher can get the students motivated and engaged in the tasks, there is a much greater possibility that they will read with real enthusiasm.

      Amir Abbass Ravayee

       

      T-chair's picture
      T-chair
      pre-reading activities
      Submitted on 29 January, 2009 - 23:40
       As you know two stratgies in dealing with reading are top-down and bottom -up stratgies.The top-down ones are those activities  that are called pre reading activities in order to prepare and motivate learners to read but bottom up activities deals with language problems.there has been a long debate that is reading a laguage problem or reading problem I mean study skills.It seems that  reading  is  an individual problem and every reader enters in it with his background knowldge and interacts with the text and he or she creats his or her meaning surprisingly different from the writers intention as it is called  the death of the author.Reading is still a wonderland  and little is known about it.I think as long as this land is not explored and discovered issuing general  orders and statments  will be void .
      Rania Jabr's picture
      Rania Jabr
      Active skills for reading
      Submitted on 3 February, 2009 - 09:41
      I have been asking my students to provide a visual representation of what they read. This requires a bit of work on the part of the teacher, but it works. The are asked to fill out tables, flow charts, venn diagrams, or label simple pictures. This helps them zoom in on important parts of the text and ignore details and examples. It even helps them categorize information into main ideas, reasons, effects, solutions, for example. Whatever the case, students in this way grasp the content of the text and reproduce it in writing while giving them a framework within which to work. Rania
      giganick's picture
      giganick
      Reading tasks
      Submitted on 6 February, 2009 - 04:32

      Hi Black Cat.

       The long answer is to search for Dave Willis's long blog in this site, with loads of wonderful ideas and theory.

      Meanwhile, an idea from that blog: Predictive questions to introduce language in a meaningful way. Simply, ask students questions about what they are going to read. You can ask open questions: "what do you think is the weirdest animal in the world?" OR closed questions: "Can the duck-billed platypus live in sea water?" These really work well to introduce language (words and grammar) and motivate the students at the same time. If you're nice, you can do T/F quizes with prizes. It really has the added bonus that students who are less capable at English have the same chance as those who are good; and therefore have more motivation to listen to/read the text when it does appear. Just remember the questions must be predictive: they must be answered before reading.

      A great idea for the review is same, opposite or different (also from this site): pairs of word have to be put into one of those three categories. For example roam and walk might be "same;" belligerent and love might be "opposite;" "red" and "paediatrics" might be "different." The argument (or resentment) that can arise over disagreements ("peaceful is the opposite of belligerent! Love isn't even an adjective!") just reinforces the language.

      Hope this helps.

      Nick.

       

      high school teacher, Japan

      Rania Jabr's picture
      Rania Jabr
      Active skills for reading
      Submitted on 8 February, 2009 - 07:26
      I usually have my students create a dialogue or write a letter or an e-mail to the character(s) in the book in response to a point of view. I have also had them write a rap song using vocbulary item focused upon in the book. They really enjoyed it. Rania
      lavi's picture
      lavi
      A great idea for the review
      Submitted on 17 April, 2010 - 13:42

      A great idea for the review is same, opposite or different (also from this site): pairs of word have to be put into one of those three categories. For example roam and walk might be "same;" belligerent and love might be "opposite;" "red" and "paediatrics" might be "different." The argument (or resentment) that can arise over disagreements ("peaceful is the opposite of belligerent! Love isn't even an adjective!") just reinforces the language.