It seems to me that reading comprehension skills are very difficult for many English learners. What aspects would you like to emphasise in teaching reading comprehension?  Or should it be taught at all? Is it enough if students just read on their own?

It think that one of the most important things is to read as widely as possible, ie. EXTENSIVE READING is essential. Also the amount of time you spend on reading may help. In addition, if  students are allowed to choose the books they read, they will find reading more interesting and thus be more engaged. It might be a good idea to discuss the books one has read with a teacher or a friend, but I don't find that necessary. 

Secondly, VOCABULARY BUILDING is important. Teachers could help their students by teaching them strategies for building a powerful vocabulary. Using frequency lists may come in handy so that students can concentrate on the most useful words. Students should be also taught to choose the words they find useful and which they want to learn. Students ought to know how to infer meaning from context. The study of word parts can help students develop more awareness of the morphological  relationships among words so that they can relate the new  words to known words or known prefixes and suffixes. It is also useful for the students to recognise collocations in texts.

Thirdly, COMPREHENSION SKILLS are vital when students tackle texts. What are these? For example previewing, making inferences, understanding paragraphs, making sense of the patterns of organisation, skimming,  summary skills and  critical reading skills.

Finally, READING FASTER may help many students to comprehend more. In my opinion rate improvement must be a key part of any reading program. It helps students to take in meaningful phrases, whole groups of words, at a time and thus incorporate the previous information with the new one more smoothly. The idea is not to read everything very fast, but to adapt the reading rate to the task at hand. For example, when a text is very difficult to comprehend reading carefully is vital, I think.

• Login or register to post comments
• Printer-friendly version