Strategies ofpractice

5' dealing

with vocabulary, and chapter

il:f

6,

dearingwith syntax, ind.uding cohesion.

unable
,Y["]:i:i:T:-':ff".;".*1".y"^"nt*ol'roa""rtood,il;.;;;;*aystrube
to make sense of the text as a wnoG. cven
r,r reaa"rs t ave
concerns the interpretation of value (not
so much what the writer says as
why she
says it) and the relationships between
different parts ofa text, orl"i*r".n
reader,
writer and text. we deal wiih these i"
crr"pi"r z. students naturally often have
difficulties with the conceptual content
ofiexis, particularly if the topic is unfamiliar
or ifwriter and reader are from airrereni
cuttures, but these ar" mosfly outside
the
scope of this book. Aspeqts of the
cultural background ,"v *.lin.ia explaining,
and
many teachers (especialy those teaching
languages for specific purposes _
ESp and so
on) find themselves willy-nilly teaching
ionript *ell. However, concept formailon
the iob oi tr,. fioer"d t?r.ii.i
",*" ,r,ru gir*

d'ffilr:li:,iir"n

li,X1ffill, "ot

it ,lJo

"nu

,u,,"

Teaching text att ack s/cills

students need a range of strategies
to deal with texts. As we want them
to confront
problems, instead of running
away frorn trr.*, we refer to these
as @rraclr s&ills,
borrowing a term from mottrer tongue
t.r.t irrg.
The

first siep is to identifv

the sources ofpot.ntirt troobre.

Most students are well
aware when they have problems with
vocauulary(ttrdh;;t-"l*ays, as we shall
see),
so they usually appreciate the
need for woid attack skills. other
sources of
difiicultv tend to be less familiar; trainiri
ir-t.x
invotves
makingstudents aware of things they noilruv
ao r"inotl."
rnir.rureness
is
who understand wt at
go wrons can take steps
to sort out their
;ili"'$d:"uers
"an

"it".il,r,ijirli*rrrre

"iii.

The

problem of credibility

It is difficult to convince people

that problems can arise from bits

ofthe text they are
hardly aware of. Some ofihe;tra6fi;a;ired
(eg working out what
reference
words rike cr and rftrs.refer to) mav
[e aism'irs.a

trXfit};rlfficulties.It

ls

trport"iriiot

to

ro'r,

iiil?il;r.terral o'ers
r[iii-iliii
fr"o can demonstrate
"

,inior

on

The time to raise an issue is when

the students have been brought
face to face wrth a
problem, and can ther.tor.
,.* trrl por"itp*ctising

can manage without training on

some of ttre auUsl

complex syntax, for instance), ro

,tr"i"gy i#eal with it. If you

(dealing with

alre;;;itAi;tt"ck

*u"r, tt l.1t_"1-.uy

not at the expense ofleaving

"
...t"in-amount
orspecmc
strailgy ,,ainin! is
helpful, but that most of it should"t u"
as problems are
s.tudents helpless. Mv

vie* i" it

If you are not clear about the purpose"ii"iic,

of an exercise, or not
better not to use it, because itl.
to mrt" training

An integratedprocess

"rsy

encountered in texts.

convr*u

seem pointless.

"u,

,i".1 *

It is convenient to assume that readers

use dilrerent
features of a text (cohesion, rhetori.;l-;;;ir"tion skills to make sense of dilferent
and so on). This enabtes us to
describe each aspect separately and
to foius ana simplify our approach.
The various text features are not
however fully separable, but tighfly
bound up with
one another, and it is important
not to or".looi trr" integr"tiv" ,'tiii
r"qui"ed to make
sense oftle tefi as a whole. Th.
r""a.r mu.tl aute to
rispona

toGL*"u

message,

4t