Teaching Reading

Comprehension
Learning Objectives
By the end of this workshop you should be familiar with:

 terminology related to a reading comprehension lesson

 key stages of a reading comprehension lesson
 techniques for engaging students to a reading passage
 how to teach reading sub-skills
 Reading games

Before we begin
In my opinion…

Students find listening harder than reading. Yes I don’t know No

Students should be engaged into the topic before reading. Yes I don’t know No

Teachers should teach all difficult vocabulary words before

Yes I don’t know No
reading.
Students should read the text aloud before answering the
Yes I don’t know No
questions.
Even a good text should be supplemented with additional
Yes I don’t know No
materials to meet student needs.

Important Terminology
Match the terms with their definitions.

1. The four English language

a. Techniques used in reading to understand a text.
skills

b. A reading technique used to quickly get the general

2. Receptive skills
meaning of a text.

3. Reading sub-skills c. Reading to find specific piece of information.

4. Inferring from context d. Reading or listening skills.

5. Scanning for specific

e. Deducting meaning from the text
information

6. Skimming f. Reading a text for maxim understanding.

7. Reading for detail g. Reading, listening, speaking and writing

1
Stages of a reading lesson

Activity or discussion to focus on the topic of the lesson and engage

Engaging students.
with text

Present words (as few as possible, and max c. 8) which students need to
Pre-Teach complete the tasks and/or understand the main ideas of the text.
Vocabulary

Set a task that concerns the main idea of the entire text, or ask students
to read to see if their earlier predictions regarding content were correct.
Set a time limit.
Students read while the teacher monitors (to check the task is being
Gist Task carried out correctly, and to judge the students' performance of the task).
Students check answers in pairs or groups, and then as a class.

Give students a task to look for specific information from the text. reading
text quickly by only looking for specific bits of information, and not
reading everything.
Students read while the teacher monitors (as above).
ScanningTask
Students check answers in pairs or groups, and then as a class. Teacher &
students clarify any problems in the text

Give students a task focussing on detailed information before they read

again. Ideally this involves processing the text, for example combining
information from two parts of the text to arrive at a conclusion, or
inferencing.
Reading for Students read while the teacher monitors (as above).
detail
Students check answers in pairs or groups, and then as a class. Teacher &
students clarify any problems in the text

Usually involving the productive skills (speaking or writing) in a reaction to

Extension the text, or building on information within the text.
task

2
Engaging students to reading text
There are several ways which can be used to engage students towards a reading text.

Watch the video

Which method is used by the teacher in this video?

3
Pre-teach vocabulary

Activity

Read the passage below and then answer the questions.

Zing quackles and randles estrates were zickled. While zickling the quackles frumpled,
zooped, and finally predacked. All quackles generally predack, but if immigted prior to
zickling, they sometimes will not predack and may only frumple and zoop.

1. What were zickled?

2. What happened to them during zickling?

3. How do you prevent predacking?

4
Teaching reading sub-skills

Prediction
predict the words in the text
predict the events
predict the mood of the story
predict the content

Skimming
match pictures with the paragrphs
match headings with paragrphs
sequence pictures or statements
choose a title for the text

Scanning
what does the number refer to?
what is the name of sth?
simple what, where, when questions

inferring
questions that need combining information.
why and how questions.
graphic organisers

Summarising
fill in the blanks in a summarised text
writing down the main ideas of each paragraph

5
Reading Games
Notes

Races to the wall

Bar chart

Grapic organizers

Reading Cards

Jig-Saw Reading

6
My Lesson Plan
Warmer

Lead-in (Engaging
students with the text)

Pre-Teach Vocabulary

Gist Skimming Task

7
Some important tips
1. Choose a text the students will be interested in.

2. Usually, if a text doesn't fit on an A4 page, it's too tong.

3. Use the stages. They are there to build both confidence and skills in reading.
Don't ignore the prediction stage: it's a valid reading skill.

4. Check that the course book readings have all the stages: if not, add your own.

5. Pre-teaching lexis will help students' comprehension, but don' go overboard: 8

words max!

6. The harder the text, the easier the questions should be.

7. Questions are there to guide students through the text, not to test them.

8. Make sure students can't just lift answers from the text without understanding
them.

9. Reassure students they don't have to understand every word in the text as
long as they can get the overall meaning. Encourage them to deduce the
meaning (at least partially) from context.

10. Reading is an important skill and therefore has an important place in the
classroom.

11. Encourage students to read for pleasure outside the classroom.