How to teach reading by Jeremy Harmer

Why teach reading?

What kind of reading should students do?

What reading skills should students acquire?

What are the principles behind the teaching of reading?’

What do reading sequences look like?

More reading suggestions

Why teach reading?

There are many reasons why getting students to read English texts is an Important part of the teacher’s job. In the first place, many of them want to be able to read texts in English either for their careers, for study purposes or simply for pleasure. Anything we can do to make reading easier for them must be a good idea.

Reading is useful for other purposes too: any exposure to English, (provided students understand it more or less) is a good thing for language students. At the very least, some of the language sticks in their minds as part of the process of language acquisition, and, if the reading text is, especially interesting and engaging, acquisition is likely to be even more successful.

Reading texts also provide good model for English writing. When we teach the skill of writing, we will need to show students models of what we are encouraging them to do.

Reading texts also provide opportunities to study language vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, and the way We construct sentences, paragraphs and texts.  Lastly, good reading texts can introduce interesting topics, stimulate discussion, excite imaginative responses and be the springboard for well-rounded, fascinating lessons.

What kind of reading should students do?

There has been frequent discussion about what kinds of reading texts are suitable for English language students. The greatest controversy has centered on whether the texts should be ‘authentic’ or not. That is because people have worried about more traditional language-teaching materials. which tended to look artificial and to use over-simplified language which any native speaker would find comical and untypical.

However, if you give low level students a copy of The Times or The Guardian (which are certainly authentic for native speakers), they will probably not be able understand them at all. There will be far too many words they have never seen before, the grammar will be (for them) convoluted and the style will finish them off.

A balance has to be struck between real English on the one hand and the students’ capabilities and interest on the other. There is some authentic written material which beginner students can understand to some degree: menus, timetables, signs and basic instructions, for example, and where appropriate, we can use these. But for longer prose, we may want to offer our students texts which , while being like English ,are nevertheless written or adapted especially for their level. The important thing is that such texts are as much like real English as possible.

The topics and types of reading text are worth considering too. Should our students always read factual encyclopedia-type texts or should we expose them to novels and short stories? Should they only read timetables and menus or can we offer them business letters and newspaper articles?

A lot will depend on who the students are . if they are all business people, the teacher may well want to concentrate on business texts. If they are scientific texts may be a priority. But if, as is often the case, they are mixed group with differing interest and careers, a more varied diet is appropriate. Among the things the teacher might want them to read are magazine articles, letters, stories, menus, advertisement, report, play extracts, recipes, instructions, poems and reference material.

What reading skills should students acquire?

Students, like the rest of us, need to be able to do a number of things with a reading text. They need to be able to do a scan for particular bits of information they are searching for. This skill means that they do not have to read every word and line on the contrary; such an approach would stop them scanning successfully.

Students need to be able to skim a text as if they were casting their eyes over its surface-to get a general idea of what it is about. Just as with scanning, if they try to gather all the details at this stage, they will get bogged down and may not be able to get the general idea because they are concentrating too hard on specifics.

Whether readers scan or skim depends on what kind of text they are reading and what they want to get out of it. They may scan a computer manual to find the one pieces of information they need to use their machine and they may skim a newspaper articles to get a general idea of what’s been happening. But we would expect them to be less utilitarian with a literary work where reading for pleasure will be a slower, closer kind of activity.

Reading for detailed comprehension, whether looking for detailed information or language, must be seen by students as something very different from the reading skills mentioned above. W hen looking for details, we expect students to concentrate on the minutiae of what they are reading.

One of the teacher’s main functions when training students to read is only to persuade them of the advantages of skimming and scanning but also to make them see that the way they read is vitally important.

What are the principles behind the teaching of reading?

Principle 1: Reading is not a passive skill.

Reading is an incredibly active occupation. To do it successfully we have to understand what the words means, see the pictures the words are painting understand the arguments, and work out if we agree with them. If we do not do these things-and if the students do not do these things-then we only just scratch the surface of the text and we quickly forget it.

Principle 2: Students need to be engaged with what they are reading:

As with everything else in lessons, students who are not engaged with the reading text- not actively interested in what they are doing - are less likely to benefit from it. When they are really fired up by the topic or the task, they get much more from what is in front of them.

Principle 3: Students should be encouraged to respond to the content of a reading text not just to the language.

Of course, it is important to study reading texts for the way they use language, the number of paragraph they contain and how many times they use relative clause. But the meaning, the message of the text, is just as’ important and we must give students a chance. to respond to that message in some way. It is especially important that they should be allowed express their feelings about the topic -thus provoking personal engagement with it and the language

Principle 4: Prediction is a major factor in reading. 

When we read texts in our own language, we frequently have a good idea of the content before we actually read. Book covers give .us a hint of what’s in the book, photographs and headlines hint at what articles are about and reports look like reports before we read a single word. 

The moment we get this hint the book cover, the headline, the  word-processed page  our brain starts predicting what we are going to read. Expectations are set up and the active process of reading is ready to begin. Teachers should give students ‘hint? So, that they can predict what’s coming too. It will make them better and more engaged readers.

Principle 5: Match the task to the topic.

We could give students Hamlet’s famous soliloquy ‘To be or not to be’ and ask them to say how many times the infinitive is used. We could give them a restaurant menu and ask them to list the ingredients alphabetically. There might be reason for both tasks, but, on the face of it, they look a bit silly. We will probably be more interested in what Hamlet means and what the menu foods actually are.

Once a decision has bcc taken about what reading text the students are going to read, we need to choose good reading task the right kind of questions, engaging and useful puzzles etc. The mast interesting text cart undermined by asking boring and inappropriate questions; the most Commonplace passage can be made really exciting with imaginative and challenging tasks.

Principle 6 good teachers exploit reading texts to the full.

Any reading text is full of sentences, words, ideas, descriptions etc. it doesn’t make sense just to get students to read it and then drop it to move on to something else. Good teachers integrate the reading text into interesting class sequences, using the topic for discussion and further tasks, using the language for study and later activation.

What do reading sequence look like ?

In the following four examples, we are going to look at four different kinds of reading texts and four different kinds of reading tasks. In each case we will see how the reading text fits into an ESA sequence.

Example 1 (elementary)

In the first example for elementary students, the teacher has introduced the topic of “attraction”. He asks the students what they find attractive in a person with luck. The discussion of the topic should be enjoyable and amusing.

He then tells the students they have to fill in the following chart about what their partner thinks in important when he or she meets a new friends.

	Very important	Important	not very important
Physical appearance
Clothes
Job or education
Family
Money and possessions
Personality or character
Religion
Politics
Other …

The students now have to list the qualities in order of importance for them as a whole class. The teacher then tells the class to read the text on the next page to see how their opinions are different from the men and women being described.

When the students have read the text, the teacher allows them to discuss their answer in pairs. This is to give them a chance to clear up any small comprehension problems before they talk in front of the class. The students now have to complete the following task.

EYES       LEGS                     FACE                      SMILE                    FIGURE                                TEETH

Read the first part of the article again use these words to answer the question below

Which do men think are most important?

Which do women think are most important?

Do you agree?

THE MAIN ATTRACTION Suddenly IT happens. You just know he’s the man for you and you haven’t even been introduced yet. But how do you know? and can you make sure he feels the same way? Company investigates… What the first attracts men to women? Whereas women tend to notice the eyes, teeth and smile in particular, men will be more attention to figure and legs According to recent survey by singles magazines, these are the top ten attributes that men and women look for in each other, in order of priority. Men look for a women who is Women look for a man who is ·         Attractive ·         Sincere ·         Slim ·         A non-smoker ·         With a sense humour ·         Affectionate ·         Tall ·         kind ·         tall ·         professional ·         with a sense of humour ·         attractive (not necessarily hansome) ·         sincere ·         intelligent ·         hansome ·         kind From the beginners’ choice by Sue Mohamed and Richard Acklam

 

As a follow-up to these reading task, the teacher asks the students to think of people who they find attractive (friends, films starts, athletes, etc.). They are then asked to say what the most attractive thing about them is. The discussion can lead on to descriptive writing etc.

Notice that this patchwork lesson started with an Engage activity, then went on to an active exercise(working with a partner),followed by an activate reading (do you agree with the passage?), a study reading(answer the questions) before being followed up with active exercises

Notice too, how important the first active exercise was: it gave the students a chance to predict what was coming.

Example 2 (lower intermediate)

In the second example, the class is once again prepared for the reading by discussing what, if anything, the students know about ghosts. The teacher may get them to say whether they believe in ghosts or not and if they have ever seen one.

After that, the textbook from which this reading text is taken gives students some information about ghost(that they are usually the result of the tragic death, that they appear at night, etc.)

The students are now asked to read the next on page 74 to say whether Orcas Manor is a typical haunted house. This is a general reading task designed to let them get an overall picture of the text.

For the next reading, the students are asked more detailed study-type question, e.g.

Complete the table

Which ghost	He killed….	You can see him in ….
1.       Previous Owner
2.	Visitor
3.		The corridors
4.

From Language in Use by Adrian Doff and Chris Jones

The students can check their answers in pairs before the teacher puts the chart on the board and has individuals come out and fill it in to check that the whole classes have understood the text.

SANDFORD ORCAS MANOR

DORSET, ENGLAND

Next to the church in the village of Sanford orcas there is an old gatehouse. If you go through the gate you arrive at the sinister manor house which is famous for its large number of ghost.

The present owner of the manor says that it is difficult to keep servants because the ghost frighten them. Many people have seen the ghost of the previous owner. He was a farmer who commited suicide by hanging himself from the gate house and he often appears in the garden wearing old working clothes.

Another ghost is an 80^th century priest who used to kill visitors while they were asleep in their beds. He still sometimes frightens guests in the middle of the night by standing over their beds holding a knife

The ghost of a servants sometimes walk along the dark corridors of the house. He murdered his master at Sandford Orcas, but nobody knows why.

But perhaps the most frightening story is of a young man who grew up in the house and then became a sailor. While he was at sea, he killed a boy and then went mad. When he returned to Sanford Orcas, they locked him in a room at the back of the house. He never felt the room again, and died there several years later. On some nights when the moon is full, you can hear him screaming and banging on the door of the room.

From language in use by Adrian Doff and Chriss Jones

The teacher wants students to understand how we use pronouns to refer back to subjects we have already mentioned. He asks them who or what’it’, ‘them’, and ‘he’ refer to paragraph two.What do ‘they’, ‘their’, ‘he’ refer to in paragraph three?

As a follow-up task) students can write a description of a hunted house which they can. Invent, they can do this individually or in pairs or groups. They can read out their final versions to the rest of the class.

Once again, a patchwork lesson has started with an Engage session where teacher and students talk about haunted house and read some information about ghosts. Then they read for general understanding- an Activate type of exercise — before Studying the text — both for meaning and then or language use (personal pronoun use in text writing) — and then doing another Activate follow—up.

Example 3 (intermediate)

in this example ‘for intermediate students, the students first look at a picture of people sunbathing and say whether it is a positive, safe and attractive image — or whether it is the opposite.
They are then shown the following magazine article.

The teacher checks that they have understood by asking them questions like what sun protection factor does roger use ?does Melinda burn ?

Who dark-skinned, fair skinned?’etc. Students then use language from the articles to describe themselves.

In this straight arrows lesson, the teacher starts by engaging the students with discussions of sunbathing. They then study the next before going on to active the knowledge which the text has given them.

Example 4 (intermediate /advanced)

The final example shows that reading does not have to be a static activity dealing with prose passages. We can make it much more dynamic than that.

The teacher wants to get this intermediate students reading poetry, both because he thinks they will enjoy it( if done in an engaging way) and because he thinks it can provide a useful focus for language study.

He asks students if they like poetry. Can they remember any poems? What are they about? What do poets normally write about?

He tells them that he is going to put students in groups of nine. Each students in the group will get a line from a poem. They can read it aloud but they must not show it to the other eight members of the group. The task of the group is to put the lines in the right order for the poem.

He then hands out the following lines(at random)to the nine members of the group.

They read their lines out to each other and see if they can put them in the right order. Ideally, the groups will be standing up in circles so that the members can change position when the groups have decided where their lines come in the poem.

As the activity goes on, the teacher goes round the groups listening to how they are getting on. If they are not making any headway, he may prompt them by saying ‘shall I tell you what the first line is?’ or ‘think of the sounds of the last word in each line’ etc

When the students (think they)have finished the task, the teacher reads the poems aloud for them check their versions. This is what he reads:

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice

From what I’ve tasted of desired

I hold with those who favour fire

But if it had to perish twice

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction

Ice is also nice

And would suffice

The groups have to decide on a good title for the poem which they can then compare with the original (which is ’fire’ and ‘ice’-the poem is by Robert frost)

The teacher can then ask students to say whether they like the poem and whether they think it is funny, sad, serious or tragic. He then gets them to describe the rhyme scheme of the last words in each line(A, B, A, A, B, C, D, B, B).

The teacher then gives students first lines of poems and tells them to write their own(he can make it ‘ the worst poem in the world ‘competition to bring humour) using a particular rhyme scheme, for example.

This reading activity works because students really have to engage with the meaning and construction of the poem. When they are trying to put the poem in order, you will hear them discussing rhymes, punctuation, logic and word meaning. It is popular with students(if used only occasionally),even with those who are not natural  fans of poetry interestingly, after an initial engage session, it quickly becomes a perfect mixture activating all the language they know.

More reading suggestions

1.      Students read small ads for holidays, partners, things for sale etc., to make a choice. They amplify the ads into descriptions.(intermediate/advanced)

2.      Students read jumbled instructions for a simple operation(using a public phonebox etc.) and have to put the instructions in the correct order.(elementary/intermediate)

3.      Students read a recipe and after matching instructions pictures they have to cook the food(elementary/intermediate)

4.      Students read an extract from a play or film and after ensuring that they understand it, they have to work on acting it out.(any level)

5.      Students are given a number of words from a text. In groups, they have to predict what kind of a text they are going to read. they then read the text to see if their original predictions were correct.(elementary/intermediate)

6.      Students read a texts and have to guess which of a group of people they think wrote the text (using the pictures provided).(lower intermediate/advanced)