2. OVERALL OBJECTIVES:
To raise students’ awareness of the importance of
teaching of reading
To let students practice different ways of reading
To guide students to work on exploring the effective
ways of teaching reading.
3. STEPS:
• familiarizing students with different pre, while
and post-reading activities, having students
distinguish types of reading activities, getting
students analyze different reading activities,
their types, aims and stages (pre, while, post-
reading), getting students to practice designing
pre, while and post-reading activities and
getting students conducting feedback on each
other’s designed activities
4. BACKGROUND:
Reading is not a passive skill. It is an incredibly active
occupation. To do it successfully, we have to understand what
the words mean, see the picture, the words are painting,
understand the arguments and work out of we agree with
them. There are many reasons why getting students to read
English texts which 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.
5. Pre-reading activities cover a range of possibilities, all directed at
helping learners engage in a process of discovery and to feel
authorized to engage with the form and content of the text.
Two pre-reading activities are very commonly used:
Brainstorming
Skimming
6. • Brainstorming
Students pool what they know about the topic of a text and share their knowledge in the native
or target language. The goal is to activate the learners' horizon of expectation, and help learners
identify what the text is about. Pre-reading exercises can take different forms, but ideally they
are learner-centered rather than teacher-centered.
• Skimming
The second pre-reading activity is skimming. In class, allot a short period of time (two minutes
or so) for the learners to skim the first paragraph or page of the text, look at illustrations and
subtitles, and identify the words in the text that explain the "who," "what," "where," and
"when" of the text content.
Pre-reading helps students activate their horizon of expectation (background
knowledge, syntactic and semantic resources, cognitive strategies), take charge of
their own learning, and become willing to tolerate ambiguity.
7. In while-reading activities, students check their comprehension as they read. The
purpose for reading determines the appropriate type and level of comprehension.
When reading for specific information, students need to ask themselves, have I
obtained the information I was looking for? When reading for pleasure, students need
to ask themselves, Do I understand the story line/sequence of ideas well enough to
enjoy reading this? When reading for thorough understanding (intensive reading),
students need to ask themselves, Do I understand each main idea and how the author
supports it? Does what I'm reading agree with my predictions, and, if not, how does it
differ?
Post-reading: The activities in this section are generated by the text and extend its
potential for meaningful language work. The tasks cannot be performed without the
text, that is, they cannot replace the text.
8. Why teach reading?
Reading texts also provide good models 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.
