how to teach reading

1. HOW TO TEACH
READING
Ahmed M. Hassan

2. Introduction
Reading is an activity which is done to catch ideas or information
of a written text. By reading, the readers will get knowledge which is
important in daily life activity. For the students at school, reading is an
activity which can motivate them to be active in adding to their
knowledge and activating their thinking process. During reading they
catch and reach much information about anything from their reading.
Reaching much information in reading will help the students have much
knowledge, especially related to their study. Therefore, students are
encouraged to do the reading activity and have good ability in it. It is
done in order to provide the students with full of knowledge about
everything. Besides, by reading well, the students can increase their
background knowledge and experience from reading the text.

3. Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension is an active process and a
complex activity that involves interaction between the
readers and the text. In this case, it is not only based on
readers’ comprehension skill but also their experience,
background knowledge and interaction between them
as readers and the writer. In reading comprehension,
the readers are not only taking the information of the
text but also applying their understanding in life.

4. Teaching Reading in the Classroom
Teaching reading is an important activity done by the
teacher in the classroom. It is an activity to help the students
learn to read some words and sentences by giving the
knowledge about the meaning of text. It is started from
teaching students how to find the topic, main idea, as well as
understand about the meaning in all paragraphs in the text.
The teacher should guide the students to understand and
comprehend the meaning of the text and get some new
knowledge from the written text.

5. In teaching reading, there are
three main activities that should
be considered by the teacher.

6. 1. Pre- reading activity
In this activity the students do not come into the reading
activity yet, the teacher tries to activate students’ knowledge
about the topic being discussed. The students are lead to
recognise the topic and some stated information through
skimming and scanning activities. The students are also guided
to be familiar with some vocabularies included in the reading
text. This activity is done only to attract students’ interest,
motivation and enthusiasm till the end of reading activity.

7. 2. Whilst-reading activity
This activity is usually assumed as the core of reading process.
The students start to read the text and comprehend all
information in the text. The students are also guided to identify
main ideas on each paragraph, grasp all information
comprehensively and try to make some clues of the
vocabularies. In this activity the teacher encourages the students
to focus on reading, so that the students will be easy to
understand and know what they have read so far.

8. 3. Post-reading activity
It is the end of reading section. In this activity the teacher
tries to evaluate students’ comprehension of the reading
text. The evaluation includes vocabulary, grammatical,
meaning and summarising of the author’s purpose. In
addition, to know these items, the teacher gives an exercise
towards the students.

9. Teaching reading problems
 Students don’t like reading.
 The teacher does not have the necessary methodological knowledge about
how to teach reading.
 It’s a national problem. Reading has little value in the culture.
 Students don’t know useful reading strategies.
 Students read “word by word”.
 Texts (topics of the texts) don’t fit student needs, interests and wants.
 The language level of the texts are too much higher or lower than the
students language level.
 Lack of vocabulary needed to understand the text.

10. Possible route map for a reading lesson:
Pre-text 1 Introduction and lead-in, e.g. get the learners
interested in the topic, initial discussion of key
themes, make an explicit link between the topic of the
text and students’ own lives and experiences, focus on
important language that will come in the text.
2 First task (pre-reading), e.g. predict from some
extracted information (illustration, keywords,
headlines), read questions about the text, students
compose their own questions

11. Text 3 Tasks to focus on fast reading for gist (skimming), e.g. check text
against predictions made beforehand, guess the title from a choice of
three options, put events (or illustrations) in the correct order
4 Tasks to focus on fast reading to locate specific information (scanning)
5 Tasks to focus on meaning (general points), e.g. answer questions
about meaning, make use of information in the text to do something
(make a sketch, fill out a form, find out which picture is being
described, etc.), discuss issues, summarise arguments, compare
viewpoints
6 Tasks to focus on meaning (finer points of detail, more intensive
comprehensive understanding)
7 Tasks to focus on individual language items, e.g. vocabulary or
grammar exercises, use of dictionaries, work out meaning of words
from context

12. Post-text 8 Follow-on task, e.g. role play, debate, writing task
(e.g. write a letter in reply), personalisation (e.g.
‘Have you ever had an experience like this one?’)
9 Closing, e.g. draw the lesson to a conclusion, tie up
loose ends, review what has been studied and what
has been learned
Learning Teaching by Jim Scrivener