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Reflecting on the significance of

Reading in the EFL classroom

G. Ledwith - 2/2010

Student’s Attitudes to Reading

Students are reluctant to read in mother tongue

Reading only enables them to answer comprehension tasks

Associated with memorizing & regurgitating

Passive = Boring

Reading no longer a pleasure

World of reading unaccessible and avoidable

Often a waste of valuable timeTeacher’s

Attitudes to Reading

Provide limited range of activities

Deprive students of time for grammar instruction

Limits student’s responses

Feel very little acomplished

Teachers have the possibility to convince students

Pleasure of reading

Perceive writer’s skillsVoice one’s ideas

Experience language in meaningful context Picture other

lives, places, times

Theme, plot, setting, character

No right / wrong answers

Entertainment

Sharing with others

Enables students to continue in contact with L2

While inmersed in wide range of language tasks and vocabulary building

Raise student’s curiosity

Pre reading activities

Motivate student’s interests

Put into play strategies such as hypothesis, prediction.

Provide opportunities for reflection

* One type of pre-reading task is to introduce targeted vocabulary.

Contribute to comprehension *

Activate background knowledge

help students build up their expectations and understandings about a text before they actually begin reading it.

Pre reading activities

Prediction

Hypothesis

Vocabulary building (ladders)

K-W-L- Chart

Spot the genre

Anticipation Guides Character anticipation

Background information

While reading

Observation Diary

Cause and Effects

Follow the clues

Who said What and Why

Sizing up the Setting

Predictions

Agree – Disagree: Before and After

Herringbone TechniqueNotes and quotes

Dear diary

Post reading

From me to you!

Story Tree

SWBS: Plot Chart

Opinion Page

Story Board

Building a Story

Comic Strip Template

Inferring word clues + experience = inferences Readers who infer… Draw conclusions about their reading by connecting the

text with their background knowledge. Synthesize new ideas and information. Create unique understandings of the text they are reading. Make predictions about the text, confirm or disconfirm

those predictions based on textual information, developing comprehension of the text as they read

Extend their comprehension beyond literal understandings of the printed page

[For narrative text] Can you predict what is about to happen? Why did you make that prediction? Can you point to (or identify) something in the book that

helped you to make that prediction? [Or] What do you already know that helped you to make that prediction?

What did the author mean by _________? What in the story (text) helped you to know that? What do you already know that helped you to decide that?

It is not enough to know how to read.

If one is to become a lifelong reader, it is imperative that one has the desire to read.

Skill makes reading a possibility. Motivation makes reading a reality.

In your hands...

Bibliography

Oliver Keene, Mosaic of Thought. The Power of Comprehension Strategy Instruction. Heinemann

Jean Greenwood, Class readers. OUP

Debbie Miller Comprehension Strategy – Drawing Inferences - www.readinglady.com/.../Inferences%20handout%20by%20Deb%20Smith.doc

International Reading Association – Read Write & Think - http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/action-character-exploring-character-175.html