Teaching Reading
Strategies for Developing
Reading Skills
Using Reading Strategies
Language instructors are often frustrated by the fact that students do not
automatically transfer the strategies they use when reading in their native
language to reading in a language they are learning. Instead, they seem to
think reading means starting at the beginning and going word by word, stopping
to look up every unknown vocabulary item, until they reach the end. When they
do this, students are relying exclusively on their linguistic knowledge, a
bottom-up strategy. One of the most important functions of the language
instructor, then, is to help students move past this idea and use top-down
strategies as they do in their native language.Effective language instructors show students how they can adjust their reading behavior to deal with a variety of situations, types of input, and reading purposes. They help students develop a set of reading strategies and match appropriate strategies to each reading situation.
Strategies that can help students read more quickly and effectively include
- Previewing: reviewing titles,
section headings, and photo captions to get a sense of the structure and
content of a reading selection
- Predicting: using knowledge of the
subject matter to make predictions about content and vocabulary and check
comprehension; using knowledge of the text type and purpose to make
predictions about discourse structure; using knowledge about the author to
make predictions about writing style, vocabulary, and content
- Skimming and scanning: using a quick
survey of the text to get the main idea, identify text structure, confirm
or question predictions
- Guessing from context: using prior
knowledge of the subject and the ideas in the text as clues to the
meanings of unknown words, instead of stopping to look them up
- Paraphrasing: stopping at the end of
a section to check comprehension by restating the information and ideas in
the text
- By modeling the strategies aloud,
talking through the processes of previewing, predicting, skimming and
scanning, and paraphrasing. This shows students how the strategies work
and how much they can know about a text before they begin to read word by
word.
- By allowing time in class for group
and individual previewing and predicting activities as preparation for
in-class or out-of-class reading. Allocating class time to these
activities indicates their importance and value.
- By using cloze (fill in the blank)
exercises to review vocabulary items. This helps students learn to guess
meaning from context.
- By encouraging students to talk
about what strategies they think will help them approach a reading
assignment, and then talking after reading about what strategies they
actually used. This helps students develop flexibility in their choice of
strategies.
Reading to Learn
Reading is an essential part of language instruction at every level
because it supports learning in multiple ways.- Reading to learn the language:
Reading material is language input. By giving students a variety of
materials to read, instructors provide multiple opportunities for students
to absorb vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, and discourse structure
as they occur in authentic contexts. Students thus gain a more complete
picture of the ways in which the elements of the language work together to
convey meaning.
- Reading for content information:
Students' purpose for reading in their native language is often to obtain
information about a subject they are studying, and this purpose can be
useful in the language learning classroom as well. Reading for content
information in the language classroom gives students both authentic
reading material and an authentic purpose for reading.
- Reading for cultural knowledge and
awareness: Reading everyday materials that are designed for native
speakers can give students insight into the lifestyles and worldviews of
the people whose language they are studying. When students have access to
newspapers, magazines, and Web sites, they are exposed to culture in all its
variety, and monolithic cultural stereotypes begin to break down.
1.
Figure out the purpose
for reading. Activate background knowledge of the topic in order to predict or
anticipate content and identify appropriate reading strategies.
2.
Attend to the parts of
the text that are relevant to the identified purpose and ignore the rest. This
selectivity enables students to focus on specific items in the input and
reduces the amount of information they have to hold in short-term memory.
3.
Select strategies that
are appropriate to the reading task and use them flexibly and interactively.
Students' comprehension improves and their confidence increases when they use
top-down and bottom-up skills simultaneously to construct meaning.
4.
Check comprehension
while reading and when the reading task is completed. Monitoring comprehension
helps students detect inconsistencies and comprehension failures, helping them
learn to use alternate strategies.
