Reading Instruction for ESL

What is Reading

•      Reading is a conscious and unconscious thinking process. The reader applies many strategies to reconstruct the meaning that the author is assumed to have intended. The reader does this by comparing information in the text to his or her background knowledge and prior experience (Burn: 2000)

What is Literacy?

•      Literacy is a set of attitudes and beliefs about the ways of using spoken and written language that are acquired in the course of a person’s socialization into a specific cultural context (Gunderson: 2009)

Scope of Discussion

•      Teaching Children/Young Learner Literacy skill in Second Language

•      Developing Adult Literacy

•      Reading for Academic Purpose

Teaching Children/Young Learner Literacy skill in Second Language

Effective Guided Reading for Children Literacy: Three Segments

•      Before Reading

1.   Building/Accessing Prior Knowledge

2.   Connecting to personal experiences

3.   Developing vocabulary

4.   Taking a “picture walk”

5.   Making predictions

6.   Setting purposes for reading

7.   Graphic organizer:

a.   Story map, story frame, story web,

•      During Reading

While reading, students must:

1.   question and monitor what they are reading and thinking about

2.   make inferences

3.   visualize

4.   continue to make connections

5.   continue to set predictions

•      After Reading

Teacher helps the children with:

1.   Discussing the text

2.   Connecting new knowledge to what they knew

3.   Following up predictions

4.   Acting out the story

5.   Discussing what they have learned and how they are becoming better readers using strategies

6.   Completing the graphic organizer

The Techniques to Teach Young Learner Literary Skill

•      Print Immersion

1.   Teachers who immerse students in print fill their classrooms with labels. Every desk has a name printed on it. Windows, pencil sharpeners, water fountains, walls, doors, the chalkboard—everything has a label. The teacher constantly refers to the labels and to the items

2.   In the beginning of this process, the teacher points to the word and says, for instance, “‘Door,’ this says ‘door.’ What does this say? Yes, this says ‘door.’”

3.   In this manner the teacher provides a model and reinforces correct responses. Students in such situations actually use the labels to remember the new words they learn.

4.   As students progress, the teacher allows them to provide the answer but immediately provides positive feedback.

•      Word Banks

1.   As students begin to learn that print represents language, they begin to want to know how to read specific words. In this case, each student is provided with a word bank, including such items as large milk cartons and large manila folders.

2.   The teacher visits each student and begins the session with a review of the words already in the word bank and adds more.

•      Sentence Strip

1.   Many teachers use 24-inch oak-tag strips to write students’ sentences.

2.   The students can be asked to form sentences out of the words found in their word bank; the oral reinforcement is vital.

3.   Producing sentences with words from the word bank allows students to manipulate words and sentences.

•      Active Listening

1.   The teacher selects material that is interesting to the students. Wordless picture books are wonderful for these activities, as are “big books.”

2.   Active listening is an activity that works well with individual students or with small groups.

3.   The story is read aloud in sections. If possible, read so that the students can watch the print. Indeed, if possible, print should be tracked with a finger or a pointer.

4.   At strategic points—for example, when something is about to happen—the reading is stopped and students are asked, “What do you think is going to happen next?” followed by “What makes you think so?”

•      The Teacher Reading Aloud

1.   Reading aloud in an uninterrupted fashion is a superb way for a teacher to model oral English, good oral reading, and enthusiasm for books and for reading. Hearing the teacher read aloud provides students with good models of pronunciation, intonation, and expression

•      The Language Experience Approach (LEA)

1.   Individual students or groups are asked to relate stories to the teacher. The stories may be about their experiences in or out of class.

2.   Students’ stories are recorded verbatim without changes or corrections.

3.   The student reads the story aloud. The teacher also reads the story aloud. In this manner the student begins to recognize words that are new to him.

4.   A few days after it has been dictated, the story should be reread and discussed.

5.   Individual students’ dictations are stapled into book form—a valuable record of their development. Students have very positive feelings about producing their own texts.

6.   Students rehearse their stories and read them to the teacher, to their friends, to small groups of students, or to the whole class

Developing Adult Literacy

The factors influence the literacy development of adults learning English

Wrigley & Guth, 1992 states that there are 6 factors influence the literacy development of adult:

•      ages;

•      motivations to read;

•      instructional, living, and working environments;

•      sociocultural backgrounds;

•      socioeconomic status; and

•      learning abilities or disabilities

The Important Aspects in Adult Literacy Development

•      Phonological processing

Adams, 1990; Snow, Burns, & Griffin 1998 stated that phonological processing is the act of interpreting letters as sounds and combining letter strings correctly into pronounceable syllables and words It includes phonemic awareness (awareness of individual speech sounds or phonemes and the ways they are represented in print), and phonological awareness (awareness of the way that language is represented in print that includes phonemes, words, syllables, and word breaks)

Phonological Teaching Suggestion

1.   Matching letters to sounds

2.   Matching morphemes, meanings, and pronunciations

3.   Oral reading

4.   Choral reading

•      Vocabulary Recognition

McLeod & McLaughlin, 1986 said that when readers are able to comprehend vocabulary words quickly, they are better able to understand the meaning of a sentence or passage. When readers struggle with the meanings of individual vocabulary words, they will have difficulties connecting the meanings of words in a sentence or passage

Vocabulary teaching suggestion

1.   Preview key vocabulary in a reading passage.

2.   Teach high-frequency vocabulary.

3.   Help learners use English-to-English dictionaries effectively.

4.   Use glosses for vocabulary that is beyond learners' level.

•      Syntactic processing

Syntactic processing involves using word order (e.g., subject followed by verb) and morphological cues (e.g., past tense and passive voice marking) to understand the meaning of a phrase or sentence as a whole.

Syntax Teaching Suggestion

1.   Use cloze exercises.

2.   Identify parts of speech and their roles.

3.   Generate sentences using specific words and grammatical forms.

•      Schema activating

Schema theory describes the process by which readers combine their own background knowledge with the information in a text to comprehend that text

Teaching Suggestion to Build Schema

1.   Build on ideas and concepts from learners' cultures where possible.

2.   For unfamiliar themes, use visual aids and  realia (physical objects) to help learners build new schema.

3.   Preview unfamiliar ideas, actions, and settings.

4.   Preview titles, pictures, graphics, text structure, and discourse markers

Models of Adult Literacy in Reading

•      Bottom-Up

Bottom-up models describe the reader as arriving at meaning by moving from letters to words to phrases and sentences and arriving at meaning.

•      Top-Down

Top-down models describe the reader as deriving meaning primarily from predictions about the text and background knowledge.

•      Interactive

1.   Interactive models posit that both processes work together: word recognition—the bottom-up ability to turn letter into sound– is informed by the top-down skills of applying background knowledge, inference, and predicting.

2.   Grabe and Stoller (2002) argue that "modified interactive models" are necessary to understand reading comprehension.

Reading for Academic Purposes

•      Adult-level students who are most often college and university level students who are attempting to gain entrance to a college or university in an English-speaking post-secondary setting or who are already enrolled in such a setting and need to learn the literacy skills they need to survive in university-level classes

•      The ultimate goal of teaching reading for academic purpose is to help students learn content reading material and how to use independent reading strategies successfully.

Characteristics of Content reading material

•      contains more complex sentence structure than reading texts

•      contains more abstract vocabulary than reading texts

•      contains more specialized vocabulary than reading texts

•      is generally more abstract than material in reading texts

•      contains different kinds of visual aids (such as graphs, maps, charts, and timelines)

•      is generally more difficult than reading material designated for the same grade level

•      requires students to read, comprehend, and learn new material from text

•      is more “information packed” and “concentrated” than reading texts

•      is usually written in a style different from reading texts

•      contains more difficult vocabulary, often with non-standard meanings

Reading Strategies

•      Skimming

Skimming is a quick reading for general idea(s) of a passage. When skimming, we go through the reading material quickly in order to get the gist of it, to know how it is organized, or to get an idea of the tone or the attention of the writer.     

•      Scanning

Scanning is very high speed reading. When we scan, we have a question. So, it can be said that when scanning, reader will not regard everything except the information he is interested in.

•      Predicting

Predicting skill which is basic to all reading technique practiced and to the process of reading generally. It is the faculty of predicting or guessing what is to come next, making use of grammatical, logical, and cultural clues. This skill is at the core of technique such as anticipation or skimming will therefore be practiced in those sections, but it may be worth while to devote sometime to more systematic training by giving

•      Previewing

Unlike predicting, previewing is a very specific reading technique which involves using the table of content, the appendix, the preface, the chapter and paragraph heading in order to find out where the required information is likely to be. It is particularly useful when skimming and scanning as a study skill. For example, quickly locating an article in a newspaper or having a few minutes to get an idea of a book through the text on the cover and the table of content.

Teaching Technique in Reading for Academic Purposes

•      SQ3R

Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review

•      Survey By surveying the chapter titles, introductory paragraphs, bold face, italicized headings, and summary paragraphs, the reader gets an overview of the material. Surveying also gives enough information to generate individual purposes for reading the text.

•      Question Purpose questions are often provided at the beginning of the chapter. It not, the reader can turn section headings into questions. The main objective is to have questions for which answers are expected to be found in the passage

•      Read The student is to read to answer the purpose questions formulated in Step 2, Question.

•      Recite Student should try to answer questions without referring to the text or notes. This step helps in transferring information from short-term to long-term memory.

•      Review Students review the material by rereading parts of the text or notes. Students verify answers given during Step 4, Recite. This helps retain information better and gives immediate feedback.