Teach English in Fengjing Zhen - Shanghai Shi

Teaching Receptive Skills Practical Strategies for Teaching Reading Comprehension One of the most difficult tasks in teaching is helping students improve their receptive skills, especially reading. By being aware of the strategies and techniques available to both students and teachers, these integral skills can be learned and ingrained. Focusing on teaching steps can effectively give students the tools they need to be successful. Step 1: Engage the student. Step 2: Pre-teach new vocabulary. Step 3: Ask a focus question. Step 4: The students read. Step 5: Ask questions about the reading. Step 6: Follow up with a task. The first step in teaching reading to ESL students is to get the students warmed-up by engaging them in the topic of the reading passage. Generating interest in the topic and reading in general will increase a student?s attention and promote comprehensive learning. The purpose of engaging the student is to introduce the theme or topic of the reading. The student can be engaged, for example, by using visuals. Students love to see pictures and make associations between what they see and what they read. Students will challenge themselves and their abilities if the ?reward? has value to them. Value can be as simple as enjoyment. Training with interesting materials now will give them the skills later for material that does not engage them. You will have created the connections already. Some strategies include, using readings with bright and interesting pictures, large fonts and short rewarding stories. Before reading, show them the characters, if there is a video or cartoon associated with the reading, they will identify with the characters and story. Use the lyrics of songs that students enjoy. Use readings with characters that the students are familiar with. Use quotes from books as pre-reading exercises to catch the students? attention. ?I?m fifteen and crazy?. Use the internet. There are many games based on stories and characters that students are familiar with. Read some of the passage out loud to the student. Use character voices and/or change intonation. Whisper, yell, have fun with it. When preparing reading activities, pre-teach important vocabulary. Decide the vocabulary that is critical for the ESL learners to know to understand the story. You don't have to teach every word that you think the student may not know, just those that are critical to understanding the reading passage. It is key that you leave some of the CONTEXT words for the students to figure out. (Abraham 2002, p. 6). Give students more than two example sentences with a new vocabulary word so they can see how to use it. Choose at least two to three words that students will need to work out for themselves or that you can discuss as part of the reading. Give the students the chance to work out the meaning sometimes. Of course, the younger the learner or the newer they are at reading, the more you will have to provide translation. A lesson plan teaching reading to ESL students should have a focus question. Write a question about a detail that is three-quarters of the way through the text for beginner level reading exercises. For advanced level ESL students, ask a "gist" question. This is something that the students have to deduce from the reading passage. Be sure to write the focus question on the board so that all students can see it. When students have a definite goal, they are often able to make connections and intuitive leaps of understanding much easier. Use flashcards, colors, letter blocks, etc to help younger students concentrate on looking for the answer during their reading. Finally, in the next step the students read! It is important to allow enough time for the students to read the entire passage. You'll have to watch the students to see how they are doing and when they're done. After the students have read the material ask the students the focus question again. In addition to the focus question, ask the students other questions about the reading to test their ability to understand. If the students are unable to answer the questions, have the students read the passage again, read it out loud to them or get them to read it out loud. One of the easiest, most important and effective tools in checking comprehension is to have students answer: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. Finally, teaching reading to students should always be followed up with a task (Haller 2000, p. 21-24). The task can be oral or written. A student needs to bring in his or her knowledge on the topic, which helps to reinforce comprehension and the learning process. Some good tools are, direct translation exercises, remove some words from the text and have students put in different words to give the text new meaning, have students create a word list from the reading and cut up the sentences and have students put them back in order without looking at the reading. Following these steps will give teachers the tools to develop active readers. One of the best things that can be taught to students who are trying to improve their reading comprehension is that Text + Thinking = Real Reading. This is such a broad topic that pages and pages can be written on the strategies that students can be taught to improve comprehension on their own, test taking strategies and focusing on beginner learners. By focusing on the basic teaching steps, students are able to begin the path towards independent learning, which is one of the biggest goals of teaching.