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Prepared by Mudassar Ahmad 2nd Batch ENG515..…….

These are notes for those students who are unable to go through video lectures &
handouts. These are not prepared for grand quiz but you can comprehend topics of
grand quiz or basic concepts.

Lecture: 01

Receptive Skills

• Listening & reading

• To receive & understand
• Known as passive skills
• Can be contrasted with productive skills

Productive Skills

• Speaking & writing

• Known as active skills

The Four Strands/Principles For Teaching Reading

A well-balanced language course should consist of four roughly equal strands:

1) Learning through meaning-focused input - learning through listening and reading where the learner’s
attention is on the ideas and messages conveyed by the language.
2) Learning through meaning-focused output - learning through speaking and writing where the learner’s
attention is on conveying ideas and messages to another person.
3) Language-focused learning - learning of language features such as pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary,
grammar, and discourse.
4) Fluency development - developing fluent use of known language items and features over the four skills
of listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Meaning-focused Input - Activities

• Extensive reading
• Shared reading
• Listening to stories
• Watching TV or films
• Being a listener in a conversation

Meaning-focused Output – Activities

• Talking in conversations
• Giving a speech or lecture
• Writing a letter
• Writing a note to someone
• Telling a story

Language-focused learning - Activities

• Pronunciation practice
• Using substitution tables
• Learning vocabulary
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Prepared by Mudassar Ahmad 2nd Batch ENG515..…….
Fluency development - Activities

• Reading
• Repeated reading
• Repeated retelling
• Skimming and scanning
• Ten-minute writing

Reading

• Recognizing language
• Reader reconstructs meaning of a text
• It is conscious and unconscious thinking process
• It is done by comparing text with prior knowledge
Lecture: 02

Learning to Read

• L2 students need to think in English

• Reading material need to be much more controlled
• Teachers need to focus on most useful words
• Connect prior & existing knowledge

Lecture: 03

Prerequisites for Formal Reading Instruction

• Phonemic awareness
▪ Understanding that words & syllables are comprised of sequence of elementary speech sounds
▪ Focus of activities on sounds of words, not on letters or spelling
▪ Use strategies that make phonemes prominent
▪ Begin with simple words: listen for initial /s/ in sat, sit, sad,
▪ Teach how to blend phonemes into words,
• Explicit instruction in sound identification, matching to sound symbols
• Decoding word, naming it, meaning
• Written expressions
• Motivation

Spoken Language & Reading

• Experience approach
• Learners should bring a lot of experience and knowledge to reading,
• It helps focus on small amounts of new information
Various methods;
• Each learner draws picture, illustrating something
• Learners take picture to teacher who asks what it is about
• Teacher writes description as learner said, using same words even if it is non-standard English
• This becomes learners text of day, they read it back to teacher,
• Learners take the description away to practice reading to classmates, friends and family
• These pictures and texts are gathered to be a personal reading book

Phonics and the Alphabetic Principle

Phonics & Decoding
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Prepared by Mudassar Ahmad 2nd Batch ENG515..…….
• When good readers see unknown word, they decode it, name it & attach meaning
• Sense about purpose of letters
• Engaging learners in activities to recognize letters visually
• Developing students’ awareness of sounds of individual words
Lecture: 04

Phonics involves spelling-sound relationships. It has significance for both learning to read and for learning to spell

The Role of Phonics in a Reading Program

• Reading interesting texts

• Introduce phonics with known words
• Concentrate on first letters of a word
• Use phonics in one-to-one reading instruction
• Teaching of the most frequent, simple, regular spelling-sound correspondences
• Teaching them to sound out all the sounds in a word

Productive Phonics: System & Item Learning

Some words can be dealt with by rules, but others have to be learned as unique items. Unpredictability of English
spelling system is major obstacle to learning to spell.

Designing a Focused Spelling Program for Reading

• Use attractive materials

• Keep learners motivated
• Make learning fun
• Measure progress
• Encourage thoughtful processing
• Do mastery testing
• Give regular practice
Lecture: 05

Intensive Reading
• Directs learners’ attention to features of text that can be found in any text
• Directs learners’ attention to the reading text:
• Provides useful information about learners’ performance:
Intensive EFL/ESL Reading
Various ways
o True or false statements
o Filling gaps in summary
o Scanning text to match headings to paragraphs
o Scanning jumbled paragraphs and put them in order

Are Comprehension Questions Good For Reading Exercise?

Usefulness
One of the effective techniques to train in reading & can take many forms:
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Prepared by Mudassar Ahmad 2nd Batch ENG515..…….
• Yes/no questions
• True/false statements
• Multiple choice items
• Blank-filling exercises
Lecture: 06

Comprehension of the Text

• Multiple-choice sentences
• Sentence completion:
Four types:
▪ Exact copies of sentences in passage
▪ To find missing words
▪ Not exactly same
▪ Missing words not in passage
The Focus of Comprehension Questions

• Literal comprehension of the text

• What text explicitly says
• Drawing inferences from the text:
• Taking messages not explicitly stated
• Organization of text
• Writer’s attitude to topic

Focus of Comprehension Questions: Benefits

• Title
• Theme
• Pictures accompanying text
• It allows teachers to check if they are providing suitable focuses
• To encourage to make questions rather than statements

Concept-oriented reading instruction (Cori) Guthrie: six strategies

1. Background
2. Questioning
3. Searching info
4. Summarizing
5. Organizing
6. Structuring stories

Standardized Reading Procedures

• Predicting
• Skimming
• Choosing main points
• Writer’s purpose

Lecture: 07
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Prepared by Mudassar Ahmad 2nd Batch ENG515..…….
Activities for grammar in Intensive EFL/ESL reading

• High frequency grammar items need sustained attention

• Make them simple and shorter

• Low frequency grammatical features are dealt as strategies

• Parts of speech:

• Choosing words from passage

Value/benefit of recognizing part of speech in a given context

1) Meaning guessed
2) Easier use of dictionary
3) Understand sentence in better way

Extensive reading – refers to as reading for joy. This approach advocates reading as much material in your target
language as humanly possible.

Intensive reading - focuses on closely following a shorter text, doing exercises with it, and learning it in detail.
According to this approach, this helps language learners really understand the language’s grammar and syntax.

Cohesion - the grammatical and lexical linking within a text or sentence that holds a text together and gives it
meaning. It is related to the broader concept of coherence.

Lecture: 08

Goals/Features/Limitations of Extensive Reading

• Learners should be interested

• Source of learning & enjoyment
• Extensive reading requires knowledge and skill
• Form of learning from meaning-focused input
• Attention on meaning of text rather than language features

Conditions of Extensive Reading

• Extensive reading can only occur if 95 to 98% of running words are familiar
• 90 or 95%, few learners gained adequate comprehension
• No more than 2 words in every 100 running words should be unfamiliar

Lecture: 09

Essential requirements for extensive reading:

1. Easy texts

2. Regular practice

3. A push to read faster

Lecture: 10

ER Materials

• Exposure to different types of materials

• Making them familiar with different genres
• Use of fiction and non-fiction texts
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Prepared by Mudassar Ahmad 2nd Batch ENG515..…….
• Simplified texts on law, business, technology and medicine

ER & Level

• Intensive reading: materials above students’ linguistic level

• In ER, these should be near or below students’ current level
• Notion of i+I in SLA
• Start with easier texts

Advantages of ER

• This pushes students to move from receptive to productive competence

• Speaking can be enhanced
• Repeated exposure help fluent reading

Lecture: 11

Introduction to Read Faster

Teacher’s Role

• Teacher counts time, writes on the board

• Text should be usually around 500-600 words long
• After finishing, students answer ten questions
• Maintaining speed reading graph
• Putting comprehension score on the graph
• Whole activity can take seven minutes

The Nature and Limits of Reading Speed

Physical Nature

Three types of actions:

1. Fixations on words
2. Jumps to next item to focus on
3. Regressions

Slow Reading Symptoms

1. Fixating on units smaller than a word

2. Spending a lot of time on fixations
3. Making many regressions

Reading speed can be affected by:

• Purpose of reading
• Difficulty of the text
• Vocabulary
• Grammatical constructions

Two ways for Fluency Development

1. Practice
2. Changing size of a basic unit
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Prepared by Mudassar Ahmad 2nd Batch ENG515..…….
Increasing Silent Expeditious Reading Speed

• Skimming and scanning

• 300-400 word per minute result of skimming, not careful reading
• Texts should be at least 2000words long
• Topics familiar
• Comprehension questions

Lecture: 12

Schema theory

• Relation between background knowledge and text comprehension

• Any text does not carry its meaning in itself
• Cognitive structures
• Text-reader interaction
• Role of cultures
• Different cultures different contexts

Lecture: 13

Teaching Reading and Linguistic Competence

• Linguistic system such as grammar rules and knowledge of vocabulary

• To decode the written text
• Linked with discourse competence
• Knowing lot of vocabulary does not help comprehension of text
• Extensive knowledge is needed
• Word recognition automaticity helps fluent reading comprehension

Teaching Reading and Pragmatic Competence

• Understanding contextual issues within which utterance takes place

• Politeness issues
• Understand intended meaning
• Typographical issues
• Lexical issues such as choice of verbs, adverbs
• Syntactic issues such as cleft constructions

Teaching Reading and Intercultural Competence

• Refers to socio-cultural knowledge or context

• Knowledge of cultural factors such as background of target community
• Dialects
• Cross-cultural awareness

Teaching Reading and Strategic Competence

• L2 readers should possess both communication and learning strategies

• Enhance communicative act between writer and reader
• Reading strategies include metacognitive, cognitive, social and affective

Reading is seen as interactive, decoding process. It is constructive and contextualized process to make meaning
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Prepared by Mudassar Ahmad 2nd Batch ENG515..…….
Lecture: 14

Strategic reading is prime characteristic of expert readers because it is woven into the fabric of reading for meaning.
Strategies enhance attention, memory, communication and learning

Reading Strategies

1. Metacognitive
▪ Reminding oneself about purpose of text
▪ Deciding whether text relevant to one’s purpose
▪ Evaluating text quality
▪ Assessing comprehension
2. Cognitive
▪ Reading slowly and quickly
▪ Re-reading
▪ Reading aloud
▪ Asking questions
3. Social

These are the set of approaches you can use to get students to become active participants in class through interaction
with others and sharing of knowledge they have. In other words, social learning strategies get students to learn from
others and with others.

4. Affective strategies

Affective strategies deal with emotions, attitudes, motivation and values that have an impact on learners and language
learning in an important way, including lowering anxiety, encouraging, taking emotional temperature.

Lecture: 15

How Do Good Readers Use Reading Strategies?

• Making aware of the purpose of reading

• Overviewing a text to decide its relevance
• Reading selectively
• Make use of prior knowledge

Skimming techniques include reading the introduction, the headlines, or the first phrase of the paragraph.

Scanning means looking over the whole text quickly in search of specific information.

TBLT - an activity in which meaning is primary, there is some sort of relationship to real world; task completion has
some priority.

Fostering Effective Reading Strategy Instruction

• Be different for different learners

• Help students where and when to use strategies
• Teach students to monitor strategies
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Prepared by Mudassar Ahmad 2nd Batch ENG515..…….
• Teach students non-strategic knowledge along with strategies

Using Purposeful Reading to Develop Strategic L2 Readers

• Begin each lesson with a purpose

• Make purpose fit students’ needs for learning L2
• Collect variety of materials around single theme
• Use of news articles on a single topic
• Select longer novel, non-fiction

Lecture: 16

What is Fluent Reading?

• Complex process that involves cognitive, cultural, world and linguistic knowledge
• Not just decoding words but clear understanding of text
• Appropriate interpretation of text

Barriers to Achieving Fluent L2 Reading

• Translate all texts

• Memorize technical or specialized words
• Avoid long texts in favor of short
• Read only authentic materials at highest levels
• Read only to study never for pleasure

Role of teachers

In the context of Fluent reading, teachers are meant to avoid the barriers given above.

Lecture: 17

Collocations and Fluency

Collocations are key to fluency. Advanced students do not become more fluent by being given lots of opportunities to
be fluent. They become more fluent when they acquire more chunks of language for instant retrieval

Bottom-Up Strategy Training for Fluent Reading

Bottom-up – to learn language by looking at individual meanings or grammatical units of most basic units of texts

Collocation

• Help students understand different meanings

• Help learn multi-word units or ready-made chunks of language
• Help process words faster and read more fluently

Narrow Vs. Wide Reading

Narrow

• Study plan must focus on specialized vocabulary such as computer science, business, and economics
• Helps them recognize quickly words in their academic or career area

Lecture: 18

TEACHING READING: Individual and social perspective

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Prepared by Mudassar Ahmad 2nd Batch ENG515..…….
Narrow perspectives

• Narrow focuses upon abilities of individuals

• Narrow deals with what & competencies readers need

Broad perspectives

• Broad sees reading as literacy practices in society

• It sees reading from communicative competence lens

Three psycholinguistic process models

1) Bottom- up
2) Top-down
3) Interactive

Lecture: 19

Data Driven Models

Bottom-up model of reading

It holds that the reader takes in data from the page in sequence, and that reading involves a letter-by letter, and word-
by-word analysis.

The crucial feature of this model, is that the processing moves in one direction, from “bottom” (the perception of
letters on the page), to the “top” (cognitive processes to do with the construction of meaning).

Concept-Driven Models

Top-down models

It hold that text is sampled and that predictions which are meaningful to the reader are made on the basis of their prior
knowledge.

Interactive Models

It proposes that input passes to a visual information store, where “critical features” are extracted. The information
extracted is then operated upon by what the reader knows about language, syntactic, semantic, lexical knowledge. A
reader’s lack of ability at one level may be compensated for by proficiency at another.

Reading: The Broad Perspective

Literacy in formal education is a restrictive attempt to “teach literacy” without reference to society. Hence, it’s
concerned not with the psycholinguistic process of reading, nor with how well the reader comprehends, but rather with
literacy as social practice.

Critical readings of texts typically examine one or more of the following:

1) Linguistic issues, such as choice of vocabulary

2) Rhetorical issues such as the overall text structure
3) Issues of text type and discourse convention

Lecture: 20

Abilities of learners that need to be developed for effective reading comprehension

• Ensure word recognition fluency

• Ensure effective language knowledge
• Emphasize vocabulary learning
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Prepared by Mudassar Ahmad 2nd Batch ENG515..…….
• Activate background knowledge
• Promote extensive reading

Nine reading strategies having influence on reading comprehension

• Prior knowledge activation

• Mental imagery
• Graphic organizers
• Text structure awareness
• Comprehension awareness
• Question generating
• Question answering
• Summarization

Lecture: 21

Lines of research (mostly L1) on the effect of text structure instruction

1) One line of research involves the impact of direct instruction which explicitly raises student awareness of
specific text structuring.
2) A second line of research develops student awareness of text structure through graphic organizers, semantic
maps
3) A third line of instructional training follows from instruction in reading strategies.

Two L1 approaches

1) Transactional Reading Instruction (TSI)

2) Concept-Orientied Reading Instruction (CORI)

Reading Fluency and Rate

• Reading fluency involves both word recognition accuracy and automaticity

• It requires a rapid speed of processing across extended text
• It makes use of prosodic and syntactic structures

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