Readin

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Reading is a receptive skill. This means it involves responding to a text, rather than producing
it. Also it involves making sense of a text. So, getting our learners to understand a simple text
is only the beginning. The Reading skills need to be encouraged so that learners can cope with
more and more sophisticated texts and deal with them efficiently: quickly, appropriately and
skilfully.

* The reading skills and strategies:

Recognize
text
components
Transferring
Developing
demonstrating information
critical
thinking
Building

vocabulary
Reading
skills
and
strategie
s Inferring
Expanding
information
knowledge

Applying Managing ideas

comprehension and information

strategies
7 Reading Strategies Your ESL Students Must Know

1
Previewing
Previewing is absolutely essential for students to get a sense of what the text is about.
Elements that are usually helpful for previewing are newspaper headlines or titles; images or
photos; and signal words or format. For example, if the article has words like first, second,
third, etc… at the beginning of each paragraph or is a numbered list, students will get the
sense that the text lists steps or is a roundup article.

Reading Exercise: Choose a newspaper article with a great headline. Before reading the
article, ask students what they think the article will be about, based on the headline.

2 Contextualizing
It is always helpful for students to learn to place the text within a context. Is the news article
centered on something that happens everywhere in the world, or just in one specific location?
Is this something that affects you, the reader, or other people in the world? Does the main
character in the story go through something you can relate to, or something you have no
experience in? These are great questions for students to think about as they read.

Reading Exercise: Before reading this text about Education in Britain, discuss the
educational system in the country your students are currently in: How many years of grade
school are there? How many years of high school? Students read about what it’s like to go to
school in Britain and compare it to their country.
Skimming
Skimming and scanning are usually considered speed-reading skills because they are not used
for intensive reading. They are essential skills nonetheless, and students need to know that
sometimes intensive reading is not necessary.

Skimming a text involves running your eyes over it quickly to get the main idea. It also allows
you to identify which parts of a long text you might want to read more closely. This skill is
particularly useful, for example, for Business English students who have to read long reports
that are several pages long. By skimming the report, they can still follow the gist and stop
when they find something of particular interest to them.

Reading Exercise: Hand out different magazines or newspapers in English, and tell the class
they have five minutes to skim one. After they’re done skimming, ask them what stories they
remember reading.

Scanning
Scanning, on the other hand, allows you to quickly search a text for a particular piece of
information. Scanning is ideal when students need to find a phone number in a directory, the
date of a historical event or the time their train is leaving.
3 Visualizing
Some students, especially those who are visual learners, need to “see” the information. Can
you see the main character in your mind’s eye based on the description? Can you picture the
contaminated river as described in the news article? Visualizing also involves organizing the
information in a visual way, usually through the use of a mind map or other graphic organizer.

Reading Exercise: Have students read a text like By the Water. After the reading, ask students
to record the images that come to mind as they read: I can picture the sun shining on the water
and the birds flying above…

4 Asking and Answering Questions

What questions come to mind when you preview an article? How will the main character
solve this problem? Students need to come up with questions they would like answered in the
text and pay attention to how they are answered.

Reading Exercise: Read a news article or a piece like this one about the Boston Marathon.
After reading the title, ask students to come up with three questions they expect the article
will answer and then read to see if they find the answers.

5 Summarizing
After the reading, students should be able to summarize what they’ve read. This may be a
short oral summary or a full paragraph. Summarizing includes a very important skill: getting
the gist. What was the main point in the story? Summarizing is not retelling everything that
happened as it happened, and students need to not only tell the difference, but also learn to
give back information in a clear concise manner.

Reading Exercise: Ask the class to read the story of Helen of Troy. Then, ask them to
summarize in just one sentence or two what caused the Troyan War.