TEACHING

• Receptive skills


  Reading and listening
• Productive skills


  Speaking and writing
• Commonly voiced problems with reading

  • I don't know enough vocabulary; I need to use a dictionary all the time
  • It's very slow and it takes me ages just to get through a few sentences
  • I often get to the stage where I understand all the individual words but the whole thing eludes me completely
  • Because it is slow, the pleasure or interest in reading is soon lost
• Types of reading techniques

  • Skimming
  • Scanning
  • Extensive reading
  • Intensive reading
• Skimming


  Mainly concerned with reading for gist (= the main idea of the text), finding key topics, ideas, overall theme, basic structure etc.
• Scanning


  Searching for information (e.g. when studying a leaflet/directory, a typical scanning task would be for Ss to move their eyes quickly over the page, searching for keywords or clues from the textual layout that will enable them to focus on small sections of the text that they are most likely to get the answers from)
• Extensive reading


  Fast pace of reading typical of the Ss' current level of fluency, a lot of contextual information, communicative experience, cultural and factual knowledge, incidental vocabulary learning, focus more on quantity of text than on precision, books, stories, essays, novels → self-selected by the Ss depending on their interests
• Intensive reading


  Slower reading with repetitions, a lot of T-S interaction: input, feedback, comprehension checks, analysis, consulting other sources of information etc., learning experience, development of reading comprehension, helps practice learning strategies, learn vocabulary, types of discourse, deliberately memorizing, focus on precision, shorter texts, which are parts of other bigger texts, selected by T
• Advantages/disadvantages of authentic vs. prepared reading materials

  • Authentic: up-to-date (+), motivating (+), adds spice to class, interesting (+), at times difficult (vocabulary) (?/-)
  • Prepared: Adjustable to the Ss' level (+), Comprehensible input, tuned to the Ss' needs (+), Feel artificial or 'fabricated' / 'processed' (-)
• Stages of a reading activity

  • Pre-reading task(s)
  • While-reading activities
  • Post-reading activities
• Pre-reading tasks


  • initial discussion of key themes
  • making a link between the text topic and Ss' own lives and experiences
  • focusing on important language (vocabulary, grammar) that Ss are about to see in the text
  • making predictions (title, illustrations, charts, graphs…)
  • predicting the kind of words that may appear in the text
• While-reading tasks - types

  • Tasks that focus on the gist
  • Tasks that focus on specific details
  • Tasks that require more comprehensive understanding
  • Tasks that focus on individual language items
• While-reading tasks that focus on the gist

  • guessing the title
  • checking text against Ss' predictions
  • arranging events in the correct order
  • arranging cut-up paragraphs in the correct order
• While-reading tasks that focus on specific details


  • Answering questions about specific items of information
  • Using the information from the text to do sth (making a sketch, filling out a form, finding out which picture is being described)
  • Finding mistakes in e.g. illustrations
• While-reading tasks that require more comprehensive understanding

  • comprehension questions
  • discussion of issues → comparison of viewpoints
  • summarizing arguments
  • finding appropriate places in the text to reinsert some sentences (previously taken out)
  • making lists of particular items mentioned in the text (e.g. jobs that involve travelling, celebrities who suffered from dyslexia, the pros/cons of sth)
  • giving headlines to sections of the article/ matching given headlines to each section /taking notes under headings
• While-reading tasks that focus on individual language items

  • vocabulary / grammar exercises
  • use of dictionaries
  • working out meanings of words from the context
  • finding words/expressions in the text that mean the same as those provided by T
• Post-reading tasks


  • Roleplays /acting out the dialogues (stories, episodes)
  • Written tasks (e.g. a reply in the form of an email/ forum post/ social media post
  • Personalization (Have you ever… How would you feel if…)
  • Problem-solving activities
  • Discussion about Ss' interpretation of the text / their feelings about it/reactions to it / its relevance in their lives
  • Closing; drawing the class to a conclusion, tying up all loose ends, reviewing what has been studied/learned
• Headlines


  • Family feared dead after shop blast
  • Scientists solve riddle in arsenic cancer treatment
  • Williams to perform at World Cup after song controversy
  • Garbage truck wrecks Brooklyn street
  • Boost for the elderly as State releases cash
  • HSBC to invest billions in tech and 'simplify' business to boost growth
  • Housing benefit axe for 18-21-year-olds
  • Crackdown on soccer louts
  • Palace besieged by journalists
• Activities using press article headlines

  • Ask the right question
  • Call my bluff
  • Creating headlines and inventing matching stories
  • Unlocking headlines
• Activities using full press articles

  • What, who, where, when, how, why?
  • Unscrambling the intro
  • Unpacking sentences
  • News flash
  • Reconstructing articles that are partly obscured
  • Mastermind
  • Filling in the gaps - adding missing info to short texts
  • News in Brief
  • Skeleton texts
  • Find the sentence