Top
ten'principles for
teaching reading
Ray Williams
In order for the teaching of EFL reading to be effective, it is important for
teachers regularly to take stock of their perception of the nature of the
reading process itself, relevant reading activities, and appropriate classroom
management This article puts forward the author's views on which
are the important principles in teaching EFL reading, and in vites teachers to
consider them as a starting point for a re-evaluation of their own
philosophy.
As an introductory 'ice-breaker' on reading seminars which I conduct with
EFL teachers, we usually start with an exchange of views on fundamental
principles. A handout lists
my principles, which I ask teachers to evaluate
and add to. Some of the principles we discuss are amazingly self-evident—
no bad thing, since in EFL, in our constant search for the novel, we
often overlook the obvious. Other principles sometimes provoke controversy—
which is also welcome, since the objective of the seminar is not to
produce stereotypical attitudes to teaching reading in EFL but to encourage
teachers to re-examine their existing beliefs about the nature of the
reading process, text choice, text-based activities, and classroom management
procedures.
The following are my 'top ten' principles:
1 In the absence of interesting texts, very little is possible.
An obvious principle,
but one which is often forgotten. Interest is vital, for it increases motivation,
which in turn is a significant factor in the development of reading speed and
fluency. Interesting to whom? First and foremost to the learner, but preferably
interesting also to the teacher. How do we
know what our learners are
interested in reading in English? Ask them what they like reading in their
own language, peer over their shoulders in the library, ask the school
librarian, spend a few minutes in the local bookshop; then find texts in
English, of an appropriate level, on similar topics. To check the interestlevel
of texts currently being used in your EFL reading course, ask learners
to assess them as 'interesting', 'all right', or 'boring'. But be prepared for a
few surprises!
2
The primary activity of a reading lesson should be learners reading texts—not
listening to the teacher, not reading comprehension questions, not writing
answers to comprehension questions, not discussing the content of die text.
This is not to say that such activities are unimportant; but it is a question of
balance. Of course, if the objective of a particular lesson is the integration of
the reading activity with another skill (e.g. an associated writing task), then
the lesson will justifiably have two equally important activities. But my
emphasis on the primacy of
learners reading in a single-skill 'reading only'
lesson is to stress that die central activity of learners reading must not be
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allowed to become submerged in a welter of peripheral supportive activities.
Learners learn to read by reading: there is no other way.
S
Growth in language ability is an essential part of the development of reading ability.
The pendulum in recent years has swung towards an emphasis on teaching
appropriate skills and strategies. This re-orientation is welcome; but we
must not forget that the best skills and strategies in the world will have little
effect unless learners are simultaneously expanding their 'sight' vocabulary,
and their recognition knowledge of commonly occurring sentence
patterns and rhetorical patternings in text. In fact, Alderson (1984:1-27),
having reviewed the relevant literature, suggests that a minimum language
threshold is necessary before reading skills and strategies (including their
transfer from the mother tongue) can successfully operate.
4
Classroom procedure should reflect the purposeful, task-based, interactive nature of
real reading.
A psycholinguistic model of the reading process (e.g. Goodman
1967) holds that the reader is actively engaged in striving to reconstruct die
author's message. He or she participates in an internal dialogue in which
hypotheses are formed, predictions made, doubts expressed, uncertainties
subsequendy clarified, new information grafted on to old, old views modified
by new, etc. Reading is thus not only active but in&ractive—just as
interactive as audible conversation. How can the interactivity which is an
intrinsic part of efficient, real reading be fostered in die reading classroom?
Through classroom procedures involving pairwork and groupwork in
which inter-learner discussion of die text and associated tasks is not only
permitted but
required. Purposeful, audible interactivity of diis nature (not
necessarily in English) replicates die interactivity which is characteristic of
die efficient, individual, silent reader.
In particular, this essential interactivity should encourage learners to
make use
of what diey have read. This can be done by requiring die
completion of a diagrammatic representation of (part of) the text—matrix,
flowchart, tree-diagram, etc. For example, in relation to a description of a
satellite launching vehicle (SLV-3) in a text for Indian students entided
India Zooms into Space,
die following grid has been a useful stimulus.
OmpUtt tht following sfxtification of SLV-3
Fourth itage
Third stage
Second stage
First stage
OmstrvcUd
>}£„,_ r
of
.
. • i, motor
PwfulUaU
Typt Amount
Thnut Dtstruction
no)
Total length:... Total weight...
Encouraging learners to make use of what diey have read can also be
achieved by means of suitably phrased 'application' questions. For
example (in relation to die same text):
*What advantages do you diink India's space programme will bring to
die average person living in India today?
(Both exercises are taken from Williams, Ray and Swales 1984:46-7.)
Top ten'principlts for Uaching reading
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5
Teachers must learn to be quiet: all too often, teachers interfere with and so impede
their learners' reading development by being too dominant and by talking too much.
Although it can and should be fostered by collaborative groupwork, in the
final analysis reading is an individual skill, like swimming or playing the
piano. It has to be practised under guidance, with copious encouragement,
and with carefully set goals. The teacher's role is therefore less that of
information-giver/text-explainer, and more that of coach/classroom organizer/
trouble-shooter/consultant/personnel manager/catalyst. This latter
role is a far more professional one (and far more demanding!) than that of
straightforward text-explainer/questlon-asker.
Many teachers find it difficult to abandon their customary centre-stage
role, and to become a learning-manager rather than a teacher. But there is
enormous satisfaction to be gained from assisting groups of learners with
their own particular difficulties, seeing them progress at their optimum
rate, and observing the pleasure that learners derive from understanding
and enjoying a text when more of the responsibility for learning is placed on
their
shoulders—where it properly belongs.
6
Exercise-types should, as far as possible, approximate to cognitive reality. Since
the purpose of teaching reading is to make the learner a more efficient
reader, it follows that we need to identify the strategies, skills, and objectives
of the efficient reader during the process of
real reading (as opposed to
the classroom teaching of reading), and then help the learner to acquire
them. In other words we need to identify just what the efficient reader
does
(by examining our own cognitive processes, perhaps).
Investigations of the reading process (self-report, self-observation, and
think-aloud), focusing on individual case-studies, are throwing very interesting
light on what readers do during the process of reading (see e.g. van
Parreren and Schouten-van Parreren 1981; Cohen 1984; Hosenfeld 1984).
We must now apply the fruits of this growing body of knowledge to the
creation of more appropriate exercise-types.
7
A learner will not become a proficient reader simply by attending a reading course or
working through a reading textbook.
For every hour of intensive reading, a
learner should be doing at least another hour of extensive reading—by
means of a graded reader system, a collection of carefully-chosen texts,
simple paperbacks, etc. It does not matter very much
what learners read in
extensive reading, as long as they enjoy doing it. A system of graded readers
is, of course, one of the most effective ways of promoting extensive reading.
Nuttall (1982:174—82) gives excellent advice concerning setting up and
administering such a scheme.
8
A reader contributes meaning to a text. Reading is not simply a matter of
taking out (information, opinion, enjoyment, etc.), like shopping at a
supermarket; it also involves contributing (attitudes, experience, prior
knowledge, etc.). This natural characteristic of real reading must be
encouraged and developed in teaching EFL reading. This can be done by
including questions or tasks which require readers to combine what is in
their heads with what is in the text. (Such questions and tasks can be
indicated by a symbol, such as * if necessary.)
9
Progress in reading requires learners to use their ears, as well as their eyes. As widi
audible reading, silent reading involves stress and intonation or prosody.
Research (e.g. Pegolo 1985) suggests that the more accurate the reader's
44
Ray Williams
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internal prosody, the greater the degree of comprehension. Therefore,
learners should be encouraged also to
listen to texts—such as tapes accompanying
graded readers, specially recorded tapes, the teacher reading to
the class, older learners reading to younger learners, and better readers
reading to weaker readers in their group.
10
Using a text does not necessarily equal teaching reading. Texts can be used for
many different purposes. For example, it is perfectly sensible to use a text to
demonstrate a certain grammatical or functional point in context, as a
trigger for further work on that point., But it would be a mistake to think
that one was thereby teaching reading. Johns and Davies (1983) make the
important distinction between what they call TALO (text as linguistic
object) and TAVI (text as vehicle for information). In TALO, the text is a
carrier for the teaching of language—grammar, vocabulary, etc.—which is
laboriously 'mined' from the text by the teacher and learners (usually with
the teacher as chief miner). This a perfectly justifiable use of text as one way
of teaching language: but it contributes very little to the development of
learners'
reading skills.
In contrast, using a text for the purposes of developing reading skills
(what Johns and Davies call the TAVI approach) uses a suitably chosen
text for the development of appropriate cognitive strategies which lead to
the learner reconstructing the author's original
message (which is very
different from understanding the elements of language which the author
uses to carry that message). Such a use of text has as its objective the
development of
generalizjable, transferable strategies of meaning-reconstruction,
which the learner can eventually employ outside the reading lesson
without the assistance of the teacher or a course in reading. When our
learners reach the stage when they no longer need our help, that is success:
as teachers of reading our professional objective is to make ourselves
redundant! •
Received January 1985
Rmfmrmncm*
Parrercn, C. F. van and M. C. Schouten-van Par-
Alderson.J. C.
1984. 'Reading in a foreign language: reren. 1981. 'Contextual guessing: a trainable
a reading problem or a language problem?' in J. C. reader strategy.'
System 9/3:235-41.
Alderson and A. H. Urquhart (eds.).
Reading in a Pegolo, C. 1985. 'More efficient silent reading com-
Foreign Language.
London: Longman. prehension.' Reading in a Foreign Language 3/1.
Cohen, A.
1984. 'Studying second-language learning Williams, R. C, R. Ray, and J. M. Swales. 1984.
strategies: how do we get die information?'
Applied Communication in English for Technical Students.
Linguistics
5/2:101-12. Hyderabad: Orient Longman.
Goodman, K. S.
1967. 'Reading: a psycholinguistic
guessing game.'
Journal of the Reading Specialist 4:126- T?» author
35. Ray Williams has taught EFL and ESP since 1965—in
Hosenfeld,
C 1984. 'Case studies of ninth grade read- Zambia, Malawi, Hong Kong, and at Aston Univerers'
in J. C. Alderson and A. H. Urquhart (eds.). sity in England. At the College of St Mark and St John,
Reading in a Foreign Language.
London: Longman. Plymouth, he is currendy course leader for the
Johns, T.
and F. Davies. 1983. 'Text as a vehicle for Diploma in Education (ELT) and Certificate in Teachinformation:
the classroom use of written texts in ing Reading in EFL. His publications include Panteaching
reading in a foreign language.'
Reading in a orama: An Advanced Course of English for Study and
Foreign Language
1/1:1-19. Examinations (Longman 1982) and Readable Writing
Nuttall,
C 1982. Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign (Longman 1985). He is co-editor (with Alexander
Language.
London: Heinemann. Urquhart) of the journal Reading in a Foreign Language.
'Top ten' principles for teaching reading
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