PAPER TEFL - Strategies for Teaching Reading

PAPER TEFL

Strategies for Teaching Reading

Lecturer: 

M.Aries Taufiq

Class : PBI-5C

 

 Rahmatul Husna (2317100)

STATATE OF INSTITUTE ISLAMIC OF BUKITTINGGI

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

2019/2020

 

Strategies for Teaching Reading

A. Balancing Instructional Elements 

Description

Most learners can cope with only a few

challenges at a time. The chart below outlines key factors to consider when designing a learning activity. Limiting the number of factors that are challenging in any particular lesson allows students to focus on the knowledge and skills that are most critical. It's important to achieve a balance between low and high challenge characteristics in your lessons.

Purpose

This structure is designed to help teachers plan instruction so that the information and the activities provided stay within the Instructional Zone of what students can handle. That is, students should be engaged in a level that is slightly above their current level of proficiency but should not be overwhelmed by both new information and new tasks. 

B.  Brainstorming and Organizing Ideas

Description

Brainstorming is a process for creating a list of ideas in response to an initial question or idea. Brainstorming emphasizes broad and creative thinking, inviting all participants' points of view in an effort to ensure that all relevant aspects of an issue or question are considered. Example: If there is a hurricane or another natural disaster, what should everyone do to be safe? It’s usually a good idea to use graphic organizers such as “idea maps” or flow charts so students can see the relationship between various ideas. Brainstorming can be done with the whole class, in pairs or small groups, or individually. 

Purpose

Brainstorming provides an opportunity for students to generate ideas or solve a problem. In addition, the activity prepares students to use brainstorming as a tool for work and personal planning. It also teaches them to organize the ideas they have generated into logical sequences, into priority lists, or other meaningful units and evaluate which ideas pertain to a topic, problem or a situation, and which ideas are interesting but irrelevant to the topic at hand. 

C.  Clarifying 

Description

Clarifying belongs to a set of reading strategies called Collaborative Teaching, but it can also stand on its own. Clarifying strategies need to be adjusted for different kinds of texts and need to take into account a variety of reasons for comprehension difficulties (insufficient background knowledge, weak decoding skills, unfamiliar vocabulary, or general problems with gaining meaning from print).

Purpose

Clarifying strategies teach struggling readers to do what proficient readers do: They stop reading when a text no longer makes sense and implement various repair strategies. In using various fix-up strategies students realize that the answer to a comprehension problem may be found in their mind (as they think about things more deeply), in the text itself (related words or other text clues), or in an outside source (another text, an expert, or a dictionary).

D. Predicting 

Description

Predicting belongs to a set of strategies called Reciprocal Teaching or Collaborative Teaching. Predicting asks students to take in information (a headline or title, a picture, a summary, or a chart) and make an informed guess as to the ideas or concepts that might appear in a text. After making a prediction, students read or listen to a text and either confirm or revise their predictions. 

Purpose

The predicting strategy activates students’ background knowledge and starts engagement with key concepts. It activates background knowledge and shows students that they are smart enough to figure things out even if they have trouble with with reading. Students learn to make connections between their own prior knowledge and the ideas in a text. 

E.  Problem-Solving Scenarios 

Description

Students work in small groups to analyze a problem and discuss possible solutions. Students may work from written scenarios, situation cards or cues, or they may create their own situations. Scenarios used in the classroom often use a problem related to a “hot topic”. 

Purpose

Scenarios are an excellent way to build problem solving skills and enhance literacy and communication skills. As students read a scenario, they are engaged in texts that require thinking. Students learn to use their thinking skills to analyze the situation, identify the problem, brainstorm ideas, and consider the consequences for each idea. Scenarios allow teachers to gain insights into what students are thinking about and how they interpret particular situations.

F. Question Generating and Answering 

Description

Question generating and answering is often taught as part of Reciprocal Teaching, a powerful set of techniques that also includes peer-to-peer strategies for summarizing, predicting, and clarifying. Students are invited to generate questions about a text (oral or written) and work with others to find the answers in the text. Some teachers use question generating to help students focus on literature concepts (character, plot, sequence, conflict, etc.).

Purpose

Question generating (or asking) encourages students to engage the text and pay attention to key content information. It is part of a set of strategies found to be effective in increasing comprehension of texts. Asking and answering questions with a partner or as part of a group engages all students, and students get significantly more time on task and opportunities to grapple with the text. Shyer students are more likely to participate since their answers (and possible mistakes) are not made public. 

G. Role Plays

Description

Students work in pairs or small groups to act out a situation. Each student has a role. Students may work from cards or cues, or they may create their own situations. Role plays can be simple (You lost your wallet on the bus and need to talk to Lost and Found.) or complex (You are a supervisor and need to tell an employee who is always late that she needs to shape up. She has sick kids at home and needs the money.)

Purpose

The purpose of a role play is to give students an opportunity to work with others to act out a situation and explore how others may think, feel or respond in a situation. Role plays are meant to build communication skills as well as problem solving skills. about what they might say and gain practice expressing thoughts and ideas in response to others. Role plays can be created from current events, short stories, novels, and screenplays to help students understand dramatic structure in texts. 

H. Summarizing

Description

Summarizing is part of a set of strategies called Reciprocal Teaching that involves peer interactions. Reciprocal teaching also includes predicting, question generating, and clarifying. Summarizing is a challenging task for most struggling readers, and is often preceded by practice in retelling and note taking. Purpose

Summarizing builds comprehension skills in reading and listening by focusing students’ attention on essential points. It is often used in academic work, both as a way to engage students in texts and to capture their understanding of key ideas. Although mostly used in writing, it also serves students well in team interaction in school and at work as they present the main points of a discussion to others or report an event or incident.

Four Methods of Teaching Reading

1.  The phonics method

The phonics method, unlike some other methods of teaching reading, is all about the art of breaking down words and knowing the sounds they represent. The process learning may be slow in the beginning, but gradually it becomes automatized and more fluent. Although the phonics method is one of the most effective methods of teaching reading, you still need to teach your child to memorize some words, because there are some words that are not spelled the way they sound. This method basically helps a learner learn how break words down into sound. It is effective because in the English language, to represent words on the page, we need to translate sounds into letters and letter combinations. Therefore, reading requires one’s ability to decode words into sounds.

2. The whole-word approach

In this method, students try to recognize whole words in their written forms. Context is important to make this method effective. Start with familiar words and then move on to short sentences. This method does not involve cognitive attention for processing words. As a result, this method is faster and it facilitates reading comprehension. This method is more effective for learning to read high frequency English vocabulary.

3. The language experience approach

Another method, the language experience method, uses learners’ own words to help them read. Unlike other methods of teaching reading, this method is grounded in personalized learning. In this method, every child learns different words. Children often find this method very easy because they learn words they are already familiar with. To use this method, notice which words your child likes most. Then make sentences with those words. When your child draws a picture, write a description underneath the picture. Then read the description aloud. It will help your child better understand what is written. This approach supports a child’s vocabulary growth and concept development. Using oral language and personal experiences, this method also offers children opportunities for meaningful reading and writing activities.

4. The context support method

The context support method is one of the least discussed methods of teaching reading, but it is not less effective than other methods. To attract and hold the attention of the learner, it uses the associative connection between words and pictures. To learn something, paying attention is of utmost importance. But children who are disinterested can not pay attention long enough. Most educators believe that this method works because it holds a learner’s attention.

10     Best Practices for Teaching Reading

1.Assess level

Knowing your students’ level of instruction is important for choosing materials. Reading should be neither too hard, at a point where students can’t understand it and therefore benefit from it. If students don’t understand the majority of the words on a page, the text is too hard for them. On the other hand, if the student understands everything in the reading, there is no challenge and no learning. So assess your students’ level by giving them short reading passages of varying degrees of difficulty. This might take up the first week or so of class. Hand out a passage that seems to be at your students’ approximate level and then hold a brief discussion, ask some questions, and define some vocabulary to determine if the passage is at the students’ instructional level. If too easy or too hard, adjust the reading passage and repeat the procedure until you reach the students’ optimal level.

2.Choose the correct level of maturity

While it’s important that the material be neither too difficult nor too easy, a text should be at the student’s maturity level as well—it’s inappropriate to give children’s storybooks to adult or adolescent students. There are, however, edited versions of mature material, such as classic and popular novels, for ESL students, that will hold their interest while they develop reading skills.

3.Choose interesting material

Find out your students’ interest. Often within a class there are common themes of interest: parenting, medicine, and computers are some topics that come to mind that a majority of students in my classes have shared interest in. Ask students about their interests in the first days of class and collect reading material to match those interests. Teaching reading with texts on these topics will heighten student motivation to read and therefore ensure that they do read and improve their skills.

4.Build background knowledge

As a child, I attempted, and failed, to read a number of books that were “classics”: Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” leaps to mind. It probably should have been a fairly easy read, but it was so full of cultural references to life in mid-nineteenth century New England that I gave up in defeat each time. It was not at my independent reading level, even if the vocabulary and grammatical patterns were, because of its cultural references.

5.Expose different discourse patterns

The narrative form is familiar to most students. In addition, it is popular to teachers. It is easy to teach: we’ve been reading and hearing stories most of our lives. However, reports, business letters, personal letters, articles, and essays are also genres that students will have to understand as they leave school and enter the working world.

6.Work in groups

Students should work in groups each session, reading aloud to each other, discussing the material, doing question and answer, and so forth. Working in groups provides the much needed interactivity to increase motivation and learning. Students may choose their own groups or be assigned one, and groups may vary in size.

7.Make connections

Make connections to other disciplines, to the outside world, to other students. Act out scenes from the reading, bring in related speakers, and or hold field trips on the topic. Help students see the value of reading by connecting reading to the outside world and show its use there.

8.Extended practice

Too often we complete a reading and then don’t revisit it. However, related activities in vocabulary, grammar, comprehension questions, and discussion increase the processing of the reading and boost student learning.

9.Assess informally

Too often people think “test” when they hear the word “assess.” But some of the most valuable assessment can be less formal: walking around and observing students, for example, discuss the reading. Does the discussion show they really understand the text? Other means of informal assessment might be short surveys or question sheets.

10.Assess formally

There is also a place for more formal assessment. But this doesn’t have to be the traditional multiple choice test, which frequently reveals little more than the test-takers skill in taking tests. The essay on a reading - writing about some aspect of Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” for example - demonstrates control of the reading material in a way a multiple choice quiz cannot as the student really needs to understand the material to write about the reading’s extended metaphor of the farm.

REFERENCES

Ogle, D.M 1986. K-W-L : a teaching model that develops active reading of exspository text. Reading Teacher (Newark,DE).

Turner,J : Paris,S.G. 1995. How literacy tasks influency children’s motivation for literacy. Reading Teacher (Newark,DE).

National Reading Panel.2000. Teaching children to read : an evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction.

Durkin, D. 1993. Teaching them to read. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.