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READING (CHAPTER 18) - Coggle Diagram
READING (CHAPTER 18)
Extensive reading
Extensive reading often takes place outside the class and has traditionally been encouraged not for language study so much as for practising reading, having a pleasurable experience and gradually acquiring language.
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The vocabulary question
It has often been said that students need to know about 95 percent of the words in a text
in order to be able to understand it easily.
The fact that the students need to know a majority of words if they are to read successfully has implications for extensive reading.
Teachers encourage their students to read for general understanding, without worrying about the meaning of every single word; the students, on the other hand, are desperate to know what each individual word means.
One way of helping students to deal with challenging texts is to pre-teach some of the vocabulary they need, especially where this is specialist topic vocabulary that is crucial to understanding the text.
Where we ask our students to read a text without any lexical pre-teaching, however, it makes sense to give them an opportunity to discover the meaning of vocabulary they have found difficult.
Time limit: We can give a time limit of, say, five minutes for post-reading vocabulary enquiry.
Word/phrase limit: We can say that we will only answer questions about five or eight words or phrases.
Meaning consensus :To start the procedure, individual students write down five words from the text they most want to know the meaning of. When they have each done this, they share their list with another student and come up with a new joint list of only five words.
The students may well be able to tell each other about some of the words which individual students did not know. ‘Understanding every word’ has been changed into a cooperative learning task in its own right.
Intensive reading
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Transferring information
One way of having the students demonstrate their
understanding of texts is by asking them to transfer the information they see to other media.
‘Interrogating’ the text
Texts which express opinions or which contain contentious information – and many types of fiction – can be used to promote critical thinking. The critical interpretation forces students to develop (and demonstrate) a clear understanding of what they have read.
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Reading aloud
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Reading aloud can actually be incredibly useful, and can help with the links between sounds and written forms that are the basis for successful comprehension.
One way of encouraging students to read aloud with enthusiasm – and after having a chance to practise – is to ask them to choose their favourite sentence from a text they have just read. They should underline it, think about how to say it, and then practise it (under their breath) as many times as they want.
When we read aloud to our students, we need to do it with passion and commitment.
Reading sequences
The reading sequences involve a range of activities: the students engage with full texts in order to understand their overall meaning; they use prediction to activate their schemata; they use what they have read to create their own writing; and they take part in puzzle-like activities to reassemble texts.