Teaching Reading

“Be sensitive… to both intensive and extensive reading”
Gary Anderson
In their future professional and personal lives, your teenage students of today are going to need to be able to read English in a variety of ways: text books and articles for their studies; reports, manuals, memos and e-mails for their jobs; tourist brochures and guides in their free time; Internet sites (the majority ofwhich will continue to be in English) for both work and pleasure. Of course as teachers we know that the challenge of reading can be either a reading problem – most teenagers don’t read much that isn’t assigned schoolwork – or an educational problem – they don’t know how to read properly in their native language let alone in a foreign language where the language is sometimes too difficult or where thenecessary vocabulary or background information is often lacking. So we need not only to teach our adolescent students active, productive reading strategies for shorter intensive texts, but also get them interested in extensive, or pleasure, reading because studies show that the best way of becoming a good reader is by reading, i.e. we learn to read by reading a lot. Below are a few suggestions ofways to be sensitive to both the intensive and extensive reading needs of your teenage students and to help them progress towards becoming better independent readers both in and outside class. their eyes and a finger to shift the focus of their ‘scanner’ from individual questions to the specific point in the text where they can find the answer. They can even place their finger on that part of thetext while writing the answer or discussing with a classmate. Ask your students to try out the techniques presented in the ‘Reading tips’ from the ‘Skills in Mind’ sections of their English in Mind Second edition workbook with reading assignments in history or other school subjects – and then to report back on how this ‘transfer of skills’ and ‘crosscurricular’ approach worked. Remember to beflexible and change the ways you present an intensive reading text. All of the texts which start the units of English in Mind Second edition are recorded on the accompanying class cassettes or audio CDs, so you might have weaker classes listen to the recording while following in their books the first time they read a text; or have your stronger class first listen to the recording with their booksclosed and then read the text. You might also try playing background music while the class is reading: not only can you use the song to time the exercise, but it can also have a calming, focusing effect. And why not have your students share some of their own techniques and strategies on how they read? Their classmates might listen more closely to them than to you – and you might learn something tohelp out students in other classes.

Intensive reading strategies
Pre-reading prediction activities: Before reading an article in a magazine or newspaper, you usually form some idea of what it is about from the accompanying photo or headline. So to heighten interest before starting to read a text in class with your students, use the picture or title to brainstorm and elicit possible vocabulary(that you can put on the blackboard) or just to discuss what the article is about: Who exactly is the person on page 40 of English in Mind Second edition level 2 and what does it have to do with Growing up? Reading for gist or ‘skimming’ for main ideas: Intensive reading texts in English in Mind Second edition start with pre-reading tasks or questions to focus students’ attention on the main ideasin the text during a first, quick ‘diagonal’ reading about the topic. Teach your students ‘skimmed milk’ and relate reading for gist to ‘skimming’ the best part, the cream off the top of a bottle of milk. Get your students into the habit of reading the questions first and then using a finger to guide their eyes quickly over the texts – and to look up, close their books or raise their hands when...