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CONTENTS
ARGUMENT……………………………………………………………………………...3
I.TEACHING LANGUAGE………………………………………………………………4
1. Defining the concept of language…………………………………………4
2. Theories concerning language teaching…………………………………...4
3. Types of learning………………………………………………………….5
4. Principles of teaching a foreign language…………………………………6
II. CLASIFFICATION OF SKILLS………………………………………………………7
1. Receptive skills……………………………………………………………7
2. Productive skills…………………………………………………………...8
3. Differences between receptive and productive skills……………………..9
III. ASPECTS OF THE TEACHING READING PROCESS……………………………10
1. Why we read………………………………………………………………10
2. How we read……………………………………………………………....10
IV. READING IN THE LIGHT OF DIFERENT METHODS AND APPROACHES….13
1. Four methods for beginner students……………………………………...13
2. The oral and the situational language teaching approach………………..14
3. The audio-lingual method……………………………………………….16
4. The silent way method…………………………………………………..16
5. The direct method……………………………………………………….17
6. The lexical approach…………………………………………………….17
V. READING IN THE ENGLISH CLASS……………………………………………...19
1. Principles in teaching reading……………………………………………19
2. Stages and activities……………………………………………………...20
a) Pre-reading stage……………………………………………………..21
i. Strategies used in pre-reading………………………….21
b) While-reading
stage………………………………………………….22
i. Types of reading……………………………………….24
ii. Strategies used in while reading stage…………………24
iii. DEVELOPING READING SPEED……………………..33
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c) Post-reading stage……………………………………………………..38
i. General overview……………………………………...38
ii. Strategies used in post-reading……………………….38
3. Reading materials…………………………………………………………40
i. Ways of choosing reading materials………………….41
ii. Authentic texts in textbooks…………………………41
4. Reading difficulties……………………………………………………….42
VI. EVALUATING READING…………………………………………………………44
1. Types of evaluation……………………………………………………….44
2. Strategies of evaluation…………………………………………………...45
VII. TYPES OF EXERCISES IN READING …………………………………………..47
1. Skimming exercise……………………………………………………….47
2. Comprehension questions………………………………………………..47
3. Chart exercises…………………………………………………………...47
4. Organization exercises…………………………………………………...47
5. Visualization exercises…………………………………………………...47
6. Close exercises…………………………………………………………...47
7. Outline exercises…………………………………………………………48
8. Discussion questions……………………………………………………..48
VIII. READING GAMES………………………………………………………………..49
CLOSING REMARKS…………………………………………………………………..52
BIBLIOGRAFY………………………………………………………………………….53
APENDICES……………………………………………………………………………..55
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ARGUMENT
The aim of this paper is to provide a general overview concerning the process of teaching
reading in school. What should be taken into consideration is that teaching reading does not
imply only the development of reading skills but also of those of comprehension. The purpose of
our paper, on the one hand, is to clearly establish notions and classifications and on the other
hand to demonstrate the usefulness of those skills and how are they approached in school.
Consequently, the paper in discussion, structured in eight chapters, offers a proper
establishment of possible issues concerning: the process of teaching language, the approaches,
strategies and materials used in teaching reading and the obtaining of proficient results when
teaching reading.
We shall account the objective of this paper to be accomplished if it gives a considerable
acquaintance with the problem of teaching reading and, for that reason we have chosen amenable
examples to avoid the common errors that can arise.
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I.TEACHING LANGUAGE
1. Defining the concept of language
Like in any domain before talking about a part of a whole we have to talk first about the
whole in order to give a meaning to the part. That is what I will try to do with teaching reading; I
will try to integrate it in a whole and say that it represents a subpart in teaching language.
Language according to the Macmillan English Dictionary is “the method of human
communication using spoken or written words (…) language skills represents the ability to use a
language, especially a foreign language, well”1. As we can see the definition refers also to the
language skills, concept used when we are talking about teaching foreign languages. The learning
and teaching of a language can be found under the concept of language education and can include
improving a learner’s native language, but it is more commonly used with regard to second
language acquisition and is a branch of applied linguistics which is an interdisciplinary domain of
study that identifies, investigates and offers solutions to language related to real-life problems.
1 Macmillan English Dictionary for advanced learners, International Student Edition, p. 798;
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2. Theories concerning language teaching
About language teaching as a domain, scientists start talking in the 20 th century. The earliest
applied linguists, such as Heinrich Gottfried Ollendorff2, Henry Sweet3, Otto Jespersen4, and
Harold Palmer5, tried to set principles and approaches based on linguistic and psychological
theories and left many specific details for others to work on. The development of language
teaching is not linear because two branches developed in this field, empirical and theoretical,
each with its sustainers, who do not communicate or cooperate between them. The empirical
branch insisted on mimicry and memorization with pattern drills and in its most extreme form
emphasizes the idea that language learning is basically the same as any other learning on any
other species and through this associating the human language with the communication behaviors
seen on other species. The theoretical branch gave birth to teaching methods that helped students
create meaningful sentences to gain a functional knowledge of the rules of grammar. This is a
theory that wants to establish the fact that the man is born to think and language is a way of
expressing what he thinks and is a feature specific only to the human race.
3. Types of learning
According to Benjamin Bloom6, an American psychologist there is more than one type of
learning:
1. Cognitive- which refers to mental skills, more precisely to knowledge;
2. Affective- here we talk about growth of feelings or emotional areas ( attitudes)
3. Psychomotor- refers to manual or physical skills;
We are interested especially in psychomotor learning because it refers to skills: “the
psychomotor domain includes physical movement, coordination and use of motor-skill areas”7.
To develop these skills requires practice and is measured in terms of speed, precision, distance,
procedures or techniques in execution8. But as in any taxonomy one thing is related to the other
2Heinrich Gottfried Ollendorff( 1803-1865): German grammarian and language educator;3 Henry Sweet(1845-1912): English philologist, phonetician and grammarian specialized in Germanic languages particularly Old English and Old Norse;4 Otto Jespersen(1860-1943): Danish linguist specialized in the grammar of the English language;5 Harold E. Palmer(1877-1949): English linguist, phonetician and pioneer in the field of English language learning and teaching;6 Benjamin Bloom(1913-1999): American educational psychologist who contributed to the classification of educational objectives and to the theory of mastery learning;7www.nwlink.com/~Donclark/hrd/bloom.html : it is a site presenting the taxonomy that Bloom created for learning;8 The items listed are criteria proposed by Bloom to help develop the psychomotor skills;
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and this happens here too, because we can’t say for example that skills do not involve cognitive
or affective features. As a classification they are part of the psychomotor domain, but they
develop with the help of cognitive and affective fields and this process is reciprocal. In this way
we come to classify skills into two major categories: on the one hand as receptive and on the
other hand as productive, and so they can be included in the whole three domains that Bloom
proposed (cognitive, affective and psychomotor), because they involve knowledge and
development of intellectual skills, the manner we deal with things emotionally, (for example
when we read something and we have to identify values, different conflicts), and also involves
the use of physical movement, coordination and motor skill areas.
4. Principles of teaching a foreign language
The principles of teaching reading helps the teachers in planning a lesson because they
guide them in choosing the appropriate strategies, methods, exercises and activities. These
principles are:
The communicative principle- refers to the fact that we have to perceive the language as
means of communication. Language provides us with tools that help us establish
relationships with the others.
The meaningful learning principle tells the teachers to avoid grammar explanation
because they could neglect the main purpose. They should insist on developing students’
ability for analysis, synthesis and association, strategies that will later be useful when they
encounter new words or new structures and the teacher will not be there to explain it to
them.
The intrinsic motivation principle give the students the opportunity to find a purpose for
studying (that serve their own interest and pleasure) and not feeling obliged to accomplish
certain tasks.
The risk taking principle encourages students to adventure in guessing, making
assumptions and generates works independently based on their background knowledge.
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The language-culture connection principle. When students learn a foreign language they
should also learn about the native speakers of that language so when teachers are teaching
English language teachers should use information about the culture of the English people.
The affective principle promotes a positive environment in which the learning should take
place because the way in which a teacher presents in front of the students and the
atmosphere that he creates have a great impact upon them.
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II. CLASIFICATION OF SKILLS
I mentioned in the first chapter that skills are of two types:
Receptive skills- reading and listening;
Productive skills- speaking and writing;
These skills are taught irrespective of grade but on different levels of difficulty according to
students’ age and knowledge and they help the learners improve their second language
acquisition. Receptive and productive skills interact in a lesson because students needs to express
themselves, to write in order to preserve information, to listen to what the teacher is
demonstrating them and to read materials used by teacher. Although they are linked, teachers can
base their lesson on developing only one skill, depending on the purpose that they establish and
the methods, strategies and procedures they are using. In this way we can have a reading, a
listening, a speaking or a writing lesson according to their aims.
1. Receptive skills
Reading and listening are two skills that can be taught together in the way that one helps the
other to develop. When a teacher starts a new lesson on reading he can use tapes to play the text
to the students before actually reading it. This can help them read easier and faster in the same
time because on the one hand they heard the text so they are familiar with the sounds, words,
sentences and on the other hand they are familiar with the subject. These things help them
prepare for reading because they activates their prior knowledge and together with it the
vocabulary that they already possess and that enables them the comprehension process. Although
the students might not understand everything on the tape they have the general picture and it is
enough because the other problems will be solved during the reading process. So we can use the
tape during the pre-reading stage to activate the background knowledge or at the beginning of the
while-reading stage to launch a task before reading the material to make students focus on certain
issues that we have in view. Reading can also be used in a listening lesson either in the pre-
listening stage or in the while-listening stage for the same reasons and with the same purposes
mentioned above.
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We teach listening skills in order to make learners be able to identify and understand what
other people are saying at normal speed and in normal conditions. From a listening class we
expect students to discriminate between distinctive features of sounds, to recognize reduced
forms of words, recognize grammar classes, to distinguish between literal and implied meaning,
while in a reading class the students have to distinguish between orthographic patterns, to
recognize words at sight and to make the distinction between the main idea and the specific
information. Of course the list with objectives is very long and it doesn’t stop here; I only
mentioned some of them in order to see that there is a distinction between reading and listening.
Reading is a receptive skill which involves a lot of guessing, predicting, checking and asking
oneself questions. The reading passage activates the students’ mental structure, develops their
capacity of inference, anticipation, deduction, analysis, synthesis and at the same time it
stimulates their capacity for appreciation and critical thinking.
Like other things that are distinctive but are parts of the same category, the two skills go hand
in hand. Teachers can’t have a reading class without listening topics and vice versa and we can’t
firmly state that one is more important than the another. They become important one at a time
when a teacher establishes his purposes according to students’ needs.
2. Productive skills
Spoken and written languages are obviously different in form and purposes too. What we
write remains written and we can go back to see and remember but what we speak is fleeting and
ephemeral. In teaching we can’t afford to waste words or to use words at random because we risk
making ourselves misunderstood and because we have to enrich students’ vocabulary with
appropriate terminology. When children are learning to write, their starting points are their
understanding of the syntax and structure of oral language. The ability to write begins from a
sound foundation in oral language. The interrelationships of speech and writing can be seen in the
writer’s acquisition of written language at the emergent and early stages. Initially, children’s oral
language greatly outstrips their ability in written language. As children control the procedures of
writing and develop a strategy of approximating spelling, they are able to write down on paper
what they can already say. When they are first taught to write, children’s works reflect and
interact with their spoken language, and contain many of the personal, context-bound qualities of
their speech. Their writing starts to get and build its own distinctive structures and patterns of
organization.
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3. Differences between receptive and productive skills
The main differences between productive and receptive skills is that the first refers to
production and the latter to recognition, respectively productive skills refer to production of
words, sentences, texts etc., and receptive skills to recognition: of sounds, words, sentences,
details from a text etc. but the two types of skills go hand in hand because receptive skills can be
acquired through the teaching of productive skills and productive skills can be improved through
the teaching of receptive skills. So, as we can see, the difference lies only in the form because in
reality both types of skills refer to the same thing; the problem is how they are acquired.
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III. ASPECTS OF THE TEACHING READING PROCESS
1. Why we read?
Because of the things stated in the early pages it appears a very important and interesting
question: Why we read? A very good answer to this question is given in the book “In Service
Distance Training Course for Teachers of English”9 which shows that we read for pleasure and
because we need information. We need the message that a writer wants to be discovered in his
text. It doesn’t matter if this message is truth, delight ness, ideas or feelings.
For students, reading in English is a means of improving their language itself: “Some of the
language read will stick in their mind as part of the process of language acquisition. Reading also
provides models for writing, opportunities to practice and develop the reading skill, and to foster
cultural insights and understanding. It is essential in the teaching of literature which is an
important goal in many syllabi”10.
2. How we read?
We saw the main reasons for which we read but the way we read is also very important.
There are two ways of reading: reading aloud or silently. Normally, reading is a silent activity
and the students should be encouraged to read silently. But reading aloud can be useful for
beginners, especially in checking their pronunciation; however this does not help them when it
comes to comprehend a text, and reading aloud should not be used very often because it may
create the impression that all texts should be read similarly.
A read aloud11 is a planned oral reading of a book or print excerpt, usually related to a theme
or topic of study. The read aloud can be used to engage the student listener while developing
background knowledge, increasing comprehension skills, and fostering critical thinking. A read
aloud can be used to model the use of reading strategies that help in comprehension.
One of the most important things adults can do in preparing children for success in school and
in reading is to read aloud with them. The advantages of this is that the children develop listening
and comprehension skills through dialogues during and after the reading, they enlarge their 9 Balan, Radu; Ciunta, Cristina; Gheorghiu, Eliza; Cehan, Anca: In Service Distance Training Course for Teachers of English, Polirom, 200310 Idem11 http://www.esiponline.org/classroom/foundations/reading/readalouds.html
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vocabulary by hearing words in context, they work their memory and improve language skills
because they encounter a different writing styles and paraphrase their understanding. They also
get information about the world around them and through this they develop individual interests in
a wide variety of subjects and imagination and creativity.
Read aloud can inspire the teacher, too. Often early childhood or elementary teachers are
uncomfortable when they have to teach science topics. They know they should bring to the
students more than the textbook offers, but they do not feel like 'experts' in the science content or
process. Using read aloud can harmonize the syllabus and help students make connections
between their knowledge, the textbook and their own inquiry.
Read aloud can be very useful because we can use it any time in the lesson. For example we
can introduce lessons, we can offer an introduction to new concepts and enlarge science
vocabulary, decrease the abstract nature of science textbooks’ explanation, begin a conversation
and generate questions for discussion and investigations or we can provide content to support
hands-on investigations.
When students are provided with models and explanations of the reasoning involved in
reading, they are better able to use the modelled strategies on their own. We don’t have to solve
everything with one read aloud because we can use a wide range of opportunities to go back on a
particular topic that we dealt with.
But as we can see read aloud is very useful with beginners so we shouldn’t transfer these data
to intermediate or advanced students or if we do it, we should limit these opportunities so we
don’t receive negative signals from our students.
Silent reading is a form of school-based recreational reading, where students read silently in a
pre-determined time period every day in school. A general assumption of silent reading is that
students learn to read by reading constantly. Successful models of silent reading usually allow
students to choose their own books and require neither testing for comprehension nor book
reports. Its success lies in helping comprehension process to develop and increase because it
promotes very well the four styles of reading: intensive, extensive, skimming and scanning.
Comprehension is hard to be achieved by practicing read aloud style because the reader
concentrates more on the fact of reading aloud than to capture the message of the passage and the
meaning of the sentences. When reading silently the student focuses his attention only on the text
and on the meaning that it conveys.
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IV. READING IN THE LIGHT OF DIFFERENT METHODS AND APPROACHES
1. Four methods for beginner students
There are four methods which are used in teaching reading, mostly at beginners’ level.
a) Phonics- this method relies on children being taught the alphabet first. They
learn the names of the letters and the sounds they make. Once they have learnt the letter sounds
they begin to blend two letters together, to make simple words, then three letters and so forth.
a-t i-t o-n i-f b-e m-e n-o w-e i-n h-e
c-a-t s-a-t m-a-t f-a-t p-a-t r-a-t c-a-r g-o-d m-e-n
f-l-a-t p-l-a-t t-h-a-t s-p-i-t g-r-i-t s-l-i-t
Children need special books on phonics to practise this type of reading and have satisfactory
results. They have to practise the sounds until each of them reach the highest level outcome.
The cat sat on the mat. The hen is in a pen.
b) Look and Say- with this method children learn to recognize the whole words or
sentences rather than individual sounds. The teacher will sound a word that the pupils are looking
at, and they have to repeat that word. We can use flashcards with written words accompanied by
pictures. However, it is recommended to use short sentences rather than individual words. When
we use short sentences that display the picture, a teacher has to say the sentence and a student to
repeat it while the teacher is pointing word by word following the student.
the is rat mat the on
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the rat is on the mat
The look and say method was developed by modern psychologists and denies the students the
tools used by the Phonic method, promoting rote memorization. Students risk to become poorer
readers because they repeat only what the teachers say, but if we manage to combine the both
methods than the students would have a lot of benefits.
c) The Language Experience Approach- this method uses students own words to
help them read. We may ask the students to perform certain drawings, for example a picture with
a dad in a car. Underneath the drawing the teacher can write “Dad is in the car”. We continue to
collect drawings and write underneath them until the children will begin to trace over the written
words and write them all alone.
The Language Experience Approach is also a form of communication between the teacher
and the student through those drawings and it promotes children’s concept development and
vocabulary growth while offering many opportunities for meaningful reading and writing
activities through the use of personal experience and oral language.
d) Context Support Method- when the students are just learning to read it is very
important to choose books that interest them. For examples if boys like cars we should choose
books that have pictures with cars and simple words, and if girls like dolls we should choose
books with doll images and simple words underneath.
2. The Oral Approach and the Situational Language Teaching
This method refers to the fact that structures must be presented in situations in which they
could be used. The theory of learning underlying Situation Language Teaching is behaviourism,
addressing more to the process than to the conditions of learning. This theory includes some
principles that that help the teacher to structure his lesson. One of these principles is that
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language learning is habit formation. For example, when it comes to teach reading skills we can
say that we encourage students to read all the time, to increase their speed in reading to
comprehend better and so on. But this encouragement practised day by day becomes a habit and
they know they have to read more because this is the only way to achieve information and to
develop and improve new skills.
The second principle of this method says that mistakes are bad and should be avoided because
they make bad habits. When we teach reading we permanently should instruct and supervise
students more or less in a subtle way, because they are constantly making mistakes: of
pronunciation, stress, intonation, grammar errors and we have to be there to correct them.
Mistakes are not always bad because the children learn from them and when they encounter
something similar they recall the moment in time, when they were corrected, and will not repeat
the error.
The other principles refer to the fact that analogy is a better foundation for language learning
than analysis, and that meanings of words can be learned only in a linguistic and cultural context.
These two principles fit to teaching reading perfectly because we need to teach vocabulary in a
reading lesson, we need the students not to learn by heart the new words, we also have to enrich
their cultural background, and in the same way teachers have to develop abilities that help the
express on a matter that they enjoy without any problems. That is why these principles promote
the use of appropriate material for reading that can help teachers reach a diversity of objectives
and purposes. In order to achieve all these we have to base our lessons on these principles to
make students understand, comprehend and implicitly use the new words and information
whenever they are asked to and not forget what they learnt. It is psychologically proved that from
the moment that we use analogy and association it is easier for us to remember something or even
to create connections better. For example if we explain to students what a pencil means, or we try
to translate it in his language or into the target language, will be harder for them to understand or
even remember later, as the amount of new words in a target language is very big. But if we try to
compare it with another word or object, and try to find similarities, for example, it would be
easier for the student to learn the word because he integrates it in a structure, in a context, getting
a specific meaning in the way that he understands, as he thinks it is easier for him to remember.
Practising these theories a student may find step by step his own way of studying, his own style,
that goes with his personality, his knowledge and his perspective on world. Also by using this
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method in teaching reading, we create the ability for the students to respond quickly and
accurately in speech situations. They can be more accurate in both pronunciation and grammar
and they can achieve an automatic control of basic structures and sentence patterns.
3. The Audio-Lingual Method
This method had a quick success by leading learners towards communicative competence.
Through extensive mimicry, memorization and over-learning of language patterns and forms,
students and teachers were often able to see immediate results on what they were doing. This was
both its strength and its failure, as critics began to point out that the method did not deliver in
terms of producing long term communicative ability. Through the procedures that it uses, this
method is very much narrowed and doesn’t give students the freedom in speech and creativity.
Reading skills may be taught but they are dependent on prior oral skills, because when
introduced, the students are taught to read what they have already learnt to say orally. With the
help of the drill that it uses this method underlines and solves problems of pronunciation,
intonation, stress and rhythm.
4. The Silent Way Method
The objective of this method is that students work as independent language learners. The
teacher speaks very little when using this method and his role is to draw the learners’ attention to
the way that they are going about the act of learning. The use of this method requires specific
materials, like a colour wall chart, word wall charts, a spelling chart and rods. This method
enables us to teach reading because we can use specific materials to introduce new vocabulary,
comprehension issues, grammar items and so on. We can also use this method when we deal with
pictures, because reading is not limited to the written text. For example, we can use a picture with
two kids playing in the yard with a ball. We can have the student’s make-up a story based on
what they are seeing in that image. Or we can use a picture from a lesson we have just taught to
change the ending of the text.
On a lesson about animals, let’s say, we can build up a chart with the animals name by using
the colours that they have; we can do the same with a text about flowers or anything else. By
combining the name with the representative colour of the animal or flower, the student can
16
identify easier the respective animal or plant, because the impact of the colour in association with
the name creates a connection in students’ mind, activating their background knowledge. Of
course it may happen that they don’t recognize the animal but generally the lessons use familiar
topics that students came across at least once in their life. Another example of chart is with
morals and images that the students have to match.
This method helps the students to develop their own creativity, gives them the impression of
freedom and also I think it develops the confidence that they should possess when it comes to
express what they think, believe and know.
5. The Direct Method
Using this method teachers can create a cultural context by providing to the students
information about the text that is going to be read. By doing this teachers can increase the
students’ interest in the specific topic and their cultural background. This method relies on
teaching speaking skills mostly because its principle is that a child’s learning starts off with a
blank sheet of paper, after which he begins collecting, selecting and organizing the experience of
a totally new world, perceived through his sense, by formulating a variety of pre-verbal concepts.
6. The Lexical Approach
When using this method a teacher should select texts that contain collocations and other
lexical units such as binomials, trinomials, idioms, similes, connectives, conversational gambits.
This could be a very interesting lesson because teachers can combine a variety of methods and
the students could work more independently. The procedures that accompany this method are:
Teaching individual collocations;
Making students aware of collocation;
Extending what students know by adding knowledge of collocation
restrictions to known vocabulary;
Storing collocations through encouraging students to keep a lexical
notebook;
All the methods mentioned above can be used in teaching reading and help develop the
reading skills at a certain level. There are also some approaches and other methods that
concentrate more on developing other skills, like listening, speaking, writing or communicative
17
skills and when it comes to reading skills they don’t have the necessary resources that could be
used to make a reading class proficient. They aim at something else than getting a student who
reads faster, or comprehends a text faster, deciphers a text more rapidly and so on.
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V. READING IN THE ENGLISH CLASS
We established earlier that generally speaking we read for two main reasons: for pleasure and
the need for information. But for the children, reading in English is also a means of improving
language itself. Sometimes the only function that the students see in a reading class is that
English HAS to be learnt or reading techniques HAVE to be learnt. When students think like this
their motivation is low and if they see no other purpose in reading than which we make them do
it, then the reading lessons will be unsuccessful.
1. Principles in teaching reading
There are a series of principles that we should consider when we teach reading because not all
classes focus on the same thing. One could aim at developing reading skills while others can
include reading skills as part of integrative practice. What activities should be performed in a
reading class depend on the principles mentioned above, principles which incorporate:
The needs, interests and abilities o the students. We should perform activities that
we think the students could encounter in English, and we have to take into consideration the
kinds of texts the students read in Romanian. We also should ask ourselves if the strategies and
skills that children already possess in Romanian can be transferred to English reading tasks.
The aims of a particular lesson. A teacher should synchronize the reading
activities with the aims and the other work that is practised during the lesson.
The purpose for reading a certain lesson. The types of activities that we perform in the
reading class should determine the students to make an active decision and assume some risks.
Doing these we want them to become independent readers who set their own goals and strategies
for reading.
The specific characteristics of the reading text. When we choose a certain type of reading,
the text we should take into consideration should help us develop activities and contexts that
follow the same track of the most realistic and appropriate approaches of a given text.
Individual pupil’s needs. Every student is different in the way that they have different levels
of knowledge, different cultural backgrounds and different personalities. That is why when we
plan a reading lesson we should have in mind these things and we should try to build up activities
19
that fits almost all the student, but by not neglecting our aims or trying to develop a certain type
of reading, let’s say, on a student that lacks that kind of skill. For example, if a student is good in
skimming a text than in scanning we should assign him activities that include skimming a text;
but we also have to name him to another task in order to develop the other types of reading and
transform the student into a better reader. But this is not the only reason that we should alternate
the reading styles, because we should take into consideration that a reading class could lower
students’ interest or motivation. That’s why we should choose a variety of texts, that suits our
students’ goals and interests, and practice appropriate techniques. Our texts should not be
selected at random because in a reading class we aim at some sub skills that should be
encountered in the texts that we choose. When we choose a text we should be able to work on it
drills of comprehension, use different style, express a critic opinion upon the text and also the
students should learn through reading in terms of language problems and content.
Related to these things Dana Anca Cehan, explains in her book “Limba si Literatura Engleza-
EFL Methodology I”12 that: “your pupils should be able to identify the purpose and the function
of a text, its main topic and the way the topic is developed through different paragraphs (…).
Your pupils should be able to skim, scan and read intensively and extensively, according to their
purpose”13 . she also stated that although from time to time may arise language problems the
students should be able to decipher individual sentences using strategies for dealing with new
vocabulary.
As a conclusion I think that depending on how a teacher chooses his activities and texts for a
reading lesson the students become eager to read. The teacher can sow the seed for reading
through what he does or says; he represents an example for his students and he could be the only
one who can awake students’ interest for something.
2. Stages and activities
In order to have some results when we teach something and for the students to understand and
learn something, a lesson has to be planned and must follow a certain pattern to create logic.
Every skill that is taught has some particular stages; in the case of reading they are:
12 Cehan, Dana-Anca: EFL Methodology I, Program postuniversitar de conversie profesionala pentru cadrele didactice din mediul rural, Ministerul Educatiei si cercetarii, 2006, p. 16513 Ibidem
20
1. Pre-reading stage;2. While-reading stage;3. Post-reading stage;
1. The Pre-Reading stage
The main purpose of this stage is to introduce students to the topic at the text they are about to
read. A teacher also uses this stage to activate students’ background knowledge concerning the
subject matter, to activate and to introduce the vocabulary related to the topic and to develop their
interests in what they are about to read.
There are theorists who claim that this stage is one of the most important because we can’t
rely only on the printed pages to stimulate ideas which already exist or not in readers’ heads.
What we can expect from these printed pages is to highlight or restructure these ideas in a fresh
way. That is why is it very important to activate prior knowledge and include it in the
comprehension process.
Prior knowledge refers to all the knowledge which readers have acquired through their lives.
But the activation of prior knowledge assumes the use of some specific strategies that also help to
increase this prior knowledge and students’ interest on the topic forcing them to be more active.
i. Strategies used in pre-reading
a) Brainstorming;
b) Class discussions;
c) Semantic mapping;
d) Pre-questions;
e) Visual aids;
f) Advance organizers;
a) In the session of brainstorming the teacher asks students to examine together the title of
the selection they are about to read. The teacher lists on the board all the information that comes
to mind as students read the text. These pieces of information are then used to further recall and,
in the process, considerable knowledge will be activated.
b) Class discussions is another strategy together with informal talk, used in or out of the
class. They serve as techniques to discover readings. Over a period of time teachers can begin to
21
get some idea as to what their students know and can adjust the time needed to be spent on
background information.
c) Brainstorming strategies are also used in semantic mapping but this strategy is organized
and controlled by the teacher. As students offer their personal ideas about a topic the teacher
writes these ideas on the board. In brainstorming all ideas are written on the board while in
semantic mapping they are organized on the board under headings. The diagram represents the
information elicited from the students but created in such a way that qualities and relationships
are evident. During active reading students can also use semantic maps because as they read, they
can include new information on their maps. During post-readings students can use their maps as a
review of information gained.
d) Whenever teachers or students decided on questions to be answered by reading, they are
activating prior knowledge. These questions are referred to as the strategy of pre-questioning and
they tend to focus attention and to provide purposeful reading. Teacher can accomplish this by
preparing questions in advance of reading. This will help in guiding students as they complete
their reading assignment. The teacher can also help students develop their own questions which
will enable them to establish purposes and to focus attention.
e) In order to appeal at students’ prior knowledge teachers make use of visual aids which are
pictures or other visual materials. If a student has a schema for vegetables, a simple picture may
serve to recall appropriate knowledge. We can also show this picture of a vegetable before
students start to read a text on this topic. The picture will help to outline students’ image on
vegetables.
f) There are also procedures that help increase prior knowledge with the purpose of creating a
strong background knowledge that students should use when talking about a certain topic. We
can do this by using accretion14 for example, which operates by introducing new information into
a schemata that students already possess. Each time a teacher teaches something new or he only
makes reference to it a student will keep everything in its memory or at least parts of it. What he
kept in his memory together with sufficient classroom discussions and experience, in time, the
students’ schema will expand and will help them to better understand the text. But it could
happen, that what students thought about a certain topic to not correspond with what they are
14 It is a term that refers to a gradual increasing of a whole by adding new parts;
22
learning after that and from this moment it begins the reconstruction. The students must replace
step by step what they learnt before with what they learnt after and this could be a very difficult
thing because the new information tends to stay in the way of the one.
In order to bring up and increase the prior knowledge a teacher could also create in students’
mind, by addressing certain questions and making certain associations, connections that help
them understand the text better. They also can make use of real objects or real situations because
when a student sees, touches, uses and experiences all these his memory suffers a great impact.
Real experience can, however, be replaced with the experience lived through readings. This
happens when actual experience can’t be used and the teacher then encourages wide reading in
order to provide the students with information about people, places, events and situations.
Before students start reading text we should discuss about assignments that they will have. A
teacher can do this by using class discussions, printed previews, photographs, outlines or films.
We should never give an assignment before we have discussed about it because a teacher should
make sure he spent enough time with this in order for the students to know what they have to do,
that they have understood the assignment. An assignment could contain or refer to topics that
involve unfamiliar words. Students should be taught these key words before reading because
background information and comprehension should increase in the same time. We could do this
by listing all words in the assignment, arrange them to show the relationships to the learning tasks
and add other words that students already know and understand in order to create connections and
relationships between what they know and what they don’t know but they are about to find out.
A problem that must be solved every time in the pre-reading stage is to capture students’
attention and maintain it active during the whole lesson. That is why we must set a purpose in
pre-reading stage by using direct questions, questions from class discussions or brainstorming or
from every individual student along with predictions about the outcome and problems that need
to be solved. All these can come from the student or from the teacher but the teacher should guide
students towards the direction of the assigned selection.
So as you can see pre-reading is a very important stage in teaching reading, because it can be
very interactive, a thing that is indicated if we want to have satisfactory results at the end of a
class. And this is only one of the aspects that sustain the higher importance of this stage, the
others being already discussed above.
23
2. While-Reading
We already established that people read with a purpose and the purposes for the students were
established in the pre-reading stage in order to have an appropriate while-reading and post-
reading stage.
The while-reading stage is a very complex one because it develops and increases a variety of
sub skills and implies a lot of practice in reading and in setting and solving different exercises
that help among other things the comprehension of a text. It refers to the reading of a text and
together with it to the introducing of new vocabulary, of grammar, comprehension problems and
problems of pronunciation, stress or intonation. In order to go through these items the teacher
uses a series of strategies and procedures.
i. Types of reading
According to the purposes and aims that we establish for a lesson there are four types of
reading that help the student understand the text on different levels and makes them work with it
from various points of view. These types of reading are:
Skimming - involves quickly running one’s eyes through a text to get its general idea.
Skimming involves some interpretations because it depends on the interest of each person. For
example, let’s take a scientific film. I can be interested in the theme of the book and someone
could be interested if the book is good or bad.
Scanning -is a quickly going through a text to search for particular information and when
we found it we stop reading.
Intensive reading - called also focusing it is used mostly in acquiring language
competence under a teacher’s guidance. It focuses less on the content of a text and more on
language. During this type of reading learners take notes, highlight important parts, and identify
details and the whole activity is based on comprehension. Learners concentrate on the semantic
and linguistic details of the passages. There are also some specific texts to be used with this type
of reading, which are: letters, postcards, telegrams, notes, maps, timetables, reports, etc., mainly
functional texts. But intensive reading does not always contribute to the development of reading
skills and that is why we have to constantly make a distinction between the use of reading for
acquiring language competence and the use of reading for developing reading skills.
24
Extensive reading - it is also called receptive and it refers to the reading of texts for own
one’s pleasure mostly. With the extensive reading we are interested on the informational content
of a text. Extensive reading is an activity characterized by fluency, which involves total
understanding and in which the readers do not check every unknown word or structure. For such
type of reading a teacher could use artistic texts, such as diary pages, extracts from novels,
stories, articles from newspapers, jokes etc. We can ask ourselves why pupils should be
encouraged to read extensively and this question has more than one answer. First, extensive
reading exposes them to different registers of the target language that they will meet in the varied
contexts. This type of reading broadens and increases their vocabulary which helps them to
develop their effective communication. Then, when a student reads a text in its entirety, he gains
confidence and it aids concentration for reading by expanding their attention span. Also in an
organized system, the extensive reading lesson provides a break from the rigors of closely
supervised lesson and enables the pupils to deepen in a text that really interests the. Lastly,
reading opens up a whole new world, enabling the readers to learn about other people-their
cultures and outlooks, and the reasons for which they behave in certain ways.
25
ii. Strategies used in the while-reading stage
The types of reading discussed above imply a number of different strategies used to guide the
students towards the solving of the target assignment. The techniques that the teacher chooses
depend on the text that they are going to read, on the reasons for which they are reading the text
and on the strategies that are available to the readers. The students should possess certain
techniques and they should be taught to select the appropriate one de pending on the text they are
reading. “ Reading aloud or silent reading, global or sentence-level reading, linear reading,
skimming and scanning, are all real-world reading skills, therefore they must be practiced fully
and regularly in the classroom”15.
a) Global reading – fast silent reading
This strategy is used when the students learn “to read for meaning”16. After we proposed a
task using the global reading strategy, the students may be asked to skim the text, to see what it is
about or to scan it to find specific information. Skimming and scanning are fast silent strategies
and while the skimmer looks for the main idea the one that scans the text targets specific
information, but neither the skimmer nor the scanner reads every word of the text because they
aim for the general idea, for the message and the meaning of the passage. Silent reading
techniques are used with the purpose of eliminating word for word reading “to get beyond the
sentence level reading and focus on the message as a whole”17.
When reading a text from the beginning to the end, sentence by sentence, the students tend to
concentrate on unimportant details losing the essential ideas and evidently failing to understand
the text. Silent and fast reading strategies enable the students to look for main facts, dates in order
to get the whole picture, the meaning and the message of the text. In the same time the new words
are learnt through context, the students must decipher the meaning of a word using the other
words around it, they are encouraged to make guesses and use these words outside the context.
The teacher should use a time limit for every task when he uses skimming and scanning and in
this way students will not be tempted to read word by word being involved actively in the
process. A teacher can use as tasks multiple choice exercises that allow guessing, or dual choice,
15 Vizental, Adriana: Metodica predarii limbii engleze, Polirom, 2008, p. 15416 Ibidem17 Idem
26
a grid to fill out questions to answer and in this way students must filter out the relevant
information faster and “ignore the non-relevant details”18. Effective reading involves active
interaction between the reader and the text. So the reader makes use of the knowledge of his
vocabulary, sentence structures as well as prior knowledge on that specific topic to get meaning
from the text. In order to help students read effectively we should not limit only on asking them
to prepare the reading text at home or on explaining to them the whole text or just have them
answer the comprehension questions in the course book. Our aim is to give students a purpose to
read and this to offer information that they can use and we can do this by using, for example, the
jigsaw reading.
Jigsaw reading works like a jigsaw puzzle. Each student in a group is given a part of a story
to read. He has to read and comprehend it all by himself in order to report to the other members
of the group. After each member has reported the different part of the story, the whole group
works together rearranging the parts to recover the original story. In order to create a jigsaw
reading text we can use any coherent passage and it would be more interesting to use short stories
that the students can easily read independently without the help of a teacher or of a dictionary.
We can divide the story between episodes. For example, having divided the story into four parts,
we make copies so that each student is only allowed to read a part from the all four of the story.
To make the activity more exciting we can turn it into a competition.
The jigsaw reading can be used at all levels. At lower primary level, we can use sentences and
instead of breaking a story up we break up a sentence into short chunks at the meaning
boundaries.
Example: The beautiful cat / jumped rapidly / in the middle of / the street.
In upper primary we can ask them to rearrange jumbled sentences of a story.
The purpose of the jigsaw reading is to give students a feeling of satisfaction which is gained
when they complete a task. In the above examples students read with a purpose: to transfer
information to their friends and in this way to reconstruct the story. Through this we can also
check the level of comprehension by asking the group to retell the story to the class. We can then
briefly analyze the text for example quote connectives, cohesion markers or flow of ideas to see
18 Vizental, Adriana: Metodica predarii limbii engleze, Polirom, 2008, p. 154
27
why apart should follow the other. We can introduce story grammar: the setting, the theme, the
plot, characters and in this way the students can read more effectively as they have a better
schema to rely on.
What I tried to do here was to analyze a procedure that a teacher can use in the while reading
stage. We can use jigsaw to stimulate the students’ mind to think freely and creatively. It
establishes cooperation between members of a group in order to solve the task because without
cooperation the students wouldn’t be able to complete the task successful. It also improves
reading ability whether the story is understood or not and together with this it stimulates also
speaking because the students have to tell the story. Jigsaw reading is fun and interesting and can
be used any time a teacher feels that is losing her students during a reading lesson and not only.
This procedure was an example to show the advantages of the global reading technique and to
emphasize its usefulness in the classroom.
b) Sentence level-reading
After the message and the meaning has been reached students are guided towards
sentence-level reading. On this level teacher introduces problems of grammar, they have to deal
with words and to work with linguistic issues.
c) Guide to mapping
This strategy helps the student to rearrange and reorganize the most important ideas and
information from a text and converting it into a diagram by using their own words with the
purpose of understanding better the text and to remember what they read.
A teacher can use different types of diagrams according to the tasks they want to establish or
to the problems they want the students to solve. They can use charts or matrixes (to compare and
contrast qualities, examples, descriptions and facts), stars or spiders (to show themes, definitions,
examples, descriptions), trees or hierarchies (to show categories, classifications, analysis,
structures, descriptions and examples), chains (to show processes, sequences, causes and effects,
chronological order and steps), flowcharts (to show relationships between diagrams, points of
overlap and points of distinction) or sketches (to show physical structures, visual images,
concrete objects, spatial relationships and descriptions of places).
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EXAMPLES19:
Types of maps to be used
Use Charts or Matrixes to compare and contrast qualities, examples, descriptions, and facts.
Use Stars or Spiders to show themes, examples, descriptions, and definitions.
Use Trees or Hierarchies to show categories, classifications, analysis, structures, descriptions, and examples.
Use Chains to show processes, sequences, causes and effects, chronological order, and steps.
Use Flowcharts/Venn Diagrams to show relationships between diagrams, points of overlap, and points of distinction.
Use Sketches to show physical structures, visual images, concrete objects, spatial relationships, and descriptions of places.
Figure 1
d) Sensitising techniques20
A. Inferring
19 http://depts.gallaudet.edu/Englishworks/reading/mapping.html20 Terminology used by Anca Cehan that says they enable practice with the strategies the students need to handle the new words and structures.
29
Students discover the meaning of unknown items by using contextual clues and in this way
the teacher does not have to explain the unfamiliar words, but to encourage the students to guess
their meaning based on how they are formed or to create connections throughout the text in order
to decipher it.
B. Understanding relations within the sentence
The students have to look first for the subject and the verb of a sentence and then after the
other elements that together give meaning to the construction. They can do this by dividing
passages into parts and analyzing the important elements.
C. Understanding cohesion
This refers to the various devices that link sentences and ideas and which students must be
able to recognize. “We may offer them exercises in recognizing the function of connectors and
deictic terms, finding equivalents, completing texts with the missing link-words, transforming
disconnected sentences into coherent text by joining sentences and adding connectors”21 .
e) A teacher’s lesson is based very much on the fact that students should comprehend what
they read. When we come with a text in the front of the students, our aim is that at the end of the
lesson they should know what the text is about. To achieve this we use a series of comprehension
strategies.
A. Creating connections with the text by using students’ prior knowledge. These connections
can be made between the text and the reader’s personal experience, between a text being read and
a text that had been previously read and between a text being read and something that occurs in
the real world.
B. Questioning helps students clarify and deepen understanding of the text they are reading.
Comprehension questions can take many forms: yes/ no, true or false, multiple choice, grids or
charts and open-ended questions. The types of questions that we use should be selected according
to students’ purposes in reading and to what we know about their prior knowledge. The use of
these questions enables students to use their variety of skills in appropriate ways.
21 Balan, Radu; Ciunta, Cristina; Gheorghiu, Eliza; Cehan, Anca: In Service Distance Training Course for Teachers of English, Polirom, 2003, p.172
30
Asking questions in the classroom is not always a successfully strategy and does not always
help us to reach our purpose because the students may have different background knowledge or
our questions are not well formulated so that we can make them be attentive.
C. Visualizing - the use of pictures help students engage with a text in ways that make it
personal and memorable. The students adapt their mental images as they continue to read.
D. Synthesizing - implies the process of thinking which involves and changes as the reader
gathers more information. But the students cannot keep everything they receive so the new
information makes the reader re-evaluate his schema and form anew one.
Using the comprehension strategies in teaching reading we develop some comprehension
subskills like: summarizing, sequencing, comparing and contrasting, drawing conclusions, self-
questioning, problem-solving, relating background knowledge, distinguishing between fact and
opinion.
f) Reading conferences are used to engage students in meaningful conversations about the
books they had to read for the class. This strategy gives the student a feeling of accomplishment
and can learn new things from each other, share new perspectives on the same book and learn
new strategies that maybe they didn’t use on that book. This strategy presents many advantage
and not only on the level of teaching reading. Competition is strength of reading conferences and
stimulates students to reach a higher level in every moment. But it also has a weak point because
there may be students that are shy, who are meeting difficulties to express themselves and so they
could be marginalized or they will interact less in these conferences.
g) SQ3R 22
This technique can be used from the pre-reading stage up to the post-reading one. The first
task from the abbreviation, survey, can be applied in the pre-reading because it sends the student
to look at the title, headings, captions under pictures, charts, graphs or maps, introductory and
concluding paragraphs. Students can make up questions from the titles, headings or subheadings
they are reading and try to answer them by skimming or scanning the text. This helps them get
the general picture of the text. They can also read questions from the end of the chapters or after
22 SQ3R is an abbreviation for Survey! Question! Read! Recite! Review! http://www.studygs.net/texred2.htm
31
each subheading. These questions can be considered almost as study goals because understanding
the answers can help students structure the information in their minds.
When the actual reading begins we should look for answers to the questions we first read, pay
attention to the underlined, italicized, bold printed words or phrases, because they are key words
for the understanding of the text. Students should read slowly the passages that contain
complicated and densE information, and they can also re-read it if it wasn’t clear for them what
the author wanted to say. Reciting determines the student to ask himself questions about what he
just read or to summarize the passage to see if he understood the text
The last point of the strategy can be worked during more than one day and implies many
types of exercises. The purpose of this review is to point out the main ideas of the text but also to
deplete the text and give the students the chance to become proficient. The review can be
performed in the classroom under the guidance of the teacher or at home independently but under
the form of homework and special assignments.
h) Reader’s theater
The purpose of this strategy is to involve the students in the reading process and in the subject
of the text implicitly and to aid in the interpretation of the text while they internalize the
information. The reasoning for this is that the more engaged the students are in the text, the more
they comprehend and it is also a good way to motivate students to read more because it is fun.
There are many strategies to be used in the while-reading stage, many more than I quoted
here, but they all depend on the objectives that we establish at the beginning of the lesson, on
what we want to achieve with the students. Every strategy has its strengths and its weaknesses but
if we practiSe enough we can learn to control or avoid them and explore only the good parts. Or,
we can use the weak points to discover new things about the students: who talks more or less,
who prepared the homework better, who reads supplementary books and so on. The important
thing is to use this variety of strategies and alternate them on every lesson in order to keep awake
students’ attention, interests and pleasure for learning and implicitly reading.
32
iii. DEVELOPING READING SKILLS IN SCHOOLS
In order to prove the limited time that teachers spend with developing these types of
skills, especially when the students are from a math class and are studying only two hours of
English, as a second language, per week, I went and practised some tests to check their abilities
on reading speed.
I selected two texts (authentic ones) because the students were from 11 th grade and their
level of study was the advanced one. First of all, when the lesson began, I told the students that
we were going to work some exercises based on two texts but I didn’t tell them that I was going
to measure their reading speed so that they won’t feel to much pressure and have low results. I
gave them the impression that, that was a regular lesson in which they have to practice exercises
as usual. I began my experiment by giving them the first text with the face turned down,
explaining the students that they should turn the page when I say so and start reading from the
moment they see the text.
A test contained three pages: on two pages was the actual text, and on the other were the
comprehension question regarding that text. The pages with comprehension questions contained
skimming and scanning exercises on separate pages being two different tasks. The difference
between the two tests was that with the first I told the students to set a time that they thought they
need to skim the text and then a time to scan it and second text I was the one setting the time for
the types of exercises. My purpose was to prove that the difference between the time set by the
students to read the first text and the time set by me was a very big one. This thing was supposed
to show that the students’ reading skills are very little developed, because when they take their
time to read they set their real speed in reading, while when they are forced to read in a given
period that is appropriate skimming and scanning a specific text they stumble.
With the first text, which had a well-liked subject, the first task was for the students to
skim the text. The time they chose to do this was of five minutes (because before handing the
texts I mentioned the length that they both have). I have to mention that I didn’t tell them what
the text was about before handing it to them. The next task was to answer the questions that were
attached to the text, in ten minutes time (the period was also chosen by the students). The third
task was to scan the text in 10 minutes (they chose the time) and the next to solve the scanning
exercises 15 minutes. Each item in the exercise was marked with two points and the final result
had to be of ten points because each exercise contained five questions.
The results of the students were the following:
33
NR. CRT.
NAMESSKIMMING EXERCISES
SCANNING EXERCISES TOTAL
1Barbu Ancuta
8 8 16
2Budaca Mihaela
6 6 12
3Ciubotaru Andrei
6 4 10
4Duma Iuliana
8 6 14
5degeratu stefana
6 6 12
6Iosub Valentin
10 8 18
7Patrichi Vasile
6 6 12
8Laiu Stefan
4 6 10
9Turcu Ionut
8 8 16
10Vartolomei Alexandru
6 6 12
11
Total test1
68 64 132
As we can see the results from the skimming exercises were higher than those from the
scanning and it proves that the students have better skimming skills than scanning when they set
the time by themselves.
With the second test the tasks were the same but the time spent on solving them was different
as it follows: they had to skim the text in two minutes; to solve the skimming exercise in five
minutes; to scan the text in five minutes; to solve the scanning exercises in eight minutes. The
results obtained were:
NR. CRT.
NAMESSKIMMING EXERCISES
SCANNING EXERCISES TOTAL
1Barbu Ancuta
6 6 12
2Budaca Mihaela
6 4 10
3Ciubotaru Andrei
4 4 8
34
4Duma Iuliana
8 6 14
5degeratu stefana
4 4 8
6Iosub Valentin
8 4 12
7Patrichi Vasile
4 4 10
8Laiu Stefan
4 4 8
9Turcu Ionut
6 4 12
10Vartolomei Alexandru
4 4 12
11 Total test254 44 98
The results from the skimming exercises were higher again then those from the scanning
ones. But the real problem appears when we compare the two tables because the total score from
the first table is higher than that from the second, and the difference between them is rather big,
not more than half but half is an important value and the result should have been if not the same
at least much lower than it is now wit at least 30 percent.
TOTAL SCORE TEST1 TOTAL SCORE TEST2 DEDUCTION132 98 34
35
50%37%
13%
TOTAL SCORE TEST1
TOTAL SCORE TEST2
DEDUCTION
The level of comprehension in the first test was higher (but the time allotted was also higher)
and when it came for the students to reduce the time spent with every task (which was actually
the time they needed to solve the them) for the second test they couldn’t manage to obtain the
same results because they couldn’t read faster than before. These things prove that their speed
reading skills are not developed enough.
TOTAL SCORE TEST1 TOTAL SCORE TEST2LEVEL OF COMPREHENSION
132 98 115
39%
28%
33%TOTAL SCORE TEST1
TOTAL SCORE TEST2
LEVEL OFCOMPREHENSION
36
Students’ level of comprehension is very low when it comes to use speed reading techniques
and this makes me conclude that they are not practicing enough fast reading strategies. This thing
could affect them:
in the learning process, because they will not be able to retain a large amount of
information, to be selective when retaining information, they will not be able to make
the distinction between main ideas and details;
in every day life because they will encounter amounts of informationin different
situations, and because they will not be able to select what is more important they
could fail in performing different activities.
The solutions for these problems are obvious: they have to learn and work on different
strategies for developing fast reading skills. They could do this at home by themselves or at
school guided by the teacher.
Some teachers may say that they don’t have enough time to do this, because the educational
system, as it exists today, does not allow them. I totally agree with this; but being a teacher
means, among other things, being creative, so I think that if we really want, we can find ways and
methods to introduce these kinds of activities in our lessons. Nowhere in the world is the
educational system is not perfect, and maybe ours is worse than others, but we should not let this
stay in our way when we are struggling to prepare the students to face the world at a certain
moment.
So, my recommendation is (given the fact that we live in an era where the supreme power
is held by information) to teach students how to notice, select and retain what is most important
from the amount of information that is permanently given to them, by using among other things,
the process of teaching reading. We should use every tool that we have to offer our students a
variety of opportunities and perspectives to handle the problems that are to come when they leave
the educational system, even though we are talking about the teaching of a second language
which is not native evidently.
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c) Post-reading
i. General overview
A teacher uses this stage to check students’ comprehension and retention of the information
of a text they just read. In this stage the students may focus more on a detailed analysis of a text
to do this they should answer questions like: who? What? When? Where? And how?, they could
explain the writer’s attitude, work supplementary exercises with the new vocabulary, share and
discuss different ideas related to the reading text.
All the strategies that were discussed in the while-reading stage could be implemented in the
post-reading, because they all refer to the comprehension of the text and one of the purposes of
post-reading is to check the comprehension skills.
Another purpose is to work with the students supplementary tasks in order to achieve a higher
level of proficiency in reading. For example, through the tasks that a teacher assigns he can
increase the level of difficulty determining the students to give a quick answer to a heavy and
complex question, or solve comprehension tasks that imply using their own way of thinking, their
prior knowledge combined with what they already learnt, their own creativity or the use of
strategies that they have been taught.
Post-reading is a stage where a teacher tries to obtain a higher level of proficiency by
performing a number of activities like: answering questions, multiple choice exercises, reordering
sentences, offering a summary of a passage, extending a story, providing an ending or a different
ending to a story, expressing feelings about the passage, re-writing the story and changing the
tenses or the type of speech, finding out other texts on the same topic, dramatizing dialogues,
engaging in conversations about the text, writing as a follow-up activity.
ii. Strategies
1. Open minded portraits23
This strategy makes the students think more deeply about a character and reflect on the story
events from the character’s point of view. The reasoning for this is that if they understand the
character and its motivation they will develop deeper meaning. This strategy helps clarify what
things and thoughts are important for the teacher and it also promotes Multiple Intelligences.23 http://www.authorstream.com
38
2. Story-quilts24
The students must pick-up the moral of the story and individualize engagement of the story
for each student, while they move to symbolic drawings. Doing this the students become
motivated because the more involved in the story they are the more they will want to read further.
3. Literature Journals/ Reading Logs25
The purpose of this strategy is to write reactions and opinions about the books the students
are reading. By engaging in this process the students become reflective readers and also help
them with comprehension. Using this technique students learn to reflect on their own reading to
ask questions and make comments. However, the time spent using this strategy can be very long,
as they have to write feedback in each journal.
4. Story Maps and Frames
The aim of this technique is to build up organizers in order to work with story structure for
comprehension development. If the students have in front of their eyes the organization and
relationships between the parts of the story they then have better comprehension and are more
able to make inferences.
Story maps and frames use sociograms to explore different relationships throughout the text,
Venn diagrams to make comparisons, plot profiles to examine the tension and the conflicts
between the characters or clusters to probe the variety of dimensions that a story can have.
The use of reading stages is very important both for the teacher and for the student. A
teacher should use every single thing that a student is willing to offer and to try to get from him
even more. That is why with each of these stages the teacher works on discovering students’
knowledge and increasing it lesson by lesson.
3. Reading materials
In this subchapter we will refer to the textbooks offered in schools as well as to the texts that
a teacher could bring to his students, if he thinks they are more appropriate.
24 http://www.authorstream.com25 Idem
39
Texts of the right reading level are neither too easy nor too hard for a particular reader,
choosing texts of the right complexity and interest levels will encourage children to read and to
enjoy what they are reading. Vocabulary, word length, grammatical complexity and sentence
length are traditionally used to indicate the difficulty level of a text.
The subject matter of a book is also an important factor. For instance, readers with substantial
prior knowledge about a subject will be able to use their knowledge to read more difficult texts.
Cultural factors are important when choosing books for non-native speakers because some
children’s books may contain references to situations, objects and experiences that are unfamiliar
to them. When a teacher wants to present a text to the students he brings a specially written
material that contains problems of vocabulary and grammar that are being developed later during
the lesson. The problem with these texts is that are often over-familiar and presents no subject of
interest for the students.
There were many debates regarding the types of texts that a teacher should use in the
classroom, especially concerning the authentic texts. Anca Cehan states in her book, in the
chapter about “Reading and Writing” that “authentic texts are written by and for fluent native
speakers, while inauthentic texts are specially designed for students”26 . The authenticity of a text
refers to the fact that the text is untouched in terms of structure and vocabulary or the way it is
presented and the layout that it use. The materials from the textbook should keep the features of
such a text because it helps students “anticipate meaning by using non-linguistic clues” 27. Many
teachers believe that an authentic text cannot be used with beginners because of its major level of
difficulty. But there are such texts that are very easy: menus, timetables, signs or simple
instructions that pupils can use in their reading classes and in this way becoming familiar with
these types of texts. The complexity of a task is established according to the texts; if the text is a
difficult one so will be the tasks. Despite the age of a student or if he is native or non-native
speaker it is important to use authentic texts. This means materials written with readers in mind,
not texts constructed to illustrate specific vocabulary or word forms. It is also important to use a
variety of authentic texts, including both information texts and narrative or story texts. Students
often have an easier time reading information texts when they can use their own knowledge on
that topic.
26 Balan, Radu; Ciunta, Cristina; Gheorghiu, Eliza; Cehan, Anca: In Service Distance Training Course for Teachers of English, Polirom, 2003, p. 159
27 Ibidem
40
The text has a predefined format that is given by its unity and by the sentences and
paragraphs that are connected in a meaningful way to each other. When the students start to read
a text they have to take into consideration some features of the text structures such as coherence
and cohesion. These two features help the students when skimming a text for example, or to
understand how a text is structured or how it functions and also to follow the writer’s ideas
through the text and reach his purpose in building those specific relationships between the
sentences and group of sentences.
i. Ways of choosing reading material
When assessing the complexity level of a text, it is important to consider the language used,
as well as its subject matter, interest level and assumed cultural knowledge. Apart from the text
difficulty a teacher has to choose the books that are well written in terms of style and language
and that utilizes students’ local context. For instance, to choose a book about what students enjoy
doing would be a good starting point. We can also use information texts that contain topics with
which the students are familiar, because it will allow them to use their prior knowledge and to
find out more about the topic.
The variety of materials is another important thing to consider because if this variety lacks
will lead to a limited reading and language experience.
ii. Authentic texts in textbooks
Looking through a series of textbooks for beginners, intermediate and advanced I was able to
see that authentic texts are used only in the textbooks for advanced students. For the beginners
they rely more on schematic sentences and use very much images; this shows us that visual aids
are emphasized on this level. The topics from the beginners textbooks are very much related to
the life experience that the pupils have or that they are about to learn. For example they are
learning things about animals, public transport, and holidays and so on and through these they are
also taught to build up conversation frames. The fact that the manual is full of pictures and
associations with the real world, helps them create connections in their mind, being more easy to
recall when they have to use what they learnt.
With the intermediate textbooks the focus is on developing reading skills, grammar skills and
mostly communication skills. The reading texts are fragments with a specific topic that has to be
41
explored and dissected according to the tasks being established in that unit. The text together with
the tasks that accompanies it are exploring human feelings, ways of thinking, their emotions and
opinions and their personality. The passages used try to fit to the age of the students that are
studying at this level.
When reaching the advanced level the authors concentrate on increasing comprehension
skills. The texts are longer than those in the intermediate level, there are many authentic passages
and the tasks are more difficult. We encounter items that have students create stories by
themselves or write essays; these things promote individual work, increase their knowledge
background and determine them to make use of a variety of strategies without being guided by
the teacher. These types of texts and tasks encourage the student to express himself freely, to
cooperate with other student and to share information or ideas. But the guidance of the teacher
should not be totally absent but subtle; it should be there but in a way that the students do not
physically feel it. This guidance is important only for the purpose of not losing the original path
and objectives from view, but otherwise the students are free to create as they feel.
As we saw from the examples above, the textbooks must be chosen according to what
students need and like. The first criterion, need, is useful for the learning process, which is
acquisition of grammar comprehension, reading, listening etc. skills and the second criterion for
the acquisition of general information about the world around us and to keep on track students’
interest in learning.
4. Reading difficulties
The source of most reading problems, in the view of many experts, is decoding.
Decoding is the process by which a word is broken into individual phonemes and recognized
based on those phonemes. For instance, proficient decoders separate the sounds "buh," "aah," and
"guh" in the word "bag." Someone who has problems decoding, and thus trouble reading easily,
may not hear and differentiate these phonemes. "Buh," "aah," and "guh" might be empty words to
them in relation to the word "bag" on the page.
The signs for decoding reading difficulties are:
trouble sounding out words and recognizing words out of context; confusion between letters and the sounds they represent; slow oral reading rate;
42
reading without expression; ignoring punctuation while reading;
Decoding phonemes is not the only problem that can arise in the process of reading; the comprehension difficulties can also appear.
Comprehension problems rely on mastery of decoding, because children who struggle to decode will understand harder and will remember harder what they read. Because of the effort spent on decoding the comprehension will lack, the students being left without enough resources to decipher the text. A teacher can identify comprehension problems when students:
Are confused concerning the meaning of words and sentences; Are not able to connect ideas in a passage; Omit details; Have problems in discriminating between significant information and
details; Lack concentration during the reading process;
Students may also have problems with retaining what they read. Retention requires decoding
and comprehending what is written and it relies on high level cognitive skills, such as memory
and the ability to group and retrieve related ideas. As students progress through grade levels they
are expected to achieve more and more information from what they read, the reading process
gaining more importance with every graduation. Signs of retention difficulty can contain
problems of remembering or summarizing what was read, problems of connecting the new text
with prior knowledge and trouble of applying new content to personal experience.
These problems ca be solved only through hard practice of reading, supplementary practice,
because if we will not do this they could increase and affect on a higher scale children’s abilities
in communication. We have to pay very much attention to this and not ignore what our students
are trying to show us.
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VI.EVALUATING READING
Reading must be evaluated in order to see our students’ knowledge level when it comes to use
this skill. The evaluation process is performed during the whole lesson, regardless of the stage,
because with every task that we perform we check students’ level of comprehension and reading.
1. Types of evaluation The evaluation is of two types: one is cumulative and one is formative or continuous.
The cumulative evaluation is performed at the end of a school cycle: the end of the semester
or of the year. We can perform cumulative evaluation of reading by using traditional methods
like written papers or oral tests as well as modern methods such as: independent investigation, the
project method, the portfolio method, exams or self-evaluation.
The formative evaluation is maybe more important than the cumulative one because it allows
the teacher to permanently check his students’ knowledge and if his objectives and purposes were
achieved. In the reading process a teacher can do this by the exercises that he uses, surveying the
feedback that he gets from his students, from the tasks that he assigns during a lesson or from the
homework that he gives. There are many ways of performing formative evaluation and any of the
methods used is welcomed. A teacher can use oral tests by launching specific questions about the
text, problems that need students’ background knowledge and the new information acquired to
solve them or tasks that require the use of their creativity.
For example, if we have a text about animals we can ask them what kind of animals are
described in the text, by what means, what kind of words does the author uses (if they are
adjectives, adverbs, certain expressions or scientific words). Then we can have them compare
these animals with the other they know by providing descriptive passages or using charts, or we
can assign them to compose a story with the same topic but to transform the scientific text into a
fictional one.
The written tests contain different types of exercises among which the students are required to
use their creativity. Most of the teachers prefer this type of evaluation because they say it’s more
objective, but this aspect is questioned by a lot of other teachers. The idea is that we should try to
use as much as we can all the types of evaluation to accustom the students with them.
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2. Strategies of evaluationWe mentioned above, when describing the types of evaluation, some methods that help us
perform the respective evaluation. In the next passages I will try to show their relevance in the
process of evaluating reading.
The investigation method promotes students’ creativity because they must accomplish
a task during one class in which they have to prove the possess a wide rang of abilities
and knowledge. This method has as a purpose the formation of group working
techniques as well as individual ones.
The project method relies on the student to work independently and allows a complex
appreciation of what the students know helping to identify some individual qualities
and abilities that they are likely to possess.
The portfolio method uses the experience and the results obtained through the other
methods following the global progress of a student. It promotes, like the project
method, that the students work independently but it helps in developing their
personality.
Example: A teacher can ask his students to read a certain number of books and provide
specific analysis for them. Or he can ask them to perform a case study about some author’s life or
about an author’s books, how they appeared, what determined the author to write them and so on.
Another productive method is The Review of Reading Response in Journals. Here
students are asked to select reading response journal entries that, they believed,
demonstrated achievement of specific evaluation criteria. These entries were then
evaluated by both teacher and students against rubric.
Individual exit conferences have the students discuss with teachers specific readings and their
individual progress relying on their journals or specific reading as evidence.
Final reading tests use an unknown text which the students have as an aid on which they work
their skills. They have to read the text, to explain why they used certain appropriate strategies and
to answer to a number of questions that fit the genre.
The last three methods of evaluating reading can be used only with advanced or proficient
readers. With beginners and intermediate students we use the traditional methods, like
questioning for example, or we can offer a text to be read, to check pronunciation, stress and
intonation, to see if the student uses the coherence and cohesion features and so on.
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The teacher can perform evaluation in every minute of his lesson, because the teaching
process is not separated by the evaluation one; they go hand in hand in order to have better
results, because a teacher must permanently follow and check if his objectives were achieved.
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VII. TYPES OF EXERCISES IN READING COMPREHENSION
The exercises used in teaching reading, are used according to the purpose established by the
teacher. But generally their purpose is to check, develop and increase comprehension skills. The
variety of these exercises allows the teacher to select the right ones and to create diversity during
a lesson. I will try to present several exercises that are very interesting and complex and could be
used on every level of knowledge.
1. Skimming exercises - these types of exercises imply reading very fast a text
in order to get its main ideas and then answer to some general questions. The teacher can give the
students a text, without them looking at it until he says so. Then he establishes a time limit of one
minute or 30 seconds (the time may depend on the length of the text) to skim the text, after which
she takes away their papers. After this one minute the students have to answer to a number of
questions to see if they found the main ides of that paragraph. This type of exercise checks the
speed that the students have when reading and implicitly how developed the strategy of
skimming is. We can use this type of exercise also wit scanning.
2. Comprehension questions - these types of questions help the student
understand the text and the author’s intentions. With these questions they go deep into the text’s
structures and dissect every piece of information that a text contains.
3. Chart exercises - charts are generally used to compare and contrast
qualities, examples, descriptions and facts.
4. Organization exercises - are used to create certain logic in students’
minds and force them to use the whole text in order to solve them.
5. Visualization exercise - determine the students to extract from a picture
information, create a story, a description or various pieces of conversation based on that picture.
Another possibility is that the students create an image in their minds based on what they read.
For instance, if they read a descriptive passage, they begin to imagine the respective place or
thing that is being described.
6. Close exercises - pay attention to what is printed on the page and involves
making oneself sensitive to all the nuances and connotations of language as it is used by skilled
writers. These exercises make reference to a work’s particular vocabulary, sentence construction
47
and imagery, themes that are being dealt with, the way in which the story is told, and the
perspective upon the world that it offers.
7. Outline exercises - the students have to extract pieces of information from
a text that follows a linear path in the description of a character, for example, or of an event.
These pieces of information must be structured into major parts that are representative for that
character or event and then for each major part the students add some specific details under the
form of statements or subheading.
8. Discussion questions - are intended to force a student to reflect upon the
readings, to develop questions and to take a position regarding the subject of the readings. The
students may agree with everything that is stated in that reading but they can also question or
disagree with parts of it. A teacher can use students’ comments to adjust the classroom lessons
and exercises so that they respond to questions and ideas that are shared by many in the class.
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VIII. READING GAMES
Reading games can be seen as teaching methods, evaluation methods, as exercises or simply
as games that make students have some fun during a lesson but still learning something from
them. A teacher uses these games when he thinks his students lost their interest in the topic or to
gain their attention on a certain subject or to teach something if he thinks the matter he has to
discuss about will be better understood through a game or to check if his students’ remained with
something after the teaching process.
Teachers use reading games for beginners and for intermediate students, because when they
reach the advanced level the students’ and teachers’ purposes are others and they concentrate on
more complex issues.
EXAMPLE28
For this game we need some prompt cards
28 http://resources.kaboose.com/games/read2.html
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"Based on the topic sentence, I thinkthe paragraph will be about ? "
The Cards
1 . Predicting - The leader asks the students to read the topic sentence or subheading and then predict what the rest of the paragraph will be about.
Since the topic sentence tells what will follow you can teach the children how to skim read at this point.
2. Reading - This card invites the children to read up to a certain point. I've added a bit of variety to the cards so they can read silently, to the group, to a partner or in unison. Just to add a bit of variety.
3. Clarification - This card gives the readers the opportunity to have any unfamiliar words, locations or pronunciations 'made clear'.
I find the first couple of times you do this strategy the children often won't volunteer that they don't know something. So I pick out a word or a place and ask the group to clarify it. If all members don't offer to answer the question, then I talk about how the purpose of reading is to gain meaning and if we are not gaining meaning, then we are simply 'barking at the print'. You can also teach information skills here as
well as dictionary skills and how to use an atlas.
What...? Why...? When...?Which...? Where...? Who...? How...?
4. Questioning - I get the children to generate the questions at this point. The questions can be answered orally or, depending on your purpose, you might like the group to record some of their questions and answers.
5. Summarising - the perfect point to teach key points, note-taking and to some extent paraphrasing.
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5. " (name) would you please say / write a sentenceor two to summarise this passage."
6. Swap Leaders and the whole processstarts again.
How Iuse the strategy in my classroom.
Firstly I introduce the whole class to each of the skills in the process. This can take a couple of lessons to do well.
Then during group work I sit with a small group of children. I bring to the group the set of the cards, multiple copies of an INFORMATION TEXT, three different dictionaries, three atlases & paper for note taking. Recently I've been taking my laptop to the group and have dictionary.com , the wikipedia.org and Google Earth open to aid in the 'clarification' phase. These sites provide great opportunity to build into the sessions the areas of website credibility and website advertising awareness.
For the first few sessions I am the leader, but the children are aware that the skills that I demonstrate will help them work as an independent group in the future.
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X. CLOSING REMARKS
From what I presented in the chapters above it can be seen that teaching reading is a
process in which teachers can combine different methods and strategies in order to
have proficient results. It also develops different skills that help students not only in a
reading class.
In developing reading skills a teacher can make use of other abilities that his students
possess, like writing, listening and speaking and also when he teaches these skills he
can use the reading ones also.
The type of texts and the exercises that teacher uses in his classroom are also
important in increasing the skills taught previously because they offer the opportunity
of practising and achieving proficiency.
The practise of different activities expands students’ background knowledge and
offers them the possibility of knowing how to choose a certain strategy or method
when dealing with a text.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Achim, Alaviana; Comisel, Ecaterina; Dinu, Felicia; Mastacan, Loretta; Popovici,
Ruxandra; Teodorescu, Elena: Pathway To English, English Scrapbook, Limba Engleza
Manual pentru Clasa a VII-a ( anul 6 de studiu), Oxford University Press 1998
Abbs, Brian; Worrall, Anne; Ward, Ann: Splash! Manual de Limba Engleza pentru Clasa
a III-a, Ministerul Invatamantului, 1997
; Badrawi, Nazly: “The Reading Dilemma: Meeting Individual Needs”, Forum, vol. 30,
No. 3, July 1992
Balan, Radu; Ciunta, Cristina; Gheorghiu, Eliza; Cehan, Anca: In Service Distance
Training Course For Teachers of English, Polirom, 2003
Balan, Rada; Carianopol, Miruna; Colibaba, Stefan; Coser, Cornelia; Focseneanu,
Veronica; Stan, Vanda; Vulcanescu Rodica: Pathway to English, Perspectives in English,
Student’s Book 10, Oxford University Press 1998
Cehan, Dana-Anca: EFL Methodology I, Program postuniversitar de conversie
profesionala pentru cadrele didactice din mediul rural, Ministerul Educatiei si cercetarii,
2006
Cehan, Dana-Anca: EFL Methodology II, Program postuniversitar de conversie
profesionala pentru cadrele didactice din mediul rural, Ministerul Educatiei si cercetarii,
2007
; Champeau de Lopez, Cheryl: “Developing Reading Speed”, Forum, vol. 31 No. 1,
January 1993
Dorobat, Dumitru: The methodology of evaluation and testing, Program postuniversitar de
conversie profesionala pentru cadrele didactice din mediul rural, Ministerul Educatiei si
cercetarii, 2007
Gardescu, Elena: Teaching English in Primary School, Program postuniversitar de
conversie profesionala pentru cadrele didactice din mediul rural, Ministerul Educatiei si
cercetarii, 2007
; Gebhard, Jerry G.: “Teaching Reading Through Assumptions about Learning”, Forum,
vol. XXIII No. 3, July 1985
; Ghani, Salwa Abdul: “ESP Reading: Some Implications for the Design Of Materials”,
Forum, vol. 31, No. 4, October 1993
53
Macmillan English Dictionary for advanced learners, International Student Edition, 2006
Pang, Elizabeth S.; Muaka, Angaluki; Bernhardt, Elizabeth B.; Kamil L. Michael:
Teaching Reading, Intenational Academy of Education, International Bureau of Education
Richards, Jack C.; Rodgers, Theodore S.: Approaches and Methods in Language
Teaching, Second edition, Cambridge University Press, 2001
Scrivener, Jim: Learning teaching, A guidebook for English language teachers, The
Teacher Development Series, Macmillan Publishers Limited, 1998
Sirquin, Marsha: “Selecting Organizing, and presenting Reading Materials By Genre”,
Forum, vol. 33,No. 4, October 1995,
; Silberstein, Sandra: “Let’s Take Another Look at Reading”: Twenty-Five Years of
Reading Instruction, Forum, vol. XXV No. 4, October 1987
Vizental, Adriana: Metodica predarii limbii engleze, editia a III-a revazuta si adaugita,
Polirom, 2008
Ur, Penny: A Course in Language Teaching, Practice and theory, Cambridge University
Press, 1996
INTERNET RESOURCES:
.
www.nwlink.com/~Donclark/hrd/bloom.html
www.nclrc.org/essentials/reading/reindex.htm
http://depts.gallaudet.edu/Englishworks/reading/mapping.html
http://www.studygs.net/texred2.htm
http://www.authorstream.com http://resources.kaboose.com/games/read2.html
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APPENDIX 1
Every second, 1 hectare of the world's rainforest is destroyed. That's equivalent to two football fields. An area the size of New York City is lost every day. In a year, that adds up to 31 million hectares -- more than the land area of Poland. This alarming rate of destruction has serious consequences for the environment; scientists estimate, for example, that 137 species of plant, insect or animal become extinct every day due to logging. In British Columbia, where, since 1990, thirteen rainforest valleys have been clear-cut, 142 species of salmon have already become extinct, and the habitats of grizzly bears, wolves and many other creatures are threatened. Logging, however, provides jobs, profits, taxes for the government and cheap products of all kinds for consumers, so the government is reluctant to restrict or control it. Much of Canada's forestry production goes towards making pulp and paper. According to the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association, Canada supplies 34% of the world's wood pulp and 49% of its newsprint paper. If these paper products could be produced in some other way, Canadian forests could be preserved. Recently, a possible alternative way of producing paper has been suggested by agriculturalists and environmentalists: a plant called hemp. Hemp has been cultivated by many cultures for thousands of years. It produces fiber which can be made into paper, fuel, oils, textiles, food, and rope. For centuries, it was essential to the economies of many countries because it was used to make the ropes and cables used on sailing ships; colonial expansion and the establishment of a world-wide trading network would not have been feasible without hemp. Nowadays, ships' cables are usually made from wire or synthetic fibers, but scientists are now suggesting that the cultivation of hemp should be revived for the production of paper and pulp. According to its proponents, four times as much paper can be produced from land using hemp rather than trees, and many environmentalists believe that the large-scale cultivation of hemp could reduce the pressure on Canada's forests. However, there is a problem: hemp is illegal in many countries of the world. This plant, so useful for fiber, rope, oil, fuel and textiles, is a species of cannabis, related to the plant from which marijuana is produced. In the late 1930s, a movement to ban the drug marijuana began to gather force, resulting in the eventual banning of the cultivation not only of the plant used to produce the drug, but also of the commercial fiber-producing hemp plant. Although both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp in large quantities on their own land, any American growing the plant today would soon find himself in prison -- despite the fact that marijuana cannot be produced from the hemp plant, since it contains almost no THC (the active ingredient in the drug). In recent years, two major movements for legalization have been gathering strength. One group of activists believes that ALL cannabis should be legal -- both the hemp plant and the marijuana plant -- and that the use of the drug marijuana should not be an offense. They argue that marijuana is not dangerous or addictive, and that it is used by large numbers of people who are not criminals but productive members of society. They also point out that marijuana is less toxic than alcohol or tobacco. The other legalization movement is concerned only with the hemp plant used to produce fiber; this group wants to make it legal to cultivate the plant and sell the fiber for paper and pulp production. This second group has had a major triumph recently: in 1997, Canada legalized the farming of hemp for fiber. For the first time since 1938, hundreds of farmers are planting this crop, and soon we can expect to see pulp and paper produced from this new source.
55
56
Test 1
I. Select the correct answer:
1. The main idea of the first paragraph isa) Scientists are worried about New York Cityb) Logging is destroying the rainforestsc) Governments make money from loggingd Salmon are an endangered species
2. The main idea of paragraph two is:a) Canadian forests are especially under threatb) Hemp is a kind of plantc) Canada is a major supplier of paper and pulpd) Canada produces a lot of hemp
3. The main idea of paragraph three is:a) Paper could be made from hemp instead of treesb) Hemp is useful for fuelc) Hemp has been cultivated throughout historyd) Hemp is essential for building large ships
4. The main idea of paragraph four is:a) Hemp is used to produce drugsb) Many famous people used to grow hempc) It is illegal to grow hempd) Hemp is useful for producing many things
5. The main idea of paragraph five is:a) Hemp should be illegal because it is dangerousb) Recently, many people have been working to legalize hempc) Hemp was made illegal in 1938d) Marijuana is not a dangerous drug
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II. Select the correct answer:
1. How many species of salmon have become extinct in BC?a) 27b) 31c) 137d) 142
2. How much of the world's newsprint paper is supplied by Canada?a) 31%b) 49%c) 34%d) 19%
3. What equipment on a ship was made from hemp?a) Ropesb) Waterproof clothc) Engine fueld) Life rafts
4. What drug can be obtained from a relative of hemp?a) Cocaineb) Heroinec) Marijuanad) Amphetamine
5. Where was hemp farming recently legalized?a) The USAb) Canadac) Singapored) The Netherlands
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APPENDIX 2
There is a long history of recreational use of the Countryside. In the North York Moors the Royal Hunting Forest of Pickering was established in 1106 by King Henry I, but areas such as this were exclusively for use by their owners - the aristocracy, and also served to provide food. The concept of access to the countryside for all took a long time to become firmly established. The reality took even longer.
Each National Park is run by an Authority. The North York Moors National Park Authority consists of a committee of 26 members who meet regularly to make key decisions about planning applications, how the Park is managed and future policies. The Authority is assisted in its work by a National Park Officer and around 75 full time staff.
In England and Wales there are 11 National Parks. Together they cover 13,877 square kilometres (5360 square miles) - nearly 10% of England and Wales. They include our finest landscapes.
In our National Parks you could find moor land, mountains, lakes, woodland, farmland, coastline, scenic villages and much more. Our National Parks are working landscapes where people live and where most of the land is privately owned, for example by estate owners and farmers. In some countries, National Parks are uninhabited, wilderness areas under state control.
Every year the National Park Authorities in England and Wales each submit their plans for expenditure to the Government. The Secretary of State for the Environment approves a grant for each National Park; 75% of this is provided by the Government (a National Park supplementary Grant) and 25% is provided by the relevant Local Authorities. National Parks are, therefore, funded by taxpayers. In 1998/99 the North York Moors National Park Authority received almost £3 million in this way. The work of the National Park Authority is limited by funding and therefore each National Park raises additional income through, for example, fees for planning applications, sale of publications and car park charges.
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TEST 1 SKIMMING
I. Select the correct answer:
1. How many National Parks are there? a) 26b) 10c) 34d) 23
2. What percentage or what area (km/miles) uses?a) 25%-6360b) 15%-3660c) 10%-5360d) 5%- 4000
3. Who pays for the National Parks?a) Local Authoritiesb) Taxpayersc) Governmentd) National Park Authority
4. Who owns them?a) Local Authoritiesb) Governmentc) National Park Authorityd) Taxpayers
5. What might you find in a National Park?a) Olivesb) Scenic villagesc) Bicyclesd) Wild animals
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TEST 2 SCANNING
II. Select the correct answer:1. How much money does tourism bring in SE England?
a) £7 millionb) £3 millionc) £9 milliond) £2 million
2. What are the main attractions?a) Mountainsb) Museumsc) Theatresd) Schools
3. How many visitors does the region receive?a) The answer can not be found in the textb) 10 millionsc) 20 millionsd) 5 millions
4. Who established the Countryside?a) King Henry Ib) King Arthurc) Queen Elizabeth IId) Henry VIII
5. When was the Countryside established?a) 1999b) 1504c) 1106d) 1989
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