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Teaching Reading

This series of articles from the British Council aims to help you think about your teaching and bring new ideas and activities into your classroom. The series covers topics including homework，working with large classes and finding resources. Today we look at teaching reading.

How can we teach reading in the English classroom？ Read these comments from teachers. Do you agree？

Alexandra，Tanzania

Shamin，South Africa

We can help our students to become better readers by giving them activities before they read，while they are reading and after they have read a text.

■ The reading skills our students need to practise include predicting，reading to understand the main idea and reading for specific details.

Before

■ To help students predict we can discuss what might be in a text，guess what vocabulary is in the text or write some questions we hope the text will answer.

While

■ The first time students read the text we can set a few general questions to help them with the skill of understanding the main idea. Students can read quickly in silence before discussing the answers as a class.

■ Students return to the text，this time reading for specific details. We can ask them to find dates，names or other information. For example they could answer questions，complete a chart or check true/false sentences.

After

■ Post reading activities help students to think about what they have read and then use their own ideas. For example，students could prepare questions in teams about a story they have read or you could follow up a newspaper article with a discussion of similar local events.

To help our students become confident readers we need to work with a variety of texts in the classroom and practise reading skills.

What do you think？

At the small school where I work，the director gave his own magazines to the library. The teachers made copies of interesting articles and prepared some activities （questions，true/false statements…）to use with each one. We use the copies with different classes and write the activities on the board. We even use the same articles with many levels. We give a really simple activity to low levels and with advanced students we think of a more difficult task.

Some advice: Set time limits when students are reading to understand the main ideas of a text—this means they don’t have time to think about understanding every word.

A classroom activity—a reading lesson

You can use this reading activity with a story，a course book text，a magazine article or newspaper story.

■ Write the title of a text on the board. Ask students where the text is from （a book，magazine，newspaper？）.

■ In pairs students look at the title and predict what vocabulary is in the text.

■ Ask one pair to write their vocabulary list on the board. Invite others to add to the list.

■ Students read the text quickly in silence. Can they find any of the words from the list on the board？Invite students to the front to cross off the words they found.

■ Students read the text again and in pairs make a note of any names，numbers，and dates they see. Set a five-minute time limit. Ask a volunteer to list the names，etc on the board.

■ Cover the text and in pairs students try to remember what the names，numbers and dates refer to. They can look at the text only if necessary.

■ Walk around the class and help with vocabulary.

■ Write “Was this story/article interesting？ Why/why not？” on the board. Students discuss the question in small groups. Students could also discuss a different question，more relevant to the specific text.

Glossary

Pairs are groups of two students working together in class.

Predicting is thinking about the content of a text before you read it.

Skills are abilities. Reading skills are abilities that we can practise to help us to read well.

True/false sentences are sentences about a text. The students decide if the sentences are true or false by reading the text.

Think about

■ Find a text that you think will interest your students. Plan some pre-reading，while-reading，and post-reading activities to try in class.

■ After the class，think about which activities worked well or what you would do differently next time.

Want to find more teaching tips？ Visit www.teachingenglish.org.uk ? British Council 2011

Raul from Cuba writes: