farpopUnit 11 Teaching Reading
Aims of the unit:
1. How and what do people read?
2. What are the skills involved in reading?
3. What is the role of vocabulary in reading?
4. What are the principles and models for teaching reading?
5. What procedures and types of activities can we u in teaching reading?
anymoreI. The reflection on our own reading experiences.
1. The nature of reading
Reading to learn or reading for pleasure.
Reading is an action to get information.
Silent reading or reading aloud.
Reading for comprehension or to get every word.
TASK 2
Read the following assumptions about reading and decide if you agree with them or not. Try to give reasons for your decisions. (See P175)
1. Reading has only one purpo, i.e. To get information
×
2. Reading is a silent activity. Reading aloud does not help much with comprehension.
√
3. Reading with a purpo is more effective than reading without a purpo.
√
ralph4. When we read, our eyes are constantly moving from letter to letter, word to word and ntence to ntence.
×
5. Reading is an individual activity.
√
6. We need to now all the words in order to understand a text.
×
7. We read everything with the same speed.videoshot
×
8. When reading in a foreign language, we mentally translate everything in order to understand.
×
9. It is helpful to u a dictionary to check and note down the meaning of all the new words while reading.
×
10. The lack of cultural knowledge may affect the rate of reading comprehension.
√
11. Posssing a large amount of vocabulary is the key for reading comprehension.
×
12.Reading can best be improved by being engaged in reading and reading more.
√
美味的英文怎么说
sna
2. The difference between reading aloud and silent reading
Reading aloud and silent reading are two types of reading practice commonly found in classrooms. Are they the same or different? Many teachers u the activity of reading aloud in teaching reading in the classroom without understanding what it is for.
Task 3: Differences between reading aloud and silent reading
Reading aloud
Silent reading
Manner
Utterance of every word
Silent
Speed
Usually slow
北京托福考试取消
Usually fast
Purpo(s)
Usually for sharing information, sometimes for appreciation or memorization
For getting information and also for pleasure
Skills involved
Pronunciation and intonation
Skimming, Scanning, predicting, guessing unknown words from the context, understanding details, understanding relations between ntences and paragraphs, understanding references, making inferences, evaluating the writer’s attitudes and opinions, etc.
Form of activity
Collective activity
youarenotalone什么意思 Individual activity
Level of difficulty in classroom management
Easy to manage as it can be obrved and heard
Difficult to manage as teachers cannot e what is going on in the students’ mind
flocks
We can e from the above table that reading aloud and silent reading are different in many aspects.
l Reading aloud cannot replace silent reading as it involves only the skills of pronunciation and intonation.
l Real reapding ability re-quires the reading skills of skimming, scanning, predicting, etc.
3. Effective reading
Bad on our understanding of the nature of reading, we believe effective readers do the following:
l clear purpo in reading;
l read silently;
l read phra by phra, rather than word by word;
l concentrate on the important bits, skim the rest, and skip the insignificant parts;
l u different speeds and strategies for different reading tasks;
l perceive the information in the target language rather than mentally translate;
l guess the meaning of new words from the context, or ignore them;
fight songl u background information to help understand the text.
4. What do people read?
Think about your experience of learning English. What kind of texts did you read?
Short stories? Tales? Essays? Diaries? Plays and poems? Biographies?
Look at the table on page 180. They are the things we read in real life. They are more authentic that are suitable to be ud in our text books.
Besides authentic texts, ESL/EFL textbooks also employ a lot of non-authentic texts, i.e. simulated texts. Though appearing authentic, the materials are written especially for language students with some language control. Simulated texts are aimed for be-ginner students who are probably not able to handle genuine authentic texts. It is be-lieved the reading of such texts will help students to acquire the necessary receptive skills they will need when they eventually come to tackle authentic materials.
