Reading in English and Spanish: two sides of the same coin?

By Flor de María Vila A.

One of the advantages of living the Fourth Industrial Revolution (1) is that our access to knowledge is unlimited. Any person with access to the internet can obtain information about anything in less than a minute. This chance takes us to the inescapable question: How much of what we read, we really understand? Are we, teachers, helping our students to go beyond identifying specific information, for instance? Are we teaching how to read?

Some educators may say that the answers to these questions depend on different factors: the age of our students, the place where we are teaching, and the purpose of the course we are giving among others. It is true that it is not the same to teach small kids as to teach teenagers, young adults or adults. Their cognitive development and their motivation, for instance, are different.  It is not the same to teach in a school as to teach in a private language institution. In a school, all courses may be part of a cross-curricular approach whereas, in a private venue, the course stands by itself. When teaching English, we may be teaching it to people who just want to learn the language or to others that study it to sit an international exam, for example.

In any case, our main objective is to help students achieve theirs and to do so they must receive a lot of input as Krashen (2) states. One of the ways is through reading. Reading is an important source of a number of samples of what good language is as well as of the knowledge required for different purposes. We need to point out this to our pupils even if we think that it is obvious. In addition, we could show them how the language written in the texts display how language is constructed as well as how the ideas are presented by native speakers. If we help them make a deep analysis of the passages, we will aid them to find a wonderful spring to which they can always return over and over to learn from it.

Needless to say, we have to help them go beyond the well-known and useful strategies used before, during and after reading. We also have to show them how to use the metacognition while reading in order to monitor their understanding, for example.

You may want to take a look at the following articles to review some of the strategies and other important aspects of the reading process.

 https://languageteachingblogger.blogspot.com/2017/03/are-we-in-reality-assessing-reading.html

https://languageteachingblogger.blogspot.com/2017/02/are-your-students-bored-with-reading.html

It is valid to say that there are people who are motivated, will read and find the information they need. Others are accustomed to finding the answer to a specific question and sometimes used to building knowledge with pieces of information as if they were making a kind of "patching reading".  The problem with that practice is that it doesn’t help much to develop critical reasoning. It is as if some are finding the pill for the pain but not curing the illness. In our case, students learn to answer questions for a text, but not necessarily know how to read. This may be observed in exams that require to answer questions which evaluate different levels of comprehension.

Thus, in addition to asking for information that requires literal or inferential comprehension, why don´t we ask questions that require the reader to make a personal response to a character or situation in the story or to the author’s purpose? With this, we will be helping students to develop their appreciative comprehension. We can always pose questions the request our pupils to make a judgment about the author’s use of language, style of writing, execution of the text, or the author’s ideas in the text. This will enable them to reach a critique comprehension of what they are reading. If we want to help our students develop an evaluative comprehension, we will need to propose questions that help them make a judgment about an aspect of the story such as a character’s actions and demonstrate or support that judgment.

Even though, it is clear that some students engage in reading in order to gain specific information and that is enough for them, our job is to enable them to go beyond and reach little by little different levels of comprehension. This will inevitably help them achieve their goals and at the same time show them the entrance of a world of wisdom and culture.

Now it´s your turn:

What else can we teach about reading?

Is it easy to teach how to read? Why? Why not?

(1)    https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/

(2)    Krashen, Stephen D. Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning. Prentice-Hall International, 1988.

(3)    Estrategias de comprensión lectora: enseñanza y evaluación en educación primaria

https://www.ugr.es/~recfpro/rev161ART11.pdf

BIOGRAPHICAL DATA

M.A. in Cognition, Learning and Development from PUCP, B.A. in Education with a major in English Teaching. Ms. Vila is currently Teacher trainer, Pedagogic Consultant and Member of the Research Team at Centro de Idiomas de la Universidad del Pacífico. She is Academic Director of International Contacts (test training & foreign applications advisory) and relationship manager for American universities´ MBA admissions officers with International Contacts. She is official Examiner for several University of Cambridge tests, freelance consultant with Universidad ESAN, experienced speaker on diverse English teaching issues for prestigious institutions, and senior international examinations trainer (GMAT, GRE, TOEFL, IELTS)

What Makes Reading Tough For Students?

By Mayra Yaranga

Reading skills are difficult to develop and students’ problems vary. Here is a list of factors that create some problems for many students and a few aspects to consider in order to tackle them:

Paraphrase

Many students are accustomed to providing in their response the information required using the same words as in the questions. This is a problem that they carry from L1 reading, which often causes a great deal of confusion, especially as the difficulty of texts and questions increases. Therefore, it is necessary to train learners, from the beginning, to recognise information given through different words or structures so that they focus on the meaning of the text, rather than only the words appearing in a text. Comparison of question text and reading passage is a good way to encourage this understanding of meaning.

Wanting to Know Every Word

Some students look up every word they do not understand from a text, presumably because this is going to help them understand the entire text. This bad habit is time-consuming and shifts the focus to words that might be irrelevant to the overall meaning of the reading passage, or even a specific section. Teachers have a key role to play in order to avoid this. Pre-teaching some important vocabulary may help students focus on relevant words only, as could also benefit building up skills for deducing meaning from context.

Lack of Strategies

Different types of questions will need application of different strategies. Many students are not aware of how to deal with reading texts, so intervention may be necessary. Introducing the concepts of strategies such as skimming or scanning is important to improve reading speed, and underlining/highlighting relevant sections of the passage can also help check that students have identified the words or phrases providing the correct answer.

Little Time to Answer

Learners facing reading comprehension examinations often find it difficult to answer questions confidently when time is very limited. Here, knowledge of the above-mentioned strategies and overall test technique training may help enormously reduce the time spent looking for answers. Encouraging extensive reading and working with small tasks with very strict timing may help students become familiar with such time constraints.

Teachers’ Planning

A factor that must not be overlooked is that of lesson planning. Sometimes, effective comprehension is hindered by factors such as irrelevant activities to engage students, poor timing or inadequate task choice. In consequence, teachers need to provide activities that will ease the reading process by quickly activating prior knowledge, language or create expectations about the text. In addition, suitable strategy work and careful timing will probably create much better conditions for learning how to deal with texts.

Now, it’s YOUR turn

What other challenges do you face when teaching reading?

Biodata

Mayra Yaranga (1985) has completed Doctorate studies in Education at UNIFÉ;Master’s Degree in Media, Culture and Identity from Roehampton University (London)  revalidated by PUCP, a Bachelor’s Degree in Education - UPCH and the Professional Title of Licenciada - IPNM. Currently she works as IELTS trainer, Cambridge Oral Examiner and Member of the Research Area for Universidad del Pacifico Language Centre. She is also ESP coordinator and Pre-University Centre Director at UNIFÉ.

Are we in Reality Assessing Reading Comprehension? Is it Legitimate to Evaluate What we Have Not Taught?

By Flor de María Vila A.

        Nowadays the capacity for reading comprehension is frequently discussed. Among the many ideas that are debated comes that related to how much we, as a nation, have improved in reading comprehension. We are no longer in the 69^th place but in the 62^nd in PISA (the Program for International Student Assessment). That appears as good news. However, it is valid to wonder, how much we teachers in general, or teachers of English as a foreign language, have cooperated to improve the reading comprehension level of our students.

        In a previous article I probed if we, teachers of English, are instructing learners on how to read or whether we are just evaluating how well students already do it in their own language. Regrettably, I am afraid that in general we just settle for evaluating; we do not teach how to read or help our students to improve their reading comprehension. Ask yourself honestly the following questions: What activities do you carry out in addition to activating students ‘previous knowledge? Do you know and teach reading strategies? Do you guide your students to use reading strategies before, during and after reading? Do you know what metacognition is? Do you teach how to use metacognition in the process of reading?

        Grasping what one is reading is more than the ability to remember ideas and information that are directly stated in the textbook material (Literal Comprehension). Neither is just the ability to extract ideas and information not directly stated in the textbook material, using prior or background knowledge to assist in such understanding (Inferential Comprehension). Truly, these are the two most common and basic levels of reading comprehension. Most textbooks come with many exercises appraising and promoting these levels of comprehension. In our lessons, we tend to think that if students can answer the questions provided by the textbook, they are then able to understand what they are reading. And this may be true, but we are not teaching them how to read; in many cases, we are just setting the scene by explaining the meaning of new words, asking a few questions to create interest and setting the time to do the exercise.

         Have you had your students make predictions about the probable meaning of the text? Have you monitored your students´ comprehension by questioning them, having them think about, and reflect on the ideas and information in the text? Have you helped students to relate what they have read to their own experiences and knowledge? If more than one answer is negative, it is very likely that you are not teaching how to read but simply helping them to fill out the exercises provided.

        It wouldn´t hurt to find about other levels of reading comprehension such as evaluative, appreciative, applied and critical. Knowing what these other levels of comprehension really mean will enable us to design and propose other kinds of activities to teach how to read or to help our pupils improve their understanding of what they read in our classes or anywhere else. Together with these levels we should also review or learn the reading strategies used before, during and after reading any text no matter whether it is short, long, easy, or difficult; no matter whether it is reading for pleasure or for doing an assignment. 

        Think about the following and share your ideas:

Is it possible to teach reading in our classes? Can we help our students improve their reading comprehension? How?

Biographical Data

M.A. in Cognition, Learning and Development from PUCP, B.A. in Education with a major in English Teaching. Ms. Vila is currently Pedagogic Advisor and Member of the Research Team at Centro de Idiomas de la Universidad del Pacífico and Academic Director of International Contacts (test training & foreign applications advisory). She is official Examiner for several University of Cambridge tests, freelance consultant with Universidad ESAN, experienced speaker on diverse English teaching issues for prestigious institutions, and senior international examinations trainer (GMAT, GRE, TOEFL, IELTS)