Conducting a Reading Task

A reading task is usually conducted in three stages:

Pre-reading Stage

Providing a Purpose for Reading

How and what one reads depends very much on the purpose, whether it is reading for gist, for specific information, for exposition, for deliberation of argument, or just for pleasure. Once the purpose is identified, one can use the appropriate reading skills and vary the speed accordingly.

When assigning a reading task, teachers can help set a clear purpose, for example, by giving students a question, problem or task before they read. Students can then judge which parts of the text to ignore, and decide on what to skim over and what to attend to in detail. At the beginning, teachers may need to make conscious efforts to remind students or to discuss with them what to look for as they read. Through modelling and practice, students can be guided to think about what they know, what connections they can make, what questions they want answered and the way the text is organised. The use of multimodal texts that are electronically linked suggests different pathways for reading and hence allows much reader autonomy. Opportunities should be provided to develop navigational skills and search skills to facilitate the reading process and reading skills development.

Introducing a Text

The introduction of a text means giving students some information on what they are going to read and this includes the topic, the setting, the background, the text type, its organisation and the modes of communication, which may include images, animations and sounds. The rationale behind this is to get students into the right mood for reading a particular text and to make them feel interested in reading it. If students get a global impression of the kind of text they are going to read and have a rough idea of the topic, they will be provided with a general framework that facilitates the more detailed work that follows.

The best introductions are the ones that the teacher draws out from students. Students can be invited to share opinions on a topic as often as possible. For example, before students start reading a text about a melancholic billionaire, teachers can ask students to put down on paper or input via an e-platform the pros and cons of being rich or ask them to engage in a debate. Students can then be asked to read the text and compare what they have thought about the topic and what they have read.

Getting Readers into a Receptive Frame of Mind

In the process of reading, readers have to interpret the message conveyed in the text in light of their previous knowledge and experience. They use schemas to make sense of a text. Schemas are the reader’s concepts, beliefs, expectations – virtually everything from past experiences that is used in making sense of things and actions.

Below are some ideas for teachers to develop and activate students’ schemas:

 Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a pre-reading activity that can establish a foundation for approaching new and unfamiliar materials. It also helps students make connections with their own life experiences, thus engaging them and giving them a stronger purpose for reading. Teachers can first show students the cover/blurb/contents page of a book or the title of a text and ask them to brainstorm a list of words and phrases, questions, ideas, and examples related to the topic. Students then have a discussion to create further understanding and clarify anything they may not understand. Teachers can help students further explore the topic by asking questions to guide the discussion.

 Previewing

Previewing means taking the time to look over the materials one plans to read.

Previewing of texts by skimming, looking at pictures, examining the title and subheadings, and going through the table of contents, the appendix and the preface helps one’s comprehension of explicit and implicit information. To facilitate navigation of e-texts, previewing requires students to recognise conventions such as the specific tabs, icons and tags that indicate hypertexts or a non-linear network of information.

 Prediction

Prediction is an important reading skill, which activates readers’ schemas. As students make hypotheses about what the writer intends to say, the experiences and associated knowledge they already have about the topic of the text will be called to mind. Having an idea of what the text is to be about helps a reader make sense of it and sets a purpose for his/her continued reading.

Teachers can get students to predict the content of books, articles and so on from non-linear information like titles and headings, subheadings, captions, blurbs and illustrations. In an electronic reading context where there is no preset pathway for readers to follow, anticipating the content of the hyperlinks and forming meaningful associations with the titles and subheadings can also get readers into a receptive frame of mind.

Students can also be asked to read aloud the first paragraph of a text to let other students discuss and predict what is likely to come in the rest of the text.

 Use of Semantic Maps

A semantic map is an arrangement of key words which embody concepts about a topic. It can be developed in the following steps:

Step 1: Associations

Begin by asking students to work in pairs/groups and discuss what they think of when they hear the word “money”, for instance. List the responses as students offer their associations.

Step 2: Categorisation

Put the associations on a semantic map, probably an electronic one to facilitate discussion and revision, by helping students assign these associations to different categories (e.g. “uses of money”, “kinds of money”, “ways of earning money”,

“consequences of having money”). Encourage students to pose their own questions about what they want to learn about the topic from the text using different means (e.g. K-W-L charts) to engage them in an active process of activating prior knowledge, sharing ideas with others and monitoring their own learning.

Step 3: Revision

While going through the set of categories and pre-reading questions related to

“money”, students add new ideas acquired from their reading and discussions, correcting and augmenting the original semantic map. The revised map is the result of the students’ pre-existing schemas, their new learning from the text, and the integration of old and new knowledge. (Step 3 is also activated for use at the while-reading and post-while-reading stages.)

 Using Signpost Questions

The purpose is to direct readers’ attention to the important points in the text or to the things that might otherwise be missed, preventing them from going off the track. The best signpost questions relate either to the whole section or to its final part, so that they cannot be answered until the whole section has been read and understood.

 Using a Video on the Topic

A short educational video with or without subtitles can stimulate students to think and motivate them to read the text. It is authentic and provides useful information that introduces students to important words and concepts in context and builds background knowledge among students. Teachers can stop, start and rewind the video to ensure that students understand the main idea, and then challenge them to predict the ending of the video, or debate an issue.

While-reading Stage

Breaking up the Text

A long text is daunting to readers who are not very skilled or speedy. Before engaging students in actual reading, teachers can break up the text into a number of shorter sections. It is easier to go through shorter texts than lengthy ones. In this way, students’

interest can be better sustained.

Tackling Unfamiliar Lexical Items/Structures

The failure to understand a text often results from an inability to decode the meaning of unfamiliar words and structures. Teachers should refrain from teaching all the new words and structures in the text before reading begins. Not only will this be very boring, students will also get used to being given “pre-processed” texts and consequently they will never make the effort to cope with a difficult passage on their own. Instead, if students are to read texts with understanding, they need to be equipped with word attack skills and knowledge of common language items and structures and usage.

Teachers can introduce three categories of words to students – active vocabulary, receptive vocabulary and throwaway vocabulary. Given frequent exposure in context, students can transform receptive vocabulary into active vocabulary, whereas throwaway vocabulary items can be forgotten once they are taken out of context.

Not every unknown word readers come across can be ignored. With words that stand in the way of comprehension, students have to develop word attack skills to tackle them.

These skills include:

 Use of Structural Information

 By looking at the position of a lexical item in a sentence, students can make a guess at its grammatical category (e.g. whether it is a noun, a verb or an adjective) and deduce its meaning.

 The morphology of a word may offer valuable clues to its meaning. An understanding of affixation, how compound words are built and the way phrasal verbs are put together to form new meanings helps students decode unfamiliar words.

 Students can be guided to recognise the various devices used to create textual cohesion, particularly the use of reference words and signpost words. For example, students can be shown how authors use these devices to set expectations and to either reinforce or overthrow these expectations before presenting their own points of view.

 Use of Text Grammar

When reading a text, students may be guided to note how the choice of language items is affected by the context and how it shapes the tone, style and register of a text. For teaching grammar at the text level, texts related to different topics and students’ learning experiences in other subjects can be chosen to help students understand the salient features of the texts they may come across in other subjects, and enhance students’ understanding of how grammar makes meaning in different texts. For further details of text grammar, please refer to Section 4.2.4 of the English Language Education Key Learning Area Curriculum Guide (Primary 1 – Secondary 6) (2017) (http://www.edb.gov.hk/elecg).

 Use of Images

Teachers may draw students’ attention to visual cues (e.g. charts, diagrams, maps, key for a map, photos or other illustrations) while reading. They often provide valuable information about the topic or unfamiliar words and facilitate the effective understanding of a text.

 Making Inferences from Context

Students should be encouraged to infer the meaning of unknown words from context. Teachers should remind students that inferences are about probabilities, not certainties. Certainties are developed over time with more frequent exposure to the language in use.

 Visualising

Students should learn to create pictures in their minds while reading a text. These pictures visualised out of reading the text can enhance their reading comprehension and contribute to effective reading. Through visualising, students can turn reading into an active, purposeful and creative process, in which they construct meaning, connect with their previous knowledge and experience and create mental pictures. The teacher should give students explicit examples of the use of visualising in reading, model the thought process involved in visualising and provide students with opportunities to try generating mental pictures while reading. Students can then share what they have visualised with the teacher and their classmates.

 Use of a Dictionary

Students must learn to use a dictionary effectively and with discretion. They have to learn to decide which words to look up and which ones to bypass. Even if they need to consult the dictionary to get a precise meaning, they should only do so after having tried to work out an approximation on their own. The new words and language items can often be more easily and effectively learnt in context during the process of reading. Students may also make use of online dictionaries with useful features (e.g. audio pronunciations, hyperlinks for cross-references) to learn new words.

Practising Skimming

Skimming is a reading skill required for a general impression of the content and structure of a text, the general direction of an argument or a narrative, ascertaining chronological sequences, like time shifts in a narrative or when it uses flashbacks, or a sense of the writer’s tone and intention. When skimming a text, a student should be encouraged to note headings and subheadings and to locate topic sentences. In skimming texts that involve more than written language, a student should be guided to identify features that enhance readability such as icons, toolbars, images and hyperlinks that help highlight key sections for retrieving information. Skimming to get an initial global view is a valuable way of approaching complex texts too.

Activities to practise skimming may include:

 skimming a text for answers to simple global questions;

 supplying a text with several titles. Students choose which title best fits the text;

 supplying a text with photos or diagrams. Students tell what topics are dealt with in the text;

 supplying some letters for various purposes (e.g. invitation, complaint, request, appreciation). Students match the letters to different categories; and

 supplying copies of news items from different papers or websites about the same incident. Students identify which copy states purely the fact, which one explains the background to the event and which one includes opinion.

The above activities can be conducted as pair or group work to facilitate collaboration and discussion among students.

Practising Scanning

Students scan to locate/extract specific information. They glance through a text rapidly to search for specific details (e.g. a name, a date). In a multimodal reading context, students can be alternating among various websites with the help of hyperlinks or toolbars to locate the specific web page for information. Students should be encouraged to look for clue words or phrases that may indicate the location of the answer they are seeking without attempting to deal with the content as a whole.

Practice for scanning can be organised orally to force the pace. It is not scanning unless it is done fast. Some scanning activities are as follows:

 The most common activity is to ask students to locate a word or a fact on a page or a hypertext. For instance:

 looking up a certain page or a hypertext to find out the year in which a particular event took place;

 counting the number of times a particular word occurs on a single page or web page; and

 finding from the index or the site map of a website where “Topic A” is mentioned.

 More complex activities can be used on a group basis:

 supplying a copy of a newspaper or suggesting a news website and asking students to:

- locate the page and column where various headlines and bylines can be found;

- locate specific data in editorials, letters to the editor; and

- locate videos and pictures being described or corresponding to captions.

 supplying a page of advertisements from a newspaper or providing links to several advertisements on the Internet and asking students to answer a series of questions orally (e.g. “Which tour agent offers holidays in Italy?”, “Where can you get a holiday for $980?”).

Understanding Main Ideas

By recognising the essential ideas, students can become more proficient in processing and retaining information about the text they read. Some suggested activities aimed at developing students’ ability to understand main ideas include asking students to:

 match headings with newspaper articles;

 identify the key phrases or sentences in a text;

 select from a list the main ideas most relevant to the text they read;

 work in pairs, with each team member reading a different text and explaining to each other its main ideas;

 summarise orally or in writing the main points of a text; and

 deconstruct a text with graphic organisers.

Questioning

Questioning, during the pre-reading stage, while-reading stage or post-reading stage, promotes engagement, invites prediction, creates reasons for reading and fosters understanding. Questions that students can ask include those that can be answered or inferred from the text or by means of further discussion or research. Teachers should model how to raise questions in interacting with a text to enhance students’ reading comprehension. Ample opportunities should then be provided for students to practise questioning.

Identifying Supporting Ideas or Details

Making distinctions between general ideas and supporting details is an important part of reading comprehension. Some suggested activities include asking students to:

 list the supporting details under each main idea in the text;

 find one illustration or example for each main idea provided; and

 read strips of paper containing sentences or a paraphrase from the text they read and put these strips under the categories of “main idea” or “supporting detail”.

Reading Beyond the Surface

If students are to understand the writer’s points of view, intent or attitude towards a specific issue and work out the implications of facts and ideas presented in the text, they have to be trained to read beyond the literal meaning of the text.

Teachers can help develop students’ ability to make inferences through:

 encouraging students to anticipate the content of a text from its title and illustrations;

 drawing students’ attention to the use of figures of speech, cohesive devices, rhetorical devices and contextual clues, which help bring out the underlying meaning;

 sensitising students to the use of certain typographical features such as italicised words and the use of question marks for statements;

 drawing students’ attention to the writer’s distinctive style or personal experience and to the social, cultural and political setting of the text;

 holding discussions about the writer’s points of view and attitude towards specific events; and

 discussing the way visual and audio elements (e.g. tables, diagrams, graphs, images, close-ups, animation, voiceovers, sound effects) contribute to the meaning of the text.

As students proceed to a more advanced level, they have to be taught to interrogate the text and respond to the writer’s ideas in light of their past experiences. To start off, general questions inviting evaluation of the information source can be asked to enable students to assess the reliability of information, recognise the presence of bias and challenge the assumptions made. If students have expressed opinions on a topic or the theme, it is desirable to invite comments from peers. Students can also be encouraged to initiate and formulate questions. Teachers may have to go through some texts with the class, thinking aloud the questions these texts raise. The next step is to let students tackle the questions from their own experience, with the teacher and their classmates giving feedback on attempts made. Students will gradually pick up the skill of reading a text critically.

Post-reading Stage

At the post-reading stage, teachers may make use of tasks that involve:

 eliciting a personal response from readers (e.g. whether they agree or disagree, like or dislike the text);

 determining what the author wants readers to think or believe based on a critical analysis of the text;

 establishing the connection with other works on the same topic/theme and drawing comparisons between them;

 drawing conclusions about the purpose and validity of the ideas and information in the text;

 suggesting practical applications of theories or principles;

 retelling or role-playing the text read;

 debating the points of view or moral values/issues presented in the text;

 choosing or creating a title, which is an excellent way of summing up readers’

overall understanding of a text;

 conducting self-evaluation in which students articulate their own progress towards the achievement of their reading goals; and

 writing about their thoughts, feelings and insights acquired from the text and sharing them with their classmates via an e-platform.