Strategic reading in the classroom (Cambridge Conversations)

[ELTWeekly Volume 7, Issue 20 | November 23, 2015 | ISSN 0975-3036]

Reading is complicated, and becoming a skilled reader takes a long time. Most L2 reading textbooks try to promote skilled reading by teaching reading strategies. When readers begin to use these strategies automatically, the strategies become skills. So, how can you promote strategic (and one day, skilled) reading in your classroom? Here are five suggestions to keep in mind.

1. Teach, don’t just test. Many reading textbooks present a reading followed by comprehension questions. Comprehension questions can indicate whether your students have understood the text but they can’t help them become strategic readers. Good comprehension is a result of strategic reading. If you want your students to find the main idea, for example, show them how. You might start by asking them to find the topic. Then ask them what the writer wants to say about the topic. Tell them to check subheads and look for repeated words and phrases. Or, if you want your students to recognize the difference between fact and opinion, help them recognize the language “hooks” such as “research suggests” and “government records indicate” that often accompany the reporting of facts.

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Going to the pictures with Shakespeare (OUP ELT Blog)

[ELTWeekly Volume 7, Issue 20 | November 23, 2015 | ISSN 0975-3036]

Not so long ago, we ‘went to the pictures’ (or ‘the movies’) and now they tend to come to us. For many people, visiting a cinema to see films is no longer their principal means of access to the work of film-makers. But however we see them, it’s the seeing as much as the hearing of Shakespeare in this medium that counts. Or rather, it’s the interplay between the two.

Some Shakespeare films appeal directly to the kinship between cinema-going and the live theatre. Olivier’s Henry V (1944) begins in an Elizabethan theatre, involving both a historical period and the viewers’ sense of themselves as an audience — the effect doubly appropriate in a film made in wartime, asserting the values of communal spirit and shared emotions.

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What Learners Can Do with Texts (OUP ELT Blog)

[ELTWeekly Volume 7, Issue 20 | November 23, 2015 | ISSN 0975-3036]

As a teacher and writer, I believe that two of the main questions we face in the classroom can be summarized as: How do our students learn, and how do our lesson plans and materials promote learning?

I’m especially interested in how this applies to our use of texts. And I say texts not readings to emphasize my belief that the articles, reviews, websites, essays, and textbooks that we assign can be used for more than teaching reading.

Here are four of the ways I use texts in my teaching:

  • To challenge students to reconsider the world. For example, in the second edition ofQ: Skills for Success Reading/Writing 5, we have a fascinating new reading about how graphs can lie: what appear to be hard numbers may turn out to be visual distortions!
  • To encourage critical thinking by presenting multiple viewpoints. When we were writing Q: Skills, we were always looking for two different ways to answer the unit question, often from very different academic fields. So, for instance, how do we define a private space after reading articles about shared spaces such as roads and public buildings?

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