Suggestions and Activities:-
The
following article deals with Points we invite teachers to consider prior to
attempting the reading skill.
Before staring your lesson, think about these
questions:
1-
What is the purpose of the reading passage? Is it to improve your students' reading skill or to reinforce
structure?
2- On average, how many new words are included in the passage and
how do you deal with them?
3-
When introducing the text, who reads?
a) You. b) The student aloud c) The student silently
4- In the textbooks which you use, do these questions cheek your students'
comprehension of the text?
5- Are the questions in any sort of order? E.g. From easy to difficult to answer.
Do
the parts of text, which provide the answer to the questions, follow the same
order as the questions themselves?
6-
Are the questions you use, GLOBAL OR SEPECIFIC?
Global
questions check whether your students have understood the idea which is central
to the whole text. Usually students
have to read most of a text to be able to answer a global question.
Specific
questions, however, focus on some points of detail. Students can answer these questions by reading one sentence,
for example.
Now read this, Please!
Questions that follow the reading of a passage are usually intended to check
whether the class as a whole has understood the passage or not.
In practice, what invariably happens is that the same brighter students
answer all the time, while the others stay quite in many cases, it is impossible
for the teacher to tell if these others have really understood nothing or they
are just too lazy to put up their hands.
Types of comprehension Questions
§
Multiple-choice questions.
§
True / false statements.
§
Open ended questionings.
§
Open ended statements.
§
Polar questions. (Students answer only with yes or no)
There are many ways of answering that all the class
does participate.
Try
just one of these activities:-
Activity one:
Make
the students answer the questions. Write
some questions.
The
questions should be carefully graded, going from very easy to more and more difficult
to answer. This activity will
finish when the first student has answered all the questions.
Notice:
In this way, each student can work at his own speed and within his own limitations.
Observation:
The weaker student will have answered only the earlier, easier questions while
the brighter students may have answered them all.
Activity two: (A game)
Write
each question on a piece of card and distribute these cards amongst the
students. When a student finishes
writing the answers on his piece of card, he then asks the teacher for a
different question or to exchange his card with another student.
The first student to have answered all the questions is the winner.
Use
TRUE/FALSE statements. Give the class a statement and have students decide
weather it is true or false.
Notice:
By
applying this activity, it is easy to involve the entire class by asking them to
put up their right hand for true and their left for false. You are able to cheek
comprehension at a glance.
Activity four. (A game)
The
class is divided into two teams and each team chooses a representative. At the
front of the class are two chairs; a true chair and a false chair. The two
students stand midway between the two chairs. The teacher or one of the other
students from the class makes a true / false statement and the students at the
front have to got to the appropriate chair and sit on it. The first student to
sit on the appropriate chair wins a point for his team.
Planning
a lesson involving a text.
If your lesson involves a text, how will you handle it?
Naturally, when you are handling a long text, the
first thing that comes to your mind is to split it up into short, more
manageable parts.
Who reads?
1.
Students read aloud after you.
2.
The students read aloud.
3.
The students read silently.
Then you can adapt one of these methods.
1- The text or part of the text is written on the board. In this way the students see a different script and their attention is focused on the teacher and on their books.
2- The text is built up orally with the help of some
pictures and word cues.
3-
Questions and answers.
4-
Jumbled sentences on card, stuck on the board.
Students
A and B are given copies of the text where different information has been left
out. The two copies so prepared that students A and B can fill in their spaces
and thus complete their texts by asking their parents questions.
Now look at the following practice activities which can be done on a text and decide what skills they are practicing.
Find and point to a word beginning with ‘a’ and ending with ‘e’ in the first paragraph.
One
student makes g the question from word prompts. Another student answers the
question. E.g. (What / friends / wearing?)
(Student 1: What were the friends wearing?)
(Student 2: They were wearing…)
What
is the word 'fneid’?
You: They had been.
Student:
They had been climbing for an hour.
6. Jumbled words:
(Yesterday suggested boss to his job he changed his) students
arrange the words in the right order without having the text in front of them or
depending on the ability to see it before the class does.
They can read the text and put the words in the right order.
You: They didn’t take any water.
Student:
They should have taken some water.
You
have a word written on a piece of card and reveal the word to the students
letter by letter. At each stage the
students try to guess what the word is. Once
the word has been guessed, students tell you what the next letter is going to
be.
12. Parallel text:
Students
use the original text as a base and substitute various pints of information to
produce a different text.
Conclusion
With
very little effort on the part of the teacher, checking comprehension of a
reading text needs be neither boring nor limited to only a few students, but it
can be an interesting activity which all the class can take part in.
By : Barrak AlBarrak
Alswaidi supervision center
How to Teach English, by Barry Sesan)
Presented here by Barrak Saad AlBarrak
English Supervisor.