Teaching Reading in the EFL Classroom
1. Play the video below to start this lesson.
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2. We have created a podcast about teaching EFL reading to complement this lesson. If you cannot see the podcast symbol below, try using a different browser. IE or Chrome will solve the issue.
Teaching EFL Reading Podcast - seven minutes
Click on the link to play it here: Teaching Reading in the EFL Classroom
You can download all our podcasts from our podcast page.
3. Basic Concepts
Teaching EFL reading is a bit different than the way native speakers are taught to read. While vocabulary is an important part of reading, teaching the reading skills of surveying, skimming, scanning, inference, predicting and guessing are just as important.
Research tends to indicate that a student's reading comprehension can be improved by focusing on teaching students skills in the following areas:
Vocabulary
Many languages do not have the word building concepts that English does. In teaching vocabulary, the idea of "root" words and prefixes and suffixes helps students build a larger vocabulary quickly. Affixes (prefixes and suffixes) help us create a variety of words from one base word. Many EFL students won't recognize that contain is the root word of container and containment or that desire is the root word of undesirable and desirability. When teaching new vocabulary, it is important to point out these connections and we can quickly help students expand their vocabulary with the base words they already know. Teaching affixes is only one of several strategies for teaching vocabulary. See the links below for more.
Surveying, Scanning, Skimming
In an academic setting, we rarely read an entire text word for word. More typical is that we look at the contents of a book, the chapters, headings, subheadings, sidebars, pictures, illustrations, words in italics and bold type and dive in to find the information we need. These are the concepts of surveying, scanning and skimming, moving from the big ideas of a text down to the specific details. These are skills that EFL students don't usually have and must be taught. The linked readings for teaching EFL reading below will give you more specifics on these skills. The video below will give you the simple details of scanning and skimming.
Guessing and Predicting from Context
Students also need to be taught to guess the meanings of words based on the context of the reading and to draw from the reading an ability to predict what might happen in the next paragraph. Links below will lead to more information on these skills. The short video below is fun and a well done explanation of predicting.
4. Expanded Concepts for Teaching EFL Reading
Teaching Reading - read the entire section and subsections. These pages are at Archive.org and reflect content from the National Capital Language Resource Center, NCLRC's Web site for college and university language instructors. The NCLRC site is currently offline.
Scanning Exercise - The University of Victoria website where these scanning exercises are located sometimes has problems with their Javascript quizzes and you might find that your correct answers are scored incorrectly! Don't worry about it. The point is to be sure that you understand what scanning is. You can do that by looking at the reading exercise and then at the questions to see that they are asking you to pick up important individual details. That is what scanning is about. This page is curated at Archve.org
Skimming, Scanning, and SQ3R -- This page is curated at Archve.org
A good fast overview of SQ3R is in this two-and-a-half minute video:
An excellent short article about teaching reading and specific reading skills is HERE at About.com