How to teach reading in a second language.

Parents often ask me what they can do to help their child become more proficient in the second language. My answer has always been the same; Read to your child, buy books with your child, encourage your child to read alone. Read, read, read and then read some more.  Reading has always been the most neglected skill in the ELT classroom, probably because of its complexity to teach. We tend to underestimate the power of free, voluntary reading, because its benefits are not instantly evident in our conscious learning classroom environments.

At this point we must make a distinction between acquisition and learning. Acquisition refers to the subconscious comprehension of a linguistic system, which is profound and leads to fluency and accuracy in grammatical forms. Conscious learning refers to the explicitly taught rules of a language. In his Comprehension Hypothesis Krashen maintains that L2 (Second Language) acquisition takes place in only one way: when we decipher the message, when we understand what is said or read. In other words we don’t acquire language when we produce it, but when we understand it (1).

Acquisition is made possible through exposing learners to plenty of compelling, comprehensible input. He goes on to stress the importance of the input comprehensibility and the fact that learners should not be forced to produce L2 before they are ready.  When overwhelmed learners tend to relapse to L1 rules in order to cope, which leads to high effective filters and error fossilisation. (2)

 For years linguists have argued for and against either one of the above approaches. My experience has taught me that one doesn’t have to choose. The only thing teachers and parents can do is work together to provide plenty of both learning and acquiring opportunities.

Linguist Beatrice S. Mikulecky, Ed.D. seems to have managed to bridge the two approaches. In her article Teaching Reading in a Second Language (3) she stresses the importance of reading in L2 classes and goes on to suggest the explicit teaching of strategies and helpful vocabulary that can make learners proficient readers.

She maintains that when a learner reads a text in L2, two information processing systems interact. Firstly, the reader employs the Top Down process to relate what he or she is reading to their prior knowledge. In the same time the Bottom Up process is employed in order to analyse textual features and information. So the act of reading is a never-ending interaction between what we already know and what is presented in text. Teaching reading in L2 is actually teaching a second literacy.

According to Mikulecky in order for students to read well they have to do the following:

1.    Understand that reading is not just translating.

2.    Discuss their reading.

3.    Read extensively for pleasure.

4.    Vary their reading rate according to the task purpose.

5.    Stop reading every word in the text, read faster.

6.    Employ Top Down processes in order to make connections to what they already know.

7.    Enhance Bottom Up processes by acquiring the most useful vocabulary and developing strategies to guess the meaning of unknown words.

8.    Master the basic 2000 words that constitute the 80% of written English.

9.    Acquire specific reading comprehension skills.  

She also proposes that the specific reading skills should be explicitly taught one at a time. The skills she considers important are:

1.Automatic decoding: recognising a word at a glance

2.Previewing and predicting

3.Understanding purpose of writer

4.Identifying genre

5.Scanning

6.Identifying topics

7.Identifying topic sentences

8.Stating the main idea

9.Identifying the words that connect the main ideas.

10.Recognise the use of pronouns and        other referents

11.Guessing the meaning of unknown words using clues like syntax, word parts, etc.

12.Skimming

13.Paraphrasing

14.Summarising

15.Drawing conclusions

16.Drawing inferences

17.Reading faster

18.Adjusting reading rate according to materials and purpose

What is more she demonstrates how to teach the above skills one by one in her book Reading Power. The book gives specific instructions on how to use the materials in your classroom as well as charts for the students to monitor their progress in their journals. It made me see teaching reading through a whole different spectrum.

  

references 

1. Stephen Krashen, Remarks on Language Acquisition and Literacy: Language Acquisition and Teaching, Free Reading, "Test-Prep" and its Consequences, The Use of the First Language, Writing, and the Great Native Speaker Teacher Debate, October 2014)  

2. Stephen Krashen, Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition, int. edition 2009)

3. Beatrice S. Mikulecky, Teaching Reading in a Second Language, 2008, Pearson Education