DEVELOPING ENGAGED

SECOND LANGUAGE READERS

Quiz:
Guess the meaning of your
mysterious word: slawato

 Experience and challenges

in ESL classrooms
Engaged readers
Fluent reading
Reading comprehension
Reading strategies

Challenges?

Challenges
more concerned about passing exams

slow reading rates

lack of reading fluently

not forming a culture of reading

Engaged readers?

II. Engaged readers

read widely with different purposes
read fluently and cognitively
develop their comprehension
use a variety of reading strategies
are motivated readers

How to help students to be engaged

readers?

Fluent reading?

III. Fluent reading

- reading fluently.
- reading at 200 wpm with 70% of
comprehension.
- decoding and comprehending the text
at the same time.
- automaticity in word recognition.

READING COMPREHENSION
ability to mentally interconnect different
events in the text and form a coherent
representation of what the text is about.
(research by Kendeou, van den Broek, White and Lynch
(2007) )

Key components of comprehension ?

Key components of comprehension

- Decoding

skills
- Vocabulary knowledge
- Grammar knowledge
- World knowledge
- Short-term memory
- Inferential knowledge

Metacognitive awareness of reading

strategies

predicting
making connections
questioning
visualising
summarizing

Predicting
Topic: Plants
K
(What I
Know)

W
(What I
Want to
Know)

Plants
have
roots and
leaves.

What
other
plant
parts are
there?

Plants

How

L
(W
hat
I
Lea
rne
d)

Predicting
Topic: Plants
K
(What
I
Know)

W
(What
I Want
to
Know
)

L
(What I Learned)

Plants
have
roots
and
leaves.

What
other
plant
parts
are
there?

Plants have roots,

leaves, stems, and
flowers.

Plants
need
water
and
light to
grow.

How
does
a
plant
get
water?
How
does

Water falls as rain.

The ground soaks it
up. The roots help get
water from the
ground.
The leaves use light
from the sun to make
food.

Discuss tips to do reading tasks in the

National English exam

Tips for task 1 (choose the best phrase or sentence A-G that
fits each of the blanks in the following text)
The students should:
-

count the gaps and options.

read the options quickly and underline the key words.

identify discourse markers (contrast, additional meaning or

giving information) and punctuation.

-

take notice of tenses of the sentence, subjects, objects,

pronouns, determiners, etc.

Tips for task 1 (cont.)

pay attention to the connection between the sentence,
before and after the gap and the option.
- make a guess for what kind of information to be filled in.
- skim the reading passage for the main idea.
- decide if the option fits into the context.
- mark the answer if they know the answer for certain.
- randomly choose the answer basing on their intuition (if
they cant decide the correct answer.)

Tips for task 2 (decide which of the notes best sums up each of
the five paragraphs.)
The students should:
- read the options first
- read the topic sentence (usually the first or the last sentence)
- skim to find out the main idea of each paragraph.
- underline key words in the options and in the paragraphs.

Tips for task 3 (multiple choice questions)

The students should:
- look at the title
- read the MCQ first and underline the key words, look at the topic
sentence, scan the passage and locate the key words in the
passage.
- read that paragraph carefully and decide on the answer (answer
the easy question first).
- read the passage quickly and decide on more difficult questions.

Homework
- Find a website (or introduce textbooks) in which
you can find useful sources for teaching reading
skill.
- How can you use these sources to teach
reading? (list)
eg : http://www.kidsgen.com/fables_and_fairytales/
(retell a story, write comments, act out the characters in a story, summary, club . )