Theme: Teaching Reading at an Advanced Level

CONTENTS
Introduction
1. The importance of teaching reading
2. Developing reading skills and strategies
3. Stages of conducting reading and reading activities
3.1 Pre-reading
3.2 While-reading
3.3 After-reading
4. Testing reading
Conclusion
Summary
References

Intoduction
Reading is about understanding written texts. It is a complex activity that
involves both perception and thought. Reading consists of two related
processes: word recognition and comprehension. Word recognition refers to the
process of perceiving how written symbols correspond to one's spoken
language. Comprehension is the process of making sense of words, sentences
and connected text. Readers typically make use of background knowledge,
vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, experience with text and other strategies
to help them understand written text.
Reading texts can be used for advanced learners for several different purposes:
- developing reading skills and strategies;
- presenting or recycling grammar items;
- extending vocabulary;
- providing modals for writing;
- giving some interesting and useful information for students;
- stimulating oral work.

Also reading can be linked to other skill work, for example writing, speaking or
listening. In the process of reading, students will be concerned with the subjectcontent of what they read and the language in which it is expressed. Both
aspects involve comprehension, though of different kinds. Depending on the
reading purpose, different strategies and skills will be involved.
As students move on up the developmental ladder, getting closer and closer to
their goals, developing fluency along with a greater degree of accuracy, able to
handle virtually any situation in which target language is demanded, they
become `advanced' students. As competence in language continues to build,
students can realise the full spectrum of processing, assigning larger and larger
chunks to automatic modes and gaining the confidence to put the formal
structures of language on the periphery so that focal attention may be given to
the interpretation and negotiation of meaning and to the conveying of thoughts
and feelings in interactive communication. Some aspects of language, of
course, need focal attention for minor corrections, refinement. So the task of
the teacher at this level is to assist in that attempt to automatized language
and in that delicate interplay between focal and peripheral attention to selected
aspects of language. Reading and writing skills similarly progress closer and
closer to native speaker competence as students learn more about such things
as critical reading, the role of schemata in interpreting written texts, writing a
documents. Everything from academic prose to literature and idiomatic
conversation becomes a legitimate resource for the classroom. Virtually no
authentic language material ought to be summarily disqualified at this stage.
Certain restrictions may come to bear, depending on how advanced the class is.
At this level most if not all of students are `fluent' in that they have passed
beyond that `breakthrough' stage where they are not more long thinking about
every word or structure they are producing or comprehending.
The topicality of this course paper is that reading is one of the most important
and effective means of receiving information. It is closely connected with the
other skills - listening, writing and speaking. We should stimulate the developing
of these skills.
The object of the course paper is the process of teaching reading to advanced
learners, the discussion of some strategies, examples, and resources aimed at
promoting students to take a deep approach to reading.
The subject of the course paper is teaching reading considering the proper
stages of reading and the activities which must be done in order to make the
learners comprehend the information in the most productive way. Much
attention should be paid to the testing reading that will help us to measure their
progress in reading.
The aim of the course paper involves the elaborating of the methods of
teaching reading to advaned learners and presenting different techniques and
activities in order to help them to comprehend the reading better.
The tasks of the course paper are the following:
- to elaborate different strategies of reading according to the purpose of reading
a text;
- to enlighten the stages of reading and show the exercises which can be used
at each stage;

- to work out the tests which will measure reading skill of the learners;
- to encourage learners desire to read more.

1. The importance of teaching reading

reading teaching advanced
Reading is the basic foundation on which academic skills of an individual are
built. Many believe that reading is an apt measure of a persons success in
academics. Most of the subjects taught to us are based on a simple concept read, synthesize, analyse, and process information. Although a priceless
activity, the importance of reading has been deteriorating rapidly.
Learning to read is an important educational goal. For both children and adults,
the ability to read opens up new worlds and opportunities. It enables us to gain
new knowledge, enjoy literature, and do everyday things that are part and
parcel of modern life, such as, reading the newspapers, job listings, instruction
manuals, maps and so on.
A reader reads a text to understand its meaning, as well as to put that
understanding to use; to find out some information, to be entertained. The
purpose for reading is closely connected to a person's motivation for reading. It
will also affect the way a book is read. We read a dictionary in a different way
from the way we read a novel. The teachers need to be aware of their students'
learning needs, including their motivation for reading and the purpose that
reading has in their lives.
It is often difficult to convince students of Eglish as a foreign language that texts
in English can be understood even though there are vocabulary items and
structures that the students have never seen before. Skills such as extracting
specific information can be satisfactorily performed even though the students
do not understand the whole text; the same is true for students who want to
`get the general idea' of a text [10, p.191]. It is consider vitally important to
train students in these skills since they ma y well have to comprehend reading
in just such a situation in real life.
The underlying purpose of reading is to develop your thoughts, to weave new
ideas and information into the understanding you already have and to give new
angles to your thinking. If you try to pass this thinking process, you are not
really learning as you read. Learning is to do with changing your ideas,
combining them together in new ways and extending them to cover new
ground. Reading a text is one way in which you trigger off these changes. The
purpose of reading is not to have a lot of words pass in front of your eyes, nor to
add a few new items to a long `list' of information in your mind. It is to engage
your ideas and make you rethink them, make the proper conclusions [18,p.34].
Researches have shown that reading is only incidentally visual. More
information is contributed by the reader than by the print on the page. That is,
readers understand what they read because they are able to take the stimulus
beyond its graphic representation and assign its membership to appropriate
group of concepts already stored in their memories (Malderez 1999:134). Skills
in reading depend on the efficient interaction between linguistic knowledge and
knowledge of the world.
Reading texts also provides opportunities to study language: vocabulary,
grammar, punctuation, models for English writing.

2. Developing reading skills and strategies

Advanced students who are literate in their own language sometimes are left
to their own devices when it comes to teaching them reading skills. They will
simply learn good reading by absorption. In reality, there is much to be gained
by focusing on reading skills. It is generally recognized that the efficient reader
versed in ways of interacting with various types of texts, is flexible, and chooses
appropriate reading strategies depending on a particular text in question. The
reader has to match reading skill to reading purpose.
We can differ between reading aloud and silent reading. Reading aloud is not
appropriate for advanced students. We can use it when we have control
reading. At the advanced level the most suitable is silent reading. Sustained
silent reading allows students to develop a sense of fluency. Also silent reading
can help the students to increase the speed of their reading. Reading speed is
usually not much of an issue for all but the most advanced students.
It is now generally accepted that reading is not the careful recognation and
comprehension of each word on the page in sequence. A good reader use a
minimum of `clues' from the text to reconstruct the writer's message. It is not
difficult for the fluent reader to read the text with missing words. Experiments
have shown that sometimes readers are not even aware of these things. Their
successful reading depends upon their ability to predict what comes next. We
read, in sense, what we expect to read, using our knowledge of language and
our knowledge of the topic to predict to a large degree what comes next and so
move on quickly [15, p.144].
Fluent advanced readers possess many different skills which they apply actively
to the reading of the text:
- they predict from syntactic and semantic clues the words;
- they read in phrases, not in single words and actually skip over words if these
are not needed for general understanding;
- they learn to read `between the lines' and working on the meaning of the text
at different levels, understanding information, making inferences and critically
evaluating ideas;
- they guess the meaning of new words from contextual clues or by applying
knowledge of how words can be formed from others;
- they follow meaning through the paragraph by recognizing signals like
`however' and `on the other hand' and by understanding how words and
phrases like `it', `this', `the latter' and `these matters' refer back to something
earlier in the text [17, p.128].
Successful reading depends on the interaction of reading `strategies' for
`processing' the text, background knowledge and linguistic competence
(Wallace 1992:57). Silent reading may be subcategorized into intensive and
extensive reading.
Intensive reading is usually a classroom-oriented activity in which students
focus on the linguistic or semantic details of a passage. Intensive reading calls

students attention to grammatical forms, discourse markers, and other surface

structure details, for the purpose of understanding literal meaning, implication,
rhetorical relationships. Intensive reading practised in class needs to be
complemented by extensive reading in or out of class. It is important to be sure
that students have ample time for extensive reading. Only then students are
given the opportunity to operate strategies like prediction or guessing word
meaning and to develop the ability to follow the lines of argument. It is carried
out to achieve a general understanding of a text. All pleasure reading is
extensive. Technical, scientific, and professional reading can also be extensive.
The idea that some words in the text may be skipped or ignored will certainly
seem strange to students accustomed to plodding word by word; but the
techniques of skimming and scanning require this [19, p.34]. These terms are
sometimes used indiscriminatly, but we will distinguish them below.
Skimming consists of quickly running one's eyes across the whole text to get
the gist. It gives the learners the advantage of being able to predict the purpose
of the passage, the main topic or message, and possibly some of developing or
supporting ideas. This gives them a `head start' as they embark on more
focused reading.
Scanning - is quickly searching for some particular piece or pieces of
information in a text. Scanning exercises may ask students to look for names or
dates, to find the difinition of some concept. The purpose of scanning is to
extract certain specific information without reading through the whole text.
Skimming and scanning are useful skills. They do not remove the need for
careful reading, but they enable a reader to select the texts, or the portions of
the text, that are worth spending time on.
The strategy of semantic mapping or grouping the ideas into meaningful
cluster, helps the reader to provide some order to the chaos. Making such
semantis maps can be done individually, but they make for the productive
group work technique as students collectively induce order and hierarchy to the
passage [1, p.76].
Guessing strategy is very broad on meaning. The students may guess the
meaning of a word, the grammatical or discourse relationships, cultural
references. Students should utilize all their skills and put forth as much efforts
as possible to be on target with their hypothesis (Brown 1994:295). The key to
the successful guessing is to make it reasonably accurate. We can help them to
become accurate guessers by encouraging them them to use effective
comprehension strategies in which they fill gaps in their competence by
intelligent attempts to use whatever clues are available to them. Language
based clues included word analysis, word associations, and textual structure.
3. Stages of conducting reading and reading activities
Reading can be subdivided into three stages: pre-reading, while reading and
after-reading. As was admitted by Hedge T. People reading in foreign language
often need to be given support before they begin reading, an introduction which
motivates reading by creating interest in the topic and which facilitates reading
by developing background understanding and linguistic knowledge (Hedge
1998:96).
3.1 Before-reading

There are various things we can do before reading a text which will make it
easier for students to understand the text and help them focus attention to it as
they read.
They include:
- presenting some of the new words which will appear in the text;
- giving a brief intoduction to the text;
- giving one or two `guiding' question (orally or on the board) for students to
think about as they read;
- suggest them to read the title of the text and try to guess what it is about.
We do not need to present all the new words in the text before the students
read it; they may guess the meaning of the words from the context. An
important part of reading is being able to guess the meaning of unknown words,
and we can help students to develop their reading by giving them practice in
this. It is important to introduce the theme of the text before we ask them to
read it. This serves two purposes:
- to help students in their reading, by giving them some idea what to expect;
- to increase their interest and so make them want to read the text [2, p. 69].
One way to introduce the text is just to give the simple sentence. For example:
We are going to read about fossils. The text tells us how animals and plants
become fossils. Another more interesting way of discussion, to start students
thinking aout the topic: Do you know how the fossils are formed? Where do
they come from? Have you ever seen the fossils? What was it like?. It is
important to mention that the teacher should not say too much when
introducing the text, because it may kill the students' interest instead of
arousing it [6, p.60-61].
Before reading the text the teacher may give the students some guiding
questions. Guiding questions should be concerned with the general meaning or
with the most important points of a text, and not focus on minor details; they
should be fairly easy to answer and not too long (Doff 1988:61). For example:
- Very few animals become fossils. Why?
- What kind of fossils are found in caves?
- How do animals become fossils?[6, p.61]
Different types of activities can be applied to prepare the student to reading the
suggested text:
I. 1) Read the text and try to understand the general meaning of the story. (All
the words which are highlighted are nonsense words).
A country girl was walking along the snerd with a roggle of milk on her head.
She began saying to herself, The money for which I will sell this milk will make

me enough money to increase my trund of eggs to three hundred. These eggs

will produce the same number of chickens, and I will be able to sell the chickens
and for a large wunk of money. [6, p.60]
2) Now look at the highlighted words again and try to guess what they might
mean? (The actual words are: road, can, stock, sum).
II. 1) Discuss in small groups or in pairs the picture of earthquake from the text
or the title. Where it might be, what seems to have happend?
2) Do the tasks below before reading the text:
- Write down at least five questions, which you hope the text will answer.
- Try to imagine what text will tell you about: buildings, people, hills around the
city, the land and the sea...
- Here are some words and phrases from the text. Can you guess how they are
used in the text? (the sea-bed, the Richter scale, a huge wave, tremors, massive
shock)
3) Now read the text [6, p.173].
III. Before you read the text, read the questions below and try to answer them.
After reading the text read once more the questions and try to correct the
mistakes which you have done before the reading.
IV. Read the second or the third paragraph and try to predict what you are going
to read in the first and last paragraph.
3.2 While-reading
Not all reading is simple extensive-global reading. There may be certain facts or
rhetorical devices that students shoud take note while they read. This gives
them a sense of purpose rather than just reading. It is important to inform the
students why they are going to read the suggested text. You may supply them
with exercises which they should do, or explain what you will do when they
continue reading. Then they will be able to choose the right strategy for the
reading.
We can distinguish between different aims of the reading:
- Reading for the main idea. This means to read the whole text quickly to get
the general idea of what it is about.
- Read text predictions. At points in the text that something dramatic has
happend, or is going to happen soon, we can ask students to stop reading, close
the books and try to predict what might happen next. This encourage the
students to read carefully, imagine and discuss future possibilities, then read
the next part to check their predictions [18, p.67].
- Reading to extract specific information. Students are supplied with the
questions or task which they are going to answer before reading the text. This
type of reading will help them to develop their scanning skills. They should

quickly scan the text only to extract the information which the questions
demand.
- reading for communicative taks. This type of reading is very important,
because it helps to develop not only student's reading skills, but also their
communicative skills. For this purpose you may cut the short text into pieces.
Then divide the students in two groups. Then give the part of the text to each
students. They should put them together in the right order and read the whole
story. Then the teacher may ask the questions concerning the story, or ask the
students their opinion about the events in the story. The reading here is
purposal and communicative. Those who read know that they they will have to
answer some questions in order to communicate [10,p.204].
This type of reading is usually supplied with different activities:
I. For each paragraph or part of the story, students find the words or the
sentences, that are the most important. This encourages them to not read the
whole text in details.
II. Read the text and note down the most important information about the main
hero in the form of the table or the chart. Then compare this information with
the information that your partner put down. Discuss the criteria which you use
while choosing the information.
III. Before the students start reading the text they are supplied with questions,
true or false statements, multiple-choice items or matching items. They should
read the text and find the right answer for the tasks.
At two minutes to noon on 1 September 1923, the great clock on Tokyo stopped.
Tokyo Bay shook as if a huge rug had been pulled from under it. Towering above
the bay the 4,000 Mount Fuji stood above the deep trench in the sea. It was
from this trench that the earthquake came, at a magnitude of 8.3 on Richter
scale.
The sea drew back for a few moments. Then, a huge wave swept over the city.
Boats were carried inland, and buildings and people were dragged out to
sea.The tremors dislodged part of the hillside, which gave way, brushing trains,
stations and bodies in the water below. Large sections of sea-bed sank 400
metres; the land rose by 250 metres in some places and sank in others. The
causalities were enormous, but there were also some lucky survivors. The most
remarkable was a woman who was having bath in her roon at the Tokyo Grand
Hotel. [6, p.174]
Tasks to the text:
1. What time did the earthquake start?
What time did it finish?
2. Did it start: a) in the mountains?
b) in the sea?
c) in the city?

d) in the desert?
3. Beside each statements write T(true), F(false) or DK (do not know)
a) Parts of the sea became deeper.
b) A hillside slid down onto the city.
c) Most people died by drowning.
d) The Ground Hotel survived the earthquake. [6, p.175]
IV. Match the sentences and the pictures which are given below with the right
paragraphs from the text. Put the sentences in the right order.
V. Remove all the verbs, or pronouns, or adjectives from the short part of the
text and ask them to fill in the gaps. They should guess the missing word from
the story context. The missing words may be given in box, or may not.
It is estimated that in the last two thousand years the world has lost more than
a hundred species of animals. The similar number of species of birds has also
become extinct. The real significance of.............figures, however, lies
in .............fact that almost tree quarters ..............all the losses
occured..............the past hundred years...............as a direct result
.............man's activities on this............It is essential for..........whole process of
evolution.............the extinction of certain...........should occur over a .............of
time [12].
VI. Read the text below. Copy and complete the chart about either Terry Fox or
Steve Fonyo.
Name:
Disease:
Date of start of run:
Age at start of run:
Distance covered:
Amount of money raised:
Answer the following questions.
1 Where did Steve Fonyo begin and end his run?
2 How many differences can you find between Steve Fonyo and Terry Fox?
Terry Fox was a college athlete who lost a leg due to bone cancer. At the age of
21, on a cold February day, he set out to run across Canada. He wanted to raise
money for the Canadian CancerSociety, but on September 1st, he was forced to
give up. He had raised more than 23 million dollars ana had become a national
hero. He died the following June. Steve Fonyo lost a leg during his childhood due

to cancer. He never completed high school. But at 19, Steve Fonyo still
managed to complete a run all the way across Canada, passing through all the
major cities [10, p.197].
3.3 After- reading
Comprehension questions are just one form of activity appropriate for postreading. Consider vocabulary study, identifying the author's purpose, discussing
the author's line of reasoning, examining grammatical structure, or steering
students toward a follow-up writting activity. The activities which are given to
students after reading the text are generated by the text and extend its
potential for meaningful language work. The tasks can not be performed
without the text, that is, they cannot replace the text. Frequently, they involve
the students in detailed revision of the text, which will help them to understand
the text better [8, p.99].
After reading the text students may do the following activities:
I. Do the multiple-choice exercise, and choose the answers which better confirm
the statements, explain them or support the ideas.
II. Summarize the text and make a conclusion. Discuss in pairs the main idea of
the text.
III. Guess the meaning of new words from the context in the sentence. Match
the words with the meanings. Then make your own sentences with this new
words.
IV. Write your own ending of the story, or write your own composition on the
same topic.
4. Testing reading
There are numerous ways of testing reading comprehension, ranging from
multiple-choice items to opend-ended questions. Although the multiple-choice
items are sometimes the most suitable instrument for testing reading
comprehension, they should not be overused. Frequently other item are more
interesting and useful. The text itself should always determine the types of
questions which are constructed. Certain texts may lead themselves to multiplechoice items, others to true or false items, others to matching items, others to
rearranged items, other to open-ended questions. Indeed, sometimes the same
text will demand at least two or three different types of items [12, p.107]. As
mentioned Burgess S. Each of the parts in typical reading test is design to
measure a different combination of reading skills (Burgess 2005:29).
Multiple-choice tests
This task is likely to be the most familiar to the students. It consists of a text,
which can be of almost any type and gener, accompined by one or more
multiple-choice items. These may be in the form of a series of statements, a
question plus answer, or an incomplete statement with a choice of phrases or
words with which to complete in.

There must be four options, only one of which is correct. It is common to have
items corresponding to specific section of the text, but there also may be items
to test comprehension of the text as the whole. Supporting tasks:
1. This type of multiple-choice is used for understanding the main idea. For this
purpose we can also use matching tasks.
What is the writer complaining about in the letter:
A Buses are becoming more crowded.
B Bus stops are poorly maintained.
C Adults can be thoughtless on buses.
D Children should be more polite on buses. [4, p.29]
The skill here is reading for gist or skimming. Students need to read the text
through from beginning to end.
2. The task to recognize the writer's attitude and opinion. The answer will not
usually be stated explicity at any one point in the text. An appreciation of the
writer's attitude or opinion depends on picking up the meaning of adverbs and
modal expressions that may be scattered throughout the text.
The writer thinks that the companies who advertise on the Internet
A should be more carefully monitored;
B never sell quality products;
C are more common;
D try to exploit their customers. [4, p.30]
3. The task is to recognise the tone. In order to be familiar with the tone,
students should read the text carefully and pay attention to the details.
She comments on this story:
A admiring;
B critical;
C slightly dismissive;
D excited. [4, p.30]
Multiple-choice test as usual include different types of multiple-choice tasks.
True or false statements

That is another task type which is familiar to most of the students. They are
given a text and a list of questions to it. Candidates determine whether the
statements are correct or incorrect, according to the text. Sometimes the third
option is included (`not given' or `not known'), for case where the text does not
give the reader enough information to determine whether a statementas true or
false. The true or false test, however, has two main disadvantages: firstly it can
encourage guessing, since testees have 50 per cent chance of giving correct
answer for each item. Secondly, as the base score is 50 per cent and thus the
average text difficulty general in the region of 75 per cent, the test may fell to
discriminate widely enough among the testees unless there are a lot of items
[12, p.222].
For example:
Read the text and decide whether the statements below are true or false.
There were tales of people who scrape salt from dirty plates back into the saltcellar, retrieve cloves from eaten apple pies, save lemon slices from dirty
glasses and preserve them in water to be reused later, or put used paper
tissues to dry on the radiator. Life with a Scrooge is not a lot of fun.
1. Life with a Scrooge is boring T/F
2. People save lemon slices from dirty glasses and preserve them in water to be
reused later T/F
3. A Scrooge does not eat apple pie T/F [7, P.88].
Matching tasks
These tasks are used by several of the exam boards, some of which include
more than one matching task in the reading tests. In matching tasks the
students choose from the list of prompts. The prompts may be headings,
statements, or question completion. For example, candidates may be asked to
match the descraption to the appropriate paragraph of a text, or to match
words or phrases with their meaning.
Task 1- match the words with definitions.
Sphere wind or twist into a continuous circular sphere;
Ellipse structure with a triangular or square base and slopping
sides meeting at a point;
Coil a form of a globe;
Pyramid regular oval [14, p. 122].
Completion items
There are two different types of completion the items: type 1 consisting of the
gaps for completion in the items following the text and type 2 consisting of the
gaps directly in the text. These tasks of type 2 involve texts from which single

words, phrases, sentences or paragraphs have been removed. In some cases

students have to decide what should fill the gap, while in others they must
choose from the series of alternatives, only one of which is correct. Where
paragraph or sentences have been removed, there is usually an item among the
alternatives that does not belong to the text. In some cases, students write in
words or figures which are missing from diagram or summary, that accompanies
the main text.
Type 1
NEWTONE THEATRE
FORTHCOMING ATTRACTIONS
Monday, 8 January for two weeks
MY FAT FRIEND
Charles Laurence's popular comedy
Wednesday, 24 January to Saturday 27 January
Shanghai Festival Ballet
Presents
SWAN LAKE
1. The Shanghai Festival Ballet will performe on..............evening.
2. .............will be the most amusing play.
3. If you like dancing, you should see..................
4. The comedy written by..............is very exciting. [12]
Rearrangement items
This type is particularly useful for testing the ability to understand a sequence
of steps in the process or events in a narrative. In the whole in an exercise for
classroom practice the students will be often required to rewrite the jumpled
sentences in the correct sequences. Also students may be asked to rearrange
the paragraphs of the text in right order.
Activity 1 - jumbled text
a. Of course, now I can understand it all more clearly. Father andI belonged to
widely different generations, held different expectations; a revolution in
attitudes to
b. opportunities that had bee denied him. A neighbor sent me the
announcement of his death in the local paper. The funeral was to be the day I
received the news. I thought

c. I realised; and maybe I could have eventually forgiven him. But would he ever
forgiven me?
d. women had occured between his day and minr. But at the time all I could feel
was bitter resentment, because he was not proud of me but deeply jealous that
I had
1.... 2..... 3.... 4... [12 ]
Open-ended questions
Student are required to answer the questions or continue the statements
concerning the text. The answers may include one word or several sentences.
There are many ways in which teachers may support students in developing the
skills measured in reading tests, but it is important to highlight the difference
between particular reading activities and the demands of the text.
For example - give the answers for the questions based on the text above.
1 Where did Steve Fonyo begin and end his run?
2 Where did Terry Fox begin and end his run?
3 Why did Steve Fonyo stop running at Thunder Bay on November 29?
4 How many differences can you find between Steve Fonyo and Terry Fox?
[10, p.203]
The students can ask and answer the questions in pairs. The answers to these
questions are not essential for an overview of the text; they are the details
which we expect students to be able to access on the second reading, not on
the first.
Conclusion
Reading is a skill that will empower everyone who learns it. They will be able to
benefit from the store of knowledge in printed materials and, ultimately, to
contribute to that knowledge. Good teaching enables students to learn to read
and read to learn. The role of the teacher in the teaching-reading process
should be of a companion rather than the boss. Teaching can be made
interesting and innovative if the efforts are put in to make learning an enjoyable
experience. Successful teaching is where effective learning takes place with the
use of appropriate knowledge, the right emotion and accurate application of
scientific devices. With consistent progress in science and technology and other
areas of study, it is the duty of the teacher to adopt the best methods and
employ the best devices to ensure rapid growth in the teaching process.
Teachers must be aware of the progress that students are making and adjust
instruction to the changing abilities of students. Both research and classroom
practices support the use of a balanced approach in instruction. Because
reading depends on efficient word recognition and comprehension, instruction
should develop reading skills and strategies, as well as build on learners'
knowledge through the use of authentic texts. Similarly, the most effective way
of dealing with the problem of cultural meaning in texts is to encourage
students to read by themselves, choosing subjects related initially to their own

interests so that they bring motivation and experience to reading. As their

understanding of other cultures and of unfamiliar views increases through
reading, they will bring to their reading activities a gradually increasing capacity
to understand the full meaning of texts.
When reading comprehension breaks down, different students need to find ways
to repair their understanding. This is where the importance of knowing how to
teach reading strategies come in, so as to facilitate the reading process and
give students a clear sense of what they are reading. Students can become
easily frustrated when they do not understand what they are reading and as a
result, they become demotivated. A teacher needs to design and teach different
strategies in order to help students close the gaps in their understanding. The
ultimate challenge for the teacher is to know exactly which strategy is useful
and most beneficial to teach, since each student needs different strategies. This
course paper in this respect, gives many strategies and a few general pointers
for how to teach them.