How to Become a Better Reader
Implementing While-Reading Strategies in the ESL Classroom
A reading program needs to have a proper build up of strategies. Where do you stand as an ESL teacher with regard to implementing them?
The learning objectives for improving reading skills and understanding texts more comprehensively are general learning strategies that students develop as they perform various tasks and activities--from pre-, while-, post-reading. They are all intentionally structured to broaden the students’ background, knowledge and skills, and may also to be helpful with other subjects as well, (hopefully!) Many of the same strategies are “re-entered” via different activities allowing students to practice using them with different texts.
Questions to think about:
Identify those strategies that you currently use, activities that help teach them, and new ones that you think would be beneficial:
What is your approach to while-reading activities in the classroom?
Which strategies do you already use?
Which new strategies would you like to try to incorporate in the classroom?
While-reading strategies can help the student to improve his ability to become more fluent in English especially in the areas of speaking and reading. The while reading activities I use in the classroom vary according to my aim in using the text.
Hopefully, such strategies will help them cope with problematic and grayer areas of the text such as identifying the main ideas of a text, identifying cause and effect, as well as fact and opinion which is also problematic for them to do in L1. In this respect, I have found the use of graphic organizers to be incredibly helpful in determining the main idea.
Some activities are also much more involving and require using a wide array of corresponding tasks to implement them, i.e. Summarizing and paraphrasing for projects. In some cases, I ask the students to handle the text by themselves and skip the while reading activities, in order to see how they cope with the text or in order to explain to them the benefits of using a strategy. By exposing the students to a variety of strategies I keep them on their toes, and I stimulate myself as well.
What are your concerns regarding while-reading strategies? What are the rewards that students and teacher gain while use them?
What are the problems and difficulties that you face teaching them?
While-reading strategies are challenging and sometimes difficult to teach and learn because different students need different strategies and not every student can acquire the same proficiency level. I am not always sure which strategies students need the most in the classroom and those which require more practice at home. Hopefully, I will gain more insight as to which activities are also suitable for each task.
Another concern regarding while reading strategies the rewards, problems and difficulties that I have faced had to do with the fact that those strategies weren't properly taught or were not taught at all in L1. Therefore, as an English teacher I have to focus on reading strategies in the target language.
Pupils are expected to reach a level of English that enables them to compete in a modern world. Since becoming a good reader is vital for the English language learner, I might say that the reading strategies I have outlined above are the stepping stones in the development of the skills needed for a pupil to become fluent in the target language.
