INTENSIVE READING

Intensive Reading

INTENSIVE READING

A. Intensive reading : The roles of the teacher

In order to get students to read enthusiastically in class, we need to work to create interest in the topic and tasks. However, there are further roles we need to adopt when asking students to read intensively :

·         Organiser : we need to tell students exactly what their reading purpose is, give them clear instructions about how to achieve it and explain how long they have to do this. Once we have said you have four minutes for this, we should not change that time unless observation ( see below) suggests that it is necessary.

·        Observer : when we ask students to read on their own, we need to give them space to do so. This means restraining ourselves from interrupting that reading, even though the temptation may be to add more information or instructions.

while students are reading we can observe their progress since this will give us valuable information about how well they are doing individually and collectively. It will also tell us whether to give them some extra time or, instead, move to organising feedback more quickly than we had anticipated.

·         Feedback organiser : when our students have completed the task, we can lead a feedback session to check that they have completed it successfully. We may start by having them compare their answers in pairs and then ask for answers from the class in general or from pairs in particular. Students often appreciate giving paired answers like this since, by sharing their knowledge, they are also sharing their responsibility for the answers.

When we ask students to give answers, we should always ask them to say where in the text they found the relevant information. This provokes a detailed study of the text which will help them the next time they come to a similar reading passage. It also tells us exactly what comprehension problems they have if and when they get answers wrong.

It is important to be supportive when organising feedback after reading if we are to counter any negative feelings srudents might have about the process, and if we wish to sustain their motivation.

·         Prompter: when students have read a text, we can prompt them to notice language features within it. We may also, as controllers, direct them to certain features of the text construction, clarifying ambiguities and making them aware of issues of the text structure which they had not come across previously.

B. Intensive reading : the vocabulary question

A common paradox in reading lessons is that while teachers are encouraging students to read for general understanding, without worrying about the mwaning of every single word, the students, on the other hand, are desperate to know what each individual word means! Given half a chance, many of them would rather tackle a reading passage with a dictionary (electronic or otherwise) in one hand and a pen in theother to write translations all over the page!

It is easy to be dismissive of such student preferences, yet as Carol Walker points out,’It seems contradictory to insist that student “read for meaning” while simultaneously discouraging them from trying to understand the text at a deeper level than merely gist’ (1998:172). Clearly, we need to find some accommodation between our desire to have students develop particular reading skills (such as the ability to understand the general message without understanding every detail) and their natural urge to understand the meaning of every single word.

One way of reaching a compromise is to strike some kind of a bargain with a class whereby they will do more or less what we ask of them provided that we do more or less what they ask of us. Thus we may encourage students to read for general understanding without understanding every word on first or second read-through. But then, depending om what else is going to be done, we can give them a chance to ask questions about individual words and/or give them a chance to look them up. That way both parties in the teaching—learning transaction have their needs met.

A word of caution needs to be added here. If students ask for the meaning of all the words they do not know – and given some of the problems inherent in the explaining of different words meanings – the majority of a lesson may be taken up in this way. We need, therefore, to limit the amount of time spent on vocabulary checking in the following ways:

·         Time limit: we can give a time limit of, say, five minutes for vocabulary enquiry, whether this involves dictionary use, language corpus searches or questions to the teacher.

·         Word/phrase limit: we can say that we will only answer questions about five or eight words or phrases.

·         Meaning consensus: we can get students to works together to search for and find word meanings. To start the procedure, individual students write down three to five words from the text they most want to know the meaning of. When they have each done this, they share their list with another student and come up with a new joint list of only five words. This means they will probably have to discuss which words to leave out. Two pairs join to make new groups of four and once again they have to pool their lists and end up with only five words. Finally (perhaps after new groups of eight have been formed – it depends on the atmosphere in the class), students can look for meanings of their words in dictionaries and/or we can answer questions about the words which the groups have decided on.

This process works for two reasons. In the first place, students may well be able to tell each other about some of the words which individual students did not know. More importantly, perhaps, is the fact that by the time we are askes for meanings, the students really do want to know them because the intervening process has encouraged them to invest some time in the meaning search. ‘Understanding every word’ has been changed into a cooperative learning task in its own right.

In responding to a natural hunger for vocabulary meaning, both teachers and students will have to compromise. It’s unrealistic to expect only one-sided change, but there are ways of dealing with the problem which make a virtue out of what seems – to many teachers – a frustrating necessity.

C. Intensive reading: letting the students in

It is often the case that the comprehension tasks we ask students to do are based on tasks in a coursebook. In other words, th estudents are responding to what someone else has asked them to find out. But students are far more likely to be engaged in a text if they bring their own feelings and knowledge to the task, rather than only responding to someone else’s ideas of what they should find out.

One of themost important questions we can ever get students to answer is Do you like the text? (kennedy 2000a and b). this question is included in the initial task in example 2 (below). The question is important because if we only ever ask students technical questions about language, we are denying them any affective response to the content of the text. by letting them give voice (if they wish) to their feelings about what they have read, we are far more likely to provoke the ‘cuddle factor’ than if we just work through a series of exercises.

Another way of letting the students in is to allow them to create their own comprehension task. A popular way of doing this – when the text is about people, events or topics which everyone knows something about – is to discuss the subject of the text with the class before they read. We can encourage them to complete a chart (on the board) with things they know or don’t know (or would like to know) about the text, e.g.

Things I/ we know	Things I/we are not sure of	Things i/we would like to know

This activity provides a perfect lead-in since students will be engaged, will activate their schemata, and will, finally, end up with a good reason to read which they themselves have brought into being. Now they read the text to check off all the items they have put into the three columns. The text may not give them all the answers, of course, nor may it confirm (or even refute) what they have put in the left-hand column. Nevertheless, the chances are that they will read with considerably more interest than for some more routine task.

Another involving way of reading is to have students read different texts and then share the information they have gathered in order to piece together the whole story. This is called jigsaw reading.

Reference :

Harmer, Jeremy. The Practice of English Language Teaching 4th Edition.