How to help
students understand what they read in textbooks
Some
of what your students have to read will be prepared by you, and there is
detailed advice elsewhere on this teacher's site to help you produce
comprehensible worksheets and tests. Much of what the students have to read in
your subject, however, will come from textbooks or, more recently, from the
Internet. Clearly, you have no control over the content and style of these passages;
what you can do however is to decide whether or not to use the text at all with
your students, or with your ESL students. Alternatively, you could choose to
rewrite the text to make it more accessible. (This is a complex, time-consuming
process, and your ESL teacher will be happy to advise or do it for you!)
Assuming
you want to use a difficult passage from a textbook as it is, there are various
strategies that students can apply to ensure that they have a better chance of
understanding. Some of the more common ones are SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read,
Recite, Review) and KWL (What do I know, What do I want to know, What have I
learned) or other kinds of graphic organiser. The most important aspects of
these various reading strategies are summarised in the following list:
Make
sure that students understand why they are reading the text and what they will
have to do afterwards. ESL students often believe they need to understand every
word of a text, whereas in many cases they can fulfil the task requirements by
scanning or skimming through the passage. Having a clear reading purpose helps
them to focus more efficiently on the information they need to extract.
Ensure
that students have the necessary background information before they are asked
to read long texts. It is most important that they have a chance to focus on
the topic and activate their existing knowledge of it before being confronted
with the text. This often provides the opportunity to pre-teach essential
vocabulary contained in the text
Encourage
students to read up about the topic beforehand, or discuss it at home with
their parents, in their own language
Have
students predict the information they will find out in the text
Ask
students to write questions that they would like to have answered by the text
Introduce
some key vocabulary from the text
Have
students predict the vocabulary they will meet in the text
Remind
students of the importance of looking at headings, diagrams, and illustrations
and their captions
Tell
students to note parts of the text that they could make no sense of. (They can
later ask you or another student to explain it to them.)
One
more piece of advice: Many textbooks are organised around a unifying principle
so that each chapter follows the same pattern. It is helpful to make sure that
students know their way around the book, particularly if it contains a
glossary.
Much
of the above advice is standard practice because it is good for all students,
not just ESL students. However, in mainstream classes, as in ESL classes, the
emphasis should be on training students to apply these reading strategies
independently where possible. It does not help in the long run if they expect
to be "walked through" every difficult text they encounter. [See my
advice to students on how to become a more effective reader.]
Understanding
what they read is only one of the difficulties faced by ESL students in school.
Another major problem for them is making sense of what they hear. Go to advice
on how to help students understand what you say.
http://esl.fis.edu/teachers/support/commun.htm
