Helping Non-Native English-Speaking Students Read for Academic Purposes

Helping Non-Native English-Speaking Students 

Read for Academic Purposes

1.   Purposes for reading

·      To search for information

·      For general comprehension

·      To learn new information

·      To synthesize and evaluate information

2. What fluent readers do

·      Read rapidly for comprehension

·      Recognize words rapidly and automatically

·      Draw on a very large vocabulary store

·      Integrate text information with their own knowledge

·      Recognize the purpose(s) for reading

·      Comprehend the text as necessary

·      Shift purpose to read strategically

·      Use strategies to monitor comprehension

·      Recognize and repair miscomprehension

·      Read critically and evaluate information

Grabe 1999b

3.   Implications from Research for Reading Instruction

·      Helping students build a large recognition vocabulary

·      Providing explicit language instruction to help students build a reasonable foundation in the L2

·      Addressing the range of skills needed for successful comprehension

·      Introducing students to discourse-organizing principles through the use of graphic representations and other practices

·      Helping students become strategic readers by focusing on meta-cognitive awareness and strategy learning

·      Giving students many opportunities to read so that they develop reading fluency and automaticity

·      Making extensive reading and broad exposure to L2 texts a routine practice, in and out of class

·      Motivating students to read

·      Integrating reading and writing instruction

·      Developing effective content-based instruction for authentic integrated-skills tasks

Grabe & Stoller 2001

4.   An effective reading curriculum

.   Conduct needs analyses to interpret institutional goals and expectations for learning

·      Plan reading curricula in relation to specific goals, topics, texts, and tasks 

·      Select appropriate text materials and supporting resources

·      Diversify students’ reading experiences

·      Work with text by means of a pre-, during-, and post-reading framework

Pre-reading instruction: previewing, skimming, answering questions, exploring key vocabulary, reflecting on or reviewing information from previous texts in connection with the new text

During-reading instruction: outlining, summarizing, examining emotions and attitudes of key characters, determining sources of difficulty and seeking clarification, looking for answers posed during pre-reading activities, writing down predictions of what will come next

Post-reading instruction: completing a graphic organizer (e.g., table, chart, grid) based on text information, expanding or changing a semantic map created earlier, listening to a lecture, ranking the importance of information, answering comprehension questions, connect text information to personal experiences and opinions

5. Reading through meaningful instruction

·  Vocabulary development related to reading abilities (Schoonen, Hulstjin, and Bossers 1998; Graves 2000; Stahl 1999)

·      Careful reading of texts

·      Awareness of text structure and discourse organization – different genres of reading and transition phrases, headings and sub-headings

·      Use of graphic organizers to support comprehension and discourse organization awareness (Mach & Stoller 1997)

·      Reading strategies vs. Strategic readers

Strategic readers employ the following strategies:

1.   Previewing a text

2.   Predicting what will come later in a text

3.   Summarizing

4.   Learning new words through the analysis of word stems and affixes

5.   Using context to maintain comprehension

6.   Recognizing text organization

7.   Generating appropriate questions about the text

8.   Clarifying text meaning

9.   Repairing miscomprehension

Janzen & Stoller 1998

·      Fluency development – involves rapid and automatic word recognition, the ability to recognize basic grammatical information, and the rapid combination of word meanings and structural information to create larger meaning units.

·      Overall fluency, rate, and word recognition need to be incorporated into reading programs

·      Extended reading – large amounts of texts or extended periods of time

1.   Provide time for extended silent reading in every class session, even if it only involves reading from the textbook

2.   Create opportunities for all types of reading

3.   Find out what students like to read and why

4.   Make interesting, attractive, and level-appropriate reading materials available

5.   Build a well-stocked, diverse class library with clear indications of topic and level of difficulty for each text

6.   Allow students to take books and magazines home to read, and hold students accountable for at-home reading in some simple way

7.   Create incentives for students to read at home

8.   Have students share and recommend reading materials to classmates

9.   Keep records of the amounts of extensive reading completed by students

10.        Seek out class sets of texts that everyone can read and discuss

11.        Make use of graded readers, provided that they interest students, are attractive, create sufficient challenge, and offer a good amount of extensive reading practice

12.        Read interesting materials aloud to students on a consistent basis

13.        Visit the school library regularly and set aside time for browsing and reading

14.        Create a reading lab and designate time for lab activities

·      Student motivation – motivate students to engage as actively as possible with class texts (Guthrie et al. 1999)

·      Integrated-Skills Instruction – reading linked to writing, listening, & speaking

Students can write journals, double-entry notebooks, a simple response, create graphic organizers, connect new texts to previous texts, determine the author’s point of view and adopt a different point of view, make a list of ideas, prioritizing the list by level of importance.