Teaching Reading | TESOL
What is Reading?
Reading is the act of looking at printed materials and comprehending what it means. It can also be an act of saying those words out loud.
What is TESOL?
TESOL or TESL means Teaching English to Speakers of other Languages. It is a term that is used to determine the English Language as a teaching profession activity that requires specialized training.
But when it comes to teaching reading, there are a lot of ways to teach especially when it comes to TESOL. In this article, I am going to discuss the skills in teaching reading in TESOL.
When you read any printed materials, do you read them the same way?
When we read a text, we do not read it always the same way. Sometimes we pay attention to details or read the keywords to have an idea of what we are reading about. And most students do the same way in their own language.
How do we teach reading to improve or develop their reading comprehension skills?
Here 5 ways how to teach reading in TESOL
- New Vocabulary
– refrain from pre-teaching all the new vocabulary
– keywords in the paragraph are very important
– you can have an activity called “Think-Pair-Share” where students pair themselves up and work out the meaning of that new vocabulary or you can give them a matching activity
- Reading Comprehension vs. Reading Aloud
– avoid the text from being read aloud. Remember that you are not teaching a listening skill but a reading one.
– set up a task like asking questions to students, True or False questions before the students start to read so that they read for something and not because they are just reading. Students may read aloud the content after reading comprehension tasks. Because if students read aloud, they are not concentrating on the content but on the pronunciations themselves. Take not that reading aloud is not reading comprehension. If your purpose is to make the students understand the content of the text, then don’t tell your students to read it aloud.
- Introduce the theme of the text first
– introducing the topics first to the students can arouse their interests
– it can help them pre-teach some new vocabulary
– it sets the students’ mood for reading
-blends the students’ speaking and listening skills
- Do Follow-up activities
– before ending the class, make sure that you give your students interesting activities to integrate their listening, writing, and speaking skills. For example, in speaking, students can debate/discuss or retell the story. In writing, students can summarize the story or they can write a letter. You also give them homework to review their vocabulary.
- Authentic Material
– original content of a text is complex but it can help the students improve their reading comprehension skills. And this is one of the materials English native speakers use. It can also make students learn real-life and meaningful vocabulary. Authentic materials include music, lyrics, poetry, ads, letters, magazine articles, and newspaper articles.
The key to making teaching reading and enhancing comprehensive skills is to make the tasks easy and simple. In teaching reading in TESOL, you will learn how to effectively incorporate reading skills into your lesson plans.
