Lesson 7: Using Reading Texts in Class

Chapter 1 :Introduction to Reading Texts

Andrew Walkley talking about Using Reading Texts in Class(videoscript)
"In this lesson, you will consider what texts in the classroom are for, what kind of texts are best suited to teaching lexically and
look at ways of exploiting texts in the classroom. You will explore some of the problems with traditional skills-based classes and
consider the value of using scripted readings but with authentic tasks!"
The changing roles of texts through the ages
Over the years, texts in the language classroom have played many different roles. In grammar translation methodologies, the focus
was mainly on translation. These texts also provided a source of vocabulary in lists. Later, texts were used to present grammar
structures 'in context'. These texts were highly artificial and were written to ensure they included several examples of the target
structure. More recently, in communicative approach classes, there has been an emphasis on authentic texts. These texts have
generally been used to teach reading skills.
Skills for Using Authentic Texts
As a result, students needed to learn strategies for dealing with authentic texts. Most of these strategies are
based on the skills L1 readers are perceived to use. The strategies typically are:
Reading for gist we may not read every word, but rather skim over the text to get the general idea
Reading for specific information we don't read every word, but scan for some particular section or fact
Guessing unknown words we use previous knowledge and the context around the word
Predicting and guessing content we use our knowledge of text types, pictures or headlines as well as previous knowledge
Making inferences we guess based on texts, context, and previous knowledge
Understanding the purpose of a
text
we infer the purpose from the whole text

The majority of these 'skills' are based on the idea of schema theory. Schema theory suggests that we learn to read faster and
derive meaning from texts from previous knowledge and the way the text meets our expectations. This is also known as top-down
processing. The opposite of top-down processing is bottom-up processing. Bottom-up processing suggests that meaning is built up
from letters to words and from words to sentences, etc.
Chapter 2 :The Problem with Skills
There are problems with this division of skills. Recent studies in Britain have suggested that first-language learners learn to
read best through phonics where students learn the sounds of letters first and then learn how to blend the sounds into words
(i.e. bottom-up processing).
Furthermore, second language research suggests that literate students are able to transfer their L1 skills into L2. A simple example
would be that a foreign student looking for a film listing in a newspaper or a source in an index would know how to use these texts.
The problem would be understanding the words and not a lack of skills.
It appears that in both first and second languages the most important factor is the quick recognition of lexis. Essentially,
the best readers know thousands of combinations of words. This coincides with our goals and methodology as lexical
teachers.
Chapter 3 : Reading In and Out of the Classroom
Reading outside the classroom
Before we look at using texts in the classroom, we should make clear that the classroom can only provide a small part of the
acquiring of language and the development of reading. Students must be encouraged to read outside class. The reading should be
graded to their level. This allows them to use their first language skills and more easily acquire new language.
If your school doesn't yet have a student library, you could build up your own class library. Ask each student to
buy one book. Get students to write reviews of the books. At the end of the term, you could have an award show
for best book.
We will mention other ideas for using recordings of books in the next lesson.
What are texts in the classroom for?
One of the main reasons for having texts in the classroom is to teach language - rather than teach skills. Texts, therefore, need to
be rich in re-useable language in the form of common collocations or chunks. And they must be graded at (or just above) the
students' level.
However, there is one further important rule. We suggested in Lesson 5 (Speaking Tasks) that the main reason students come to
class is to speak, as they can't practice on their own. Texts should therefore aim to provoke class discussion.
Chapter 4 : Texts and Language Tasks : How to use reading texts in class
Before we go any further, have a look at the following text taken from Innovations Intermediate.
People in developed countries are increasingly suffering from illnesses resulting from over-eating. While starvation and famine are still
big problems in many poor countries in the world, in America and other western countries, more than twenty-five percent of the
population are obese. This doesn't just mean you're a little bit fat, it means you are more than twenty kilos overweight. And Dr John
Colon from Ohio State University says the problem is only going to get worse. "As more women have gone out to work, you find that
parents in general have less time to spend on preparing food. That's not just the cooking, but also planning what to eat, doing the
shopping and buying fresh food. Families, therefore, increasingly rely on ready-made and frozen meals, which tend to be high in fat and
contain a lot of additives and sugar. The other thing is that parents seem to feel guilty about not spending so much time with their kids
so they tend to give in a lot quicker to children's demands for things like sweets and chocolate."
Ben Brown, who is a British Member of Parliament, blames the big food companies. He wants to ban any food advertising which is aimed
at children. "The problem is that these companies spend millions of pounds selling food to children. Its all crisps in the shape of
dinosaurs and chocolate in the shape of Mickey Mouse. I mean, what's going to seem more fun to an eight-year-old - an ice-cream with
a free toy or an apple?"
One food company thinks it has an answer to this: it has invented pizza-flavoured broccoli, baked-bean-flavoured peas, cheese and
onion-flavoured cauliflower and chocolate-flavoured carrots. It developed the 'Whacky Veg' with money donated by a cancer research
charity, which found that a diet containing lots of fruit and vegetables helps reduce cancer. However, today's sweet-toothed kids need
to be bribed into a healthy diet, and will only eat their greens if they taste different.
From Innovations Intermediate
A text like this contains a lot of useful language. There are a number of ways you could draw attention to it and also provide
transferable contexts as well as extra recognition practice. We will look at three ways:
1. Pre-teaching words and predicting
2. Same word new context
3. Work on collocation
1. Pre-teaching words and predicting
Choose between six and ten key words from the text. (For example: over-eating, famine, ready-made and frozen meals, etc.)
Get students to ask you any words they dont know. Give examples of usage. Then get students to discuss what they think the text
will be about. Encourage them to use the words in their discussion. Tell students to read and find out if they were right.
After students have read the text, they could discuss how much they predicted correctly. They could also re-tell what they
understood of the text to each other, using the same words.
You could do a similar exercise using whole sentences from a text instead of just vocabulary items.
Remember, the aim is not to test students' predicting skills or the correct answer. It is to teach new language and have students
recognise words and chunks more quickly.
2. Same word/chunk - new context
Choose the key words you want to exploit and write new sentences showing usage. Obviously, at lower levels, it makes sense for the
examples you write to show similar usage to the way the words worked in the text. You can then gap the words out completely or give
them at the start of the exercise.
It's often sensible to give the words at the top of the exercise if you're doing an exercise like this before students read, but to
leave the words out if students are doing this exercise after they've read the text. You can then simply ask them to complete the
sentences using words from the text. For example:
Complete these sentences using the correct form of words from the text.
1. I __________ quite badly from asthma.
2. There are a lot of health problems __________ from the high levels of pollution.
3. I feel so __________ about forgetting my mum's birthday! She'll never forgive me.
Students can then be asked to go back and check if they were right by re-reading the text. It's a good idea to write the example
sentences in the same order that the words appear in the text.
3. Work on collocation
In a similar way to the pre-teaching tasks, you can ask students to find different kinds of collocations - adjective-noun, noun-verb,
adverb-verb, etc. We think it's best to give the students one of the words from each collocation.
Find the collocates in the text that go with these adjectives
developed western ready-made high big fresh frozen guilty healthy

Again, it is easier for students if these words come in the order they appear in the text. You can sometimes expand on the
collocations by adding some new ones in an exercise like this:
Which words in the box collocate with the words and phrases 1-8 below?
salad fruit weight food diet meat good meal
1. lose / put on a bit of / gain _________
2. a balanced / a healthy / a special / a poor _________
3. health / organic / fast / fresh / junk _________
4. a light / a heavy / a big / a lovely / our main _________
5. ripe / tropical / rotten / tinned _________
6. white / red / lean / fatty / raw _________
7. a potato / a green / a side / a fruit_________
8. _________ for your health / for your heart / for your
digestion / when you've got a cold.
In all cases, we would go through answers with the class explaining, exemplifying and expanding on some of the vocabulary as we
suggested in Lesson 4.

Chapter 5 Reading and Speaking
For us, teaching lexically also means giving students plenty of opportunities to speak and then using the students' current language
to teach new language through correction and reformulation (as we saw in Lesson 6 Correction). Speaking may happen before or after
the text.
Speaking before using the text
Before the text, general questions about the topic will generate language that students will then see in the text. For example, with
the text above, you could first elicit different problems that are associated with food. When students give you ideas, always make
sure you reformulate their ideas into better English and expand on them.
You could also guide students more explicitly towards language you want by writing questions for students to discuss. Make sure
these questions are open ended. It is always good to have questions about both society and students themselves. For example, for
the text above, you could write questions such as:
1. Do you think you have a healthy diet? Why / why not?
2. Who does the cooking in your house?
3. Is there a problem with obesity in your country? What's caused it?
Ask the students if they understand the underlined words and then explain to them where necessary.
You could do this kind of task before or after the text, depending on their level. Doing it beforewill help students with vocabulary
they may need when reading.
Speaking after using the text
After the text, speaking encourages students to respond with their own opinions or experiences. In this case you could ask the
students to mark the parts of the text they agree with and the parts they disagree with. They can then compare their ideas with a
partner.
Finally, you could take one or two pieces of vocabulary from the text and give a speaking task based on that. For the text above, we
could ask: Is there anything you sometimes feel guiltyabout?
Or we could do this exercise.
It should be banned!
Ben Brown wants to ban food advertising which is aimed at children. Which of the following do you think should be
banned? Why?

smacking kids smoking in public places cars in city centres whaling grammar
boxing karaoke golf
Can you think of anything else that should be banned? Why?
From Innovations Intermediate
Such speaking tasks can provide interesting ideas in a lesson that is largely focused on one topic.
In his Business English coursebook, Business Matters, Mark Powell frequently follows reading texts with a section entitled Response.
Here, students are provided with sentence starters - or sometimes even whole sentences - that they can use to discuss their own
reactions to what they have read. The irony here is that whilst the texts students meet may well be graded and tweaked for
classroom use, the way in which students are encouraged to react to such texts is profoundly authentic and mirrors real-world
consumption of texts, where we read to learn, to explore, to be entertained, enlightened or gripped. Such tasks are also excellent
global comprehension checks as it is impossible to discuss texts as entities if one has not got at least the basic gist. Here is an
example of a Business Matters task that follows a reading about corporate re-engineering and 'down-sizing':

Response
What is your immediate response to the article?
Tick the response nearest to your own or sum up what you think in a single sentence.
1. I think it paints a rather negative picture.
2. I think it oversimplifies the issue.
3. I think it's a bit one-sided.
4. I think it makes some interesting points.
5. I think it argues its case extremely well
6. I think.
From Business Matters Book 1, Page 35
Obviously, these sentences are also recyclable and can be used by students when discussing other texts later on in the course.
A warning about texts
Texts have multiple possibilities. You may find yourself wanting to focus on everything the text has to offer in speaking and
vocabulary. The danger can be that you do too much and students will get bored. Try to spread the language work before and after
the text and don't be afraid to ignore some language till another day.
Lesson 7 Quiz
1. In the communicative approach, there is an emphasis
on.
the translation of texts.
presenting grammar in texts.
very artificial texts.
authentic texts.
2. In lexical teaching methodology.
phonics is used to teach reading.
readers must learn thousands of
combinations of words.
the most important factor is the quick
recognition of lexis.
teachers need to teach reading skills.
3. One of the main reasons to have texts in the
classroom is.
to teach reading skills.
to provide language input.
to recycle language.
to present collocations.
4. Which of the following is a goal of lexically based
reading activities?
To test students' predicting skills
To read for gist
To recognise words and chunks more quickly
To read for comprehension
5. Which of the following is most likely an example of a
pre-reading, speaking-based activity?
Have students underline the words they
don't know in the text
Ask students which parts of the text they
agree/disagree with
Have students respond to the text with
their own opinions or experiences
Ask general questions to elicit language
students will see in the text