Teaching ESL/EFL Reading and Writing

I.S.P. Nation, John Macalister

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000176612
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Methods for Reading

The second edition of this bestselling text, Teaching ESL/EFL Reading and Writing, is a fully updated and expanded guide for teaching learners at all levels of proficiency how to develop their reading and writing skills and fluency. Practical and accessible, this book covers a diverse array of language teaching techniques suitable for all contexts.

Updated with cutting-edge research and theory, the second edition is an essential and engaging text. Key insights and suggestions are organised around four strands – meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, language-focused learning, and fluency development – to allow teachers to design and present a balanced programme for their students. Bringing together research and theory in applied linguistics and education, the text includes useful examples and practical strategies and features new topics related to technology, assessment, and genre. The second edition includes new tasks and further reading sections in every chapter.

Teaching ESL/EFL Reading and Writing is designed for practising and pre-service teachers of all levels, and is ideal for certificate, diploma, masters, and doctoral courses in English as a second or foreign language.

1 Learning to Read in Another Language

Learning to Read in the First Language

People learn to read their first language in a wide variety of circumstances. The following description is of a fortunate child in a fortunate country where reading is well prepared for and well taught. An excellent account of the teaching of reading to native speakers in New Zealand can be found in Smith and Elley (1997).

Children are prepared for reading at an early age by listening to stories, being read to, and interacting with adults and others about the stories they hear. This is done not with the main purpose of preparing a child for reading but as a way that parents and others interact with and entertain and educate children. The interaction involves asking questions about what is going to happen in the story, getting the child to complete sentences in a known story, talking about the interesting and scary parts of the story, and generally having fun.

When children start to learn to read, they already have a large vocabulary of several thousand words which includes most of the words they will meet in early reading. They also have good control of the grammar of the language, have a lot of knowledge about books and reading conventions, and have had many, many stories read to them. They are very keen to learn how to read.

They begin formal schooling at the age of about five. The teacher and learners work with books that are interesting, well illustrated, use language that is close to spoken language, and not too long. The texts contain a lot of repetition and are often very predictable but in an interesting way.

The techniques used to teach reading are largely meaning-focused; that is, they give primary attention to understanding and enjoying the story. They include shared reading, guided reading, and independent reading. A small amount of attention may be given to phonological awareness, phonics, and spelling, but this is in the context of enjoying the story and only takes a very small amount of time. Let us now look at the typical techniques used to teach reading to young native speakers.

Shared Reading

The learners gather round the teacher and the teacher reads a story to the learners from a very large “blown-up” book while showing them the pictures and the written words. The teacher involves the learners in the reading by asking them what they think will happen next and getting them to comment on the story. Where they can, the learners read the words aloud together. The procedure is an attempt to make the shared-book activity like a parent reading a child a bedtime story.

The learners are asked to choose what blown-up book they want read to them and the same book may be used in the shared-book activity on several occasions. In the later readings, the learners are expected to join in the reading much more. At other times, learners can get the small version of the blown-up book and read it individually or in pairs. After a reading, the learners draw, write, act out the story, or study some of the language in the story.

The shared-book activity is a very popular reading activity in New Zealand pre-schools and primary schools. It was developed by a New Zealander, Don Holdaway, and is such a normal part of a primary teacher’s repertoire that publishers now print blown-up book versions of popular children’s books.

The purpose of the shared-book activity is to get the learners to see the fun element in reading. In the activity, this fun comes from the interesting story, the interaction between the teacher and the learners in predicting and commenting on the story, and the rereading of favourite stories.

Teachers can make blown-up books (Ministry of Education, 1993). Although a blown-up book takes some time to make, it will be used and re-used and well repays the effort of making it or the cost of buying it. The books also make attractive displays in the classroom. There are also commercially produced blown-up books. You can search for them on the internet (search for “Big books for children”). Titles include Where Do Monsters Live?, Bears, Bears Everywhere, Mr Noisy, and What Do You See? The shared-book activity was used in one of the experimental groups in the Elley and Mangubhai (1981) Book Flood experiment.

Guided Reading

Guided reading can be done silently or with a child reading aloud to a friend, parent or teacher. Before the reading the learner and teacher talk about the book. Research by Wong and McNaughton (1980) showed that for the learner they studied, pre-reading discussion resulted in a greater percentage of words initially correct, and a greater percentage of errors self-corrected. The teacher and the learner look at the title of the book and make sure that all the words in the title are known. Then they talk about the pictures in the story and make predictions about what might happen in the story. They also talk about any knowledge the learner already has about the topic. Important words in the story are talked about but need not be pointed to in their written form. So, before the learner actually starts to read the story, the ideas and important words in the story are talked about and clarified. Then the learner begins to read.

If the learner is reading aloud to the teacher, then it is good to use the pause, prompt, praise procedure (Glynn et al., 1989; Smith & Elley, 1997: 134–136). This means that when the learner starts to struggle over a word the teacher does not rush in with the answer but pauses for the learner to have time to make a good attempt at it. If the learner continues to struggle the teacher gives a helpful prompt, either from the meaning of the story or sentence or from the form of the word. When the learner finally reads the word correctly the teacher then praises the attempt.

If the learner is reading silently, then a part of the text is read and there is a discussion of what has just been read and the next part of the text.

Independent Reading

In independent reading the learner chooses a book to read and quietly gets on with reading it. During this quiet period of class time, the teacher may also read or may use the time as an opportunity for individual learners to come up to read to the teacher. In beginners’ classes there is a set time each day for independent reading and learners are expected to read out of class as well, often taking books home from school.

Learning to read is also helped by learning to write and learning through listening. In writing as in reading, first-language teachers emphasise the communication of messages and expect the learners to gradually approximate normal writing over a period of time.

Research indicates that the best age to learn to read is about six to seven years old. Starting early at five has no long-term advantages and may make it more difficult for some learners to experience success in reading. At the age of about six or seven children are intellectually ready to begin reading.

It should be clear from this description that native speakers learning to read have the advantage of bringing a lot of language knowledge and a lot of experience to learning to read. They might have the disadvantage of beginning to learn a complex skill when they may not be quite ready for it.

Learning to Read in Another Language

There are numerous factors that affect the difficulty of learning to read in another language. Table 1.1 focuses on three factors but as the footnote to the table suggests there are other factors that are important particularly when working with a group of learners. Let us look at the factors in Table 1.1 by focusing on a learner from a particular language background, Thai, who is in the very early stages of learning English. The learner is 12 years old and can already read fluently in Thai.

Table 1.1 L1\L2 differences for an individual beginning to read

Constraints	General effects	Particular effects
L1 beginning readers already know a lot of the language they are beginning to read (sounds, vocabulary, grammar, discourse). L2 learners do not.	Learning to read an L2 involves a great deal of language learning.	L2 learners need very controlled texts. L2 learners need a greater amount of pre-reading activities.
L2 beginners can already read in their L1.	They have general cognitive skills. They have preconceptions and attitudes to reading. They have language specific skills. There will be interference and facilitation effects.	They do not need to learn what they can transfer from the L1. They may need to change attitudes to reading. Learners may have to learn a different writing system.
L2 beginners are usually older than L1 beginners.	L2 learners have greater metalinguistic and metacognitive awareness.	It is easy to transfer L1 skills. L2 learners can use more explicit approaches and tools like dictionaries.

Note: This table has been kept simple by focusing on only one learner who is just beginning to read. It is more complicated if you have several learners with different L1s, different L2 proficiencies, different L1 reading proficiencies, and different motivations for reading.

A Thai learner beginning to read English will know very little English vocabulary. There are English loan words in Thai like free, but a Thai learner might not realise that they have an English origin. This means that the initial reading material will need to be much more controlled than the material aimed at young native speakers of English who already know close to three thousand words. Thai learners may also need much more preparation or pre-teaching before they start on their reading. These are all disadvantages. There are, however, numerous advantages that the Thai learner has. First, the Thai learner can already read Thai and so knows a lot about reading. Thai is an alphabetic language so the Thai learner is already very familiar with the alphabetic principle; that is, that letters can represent sounds and these letters can go together to make up words. Thai script is not related to English script so the Thai learner will have to spend time learning letter shapes. An Italian learner of English does not have this problem because Italian uses substantially the same script as English. Second, if the Thai learner is good at reading Thai, the learner...