MY FAVOURITE READING STRATEGY

 

 

SHARE YOUR FAVOURITE READING STRATEGY

I always try to encourage top-down reading. However, it’s rather difficult because students insist on understanding every single word of a text. They have a hard time trying to figure out the general meaning of a text without understanding everything. I suppose they transfer this idea from reading in their mother tongue.

So what do I do to help them use top-down reading? How do I do it or try to do it?

-          What type of texts do you use it with?

I usually use the texts that are in their textbooks. They are normally related to the topic of the unit they are studying and hence students have some previous knowledge of the topic and are already familiar with some vocabulary that may appear in them. All this makes easier their comprehension of the text. Besides, they are accompanied by images and a title, which always helps to introduce the text and make predictions about what to expect.

I also use “readers” from different publishing companies, articles that I find relevant for them or short stories that I come across and consider interesting.

-          How do the students work, individually, in pairs, in groups?

All of the above. The pre-reading activities are always done in groups or by the entire class. That way we get more ideas and students that are “weaker” can benefit from other classmates. As far the actual reading of the text, it depends. Sometimes they work individually or in pairs but we usually start reading all together, just to make sure nobody is lost from the very beginning and they all have a “push” to start.

-          How much preparation is necessary on the teacher´s part? (We all like to save time…)

Textbooks and readers do some of that work for us but we often have to add something else. I find some AI tools very useful to do so and save time. For example, LensGo AI o or Ideogram.AI can generate images in no time that can help us to give students some background for their reading and introduce what their reading is going to be about. Canva has also integrated AI and can create any type of questions for before, while or after reading.