TESOL Connections - December 2011

Lessons From New Ways in Teaching Reading

The New Ways series is a collection of activities and exercises for classroom practice. Here are two great activities for teaching reading.

Main Ideas

Piecing Together Ideas

Levels Intermediate +	Aims Practice reading for main ideas Develop skill in reading for details
Class Time 20–30 minutes Preparation Time No set time	Resources Any reading material Paper Hat

Making distinctions between general ideas and supporting details is an important part of reading comprehension. Strip stories are an enjoyable way for students to see the relationship between the bigger and smaller pieces of a text.

Procedure

Select appropriate reading material for the class.
Select sentences or paraphrase portions of the reading passage and write them on strips of paper. Prepare a set of corresponding strips that say either “main idea” or “supporting detail.” The two sets of strips must correspond exactly. The total number of strips should equal the number of students in the class.
As the students read the material, devote class time to enhancing comprehension until the material is well understood.
Have students

draw a strip from a hat.
work together to match the strips with the quotations to the strips with the labels.
stand in a line (with a strip) in the order that the sentences appeared in the reading passage.
read out loud, in sequence, what is written on the individual strip.

Caveats and Options

For a large class, use two sets of strips and have two groups form two different lines simultaneously.
Make the activity more difficult by requiring any reading material to be put away before the strips are drawn from the hat so students may not refer to it during the exercise.
It is important to have covered the material well before attempting this activity, but it is a nice way to conclude work on a reading passage.

Contributor

Caroline Crolley is a candidate for an MA in ESL at the University of Hawaii, where she also teaches.

Academic Reading

Clozeline

Levels Intermediate +	Aims Improve academic reading comprehension skills by focusing on main and supporting points. Introduce note-taking skills through outlining
Class Time 30 minutes Preparation Time 20 minutes	Resources A textbook chapter and an outline

Students must be able to recognize main and supporting ideas in order to understand a text. In turn, they must develop note-taking and outlining skills so that they can review the text later.

Procedure

Locate a suitable chapter and outline in a textbook.
Do not make any changes in the first two sections and the last section of the outline.
Omit the main points of the next two parts of the outline. Leave all of the supporting points as they appear in these sections of the outline.
Omit about half of the supporting points in another part of the outline. Leave the key point as is in this section.
Omit all of the supporting points in one or more remaining sections of the outline.
In class, distribute copies of the reading passage and the cloze outlines. Have students read over the cloze outline before they read the chapter. Ask students to use the cloze outline to help them focus on the main ideas and the key supporting ideas for each section when reading.
Have students complete the cloze outline.
Create small groups of students. Each group can discuss their responses to one part of the outline. If the group has time, they can discuss other sections as well.
Group representatives can report on the main and supporting ideas of each section of the outline to the entire class.

Caveats and Options

If the textbook chapter does not have an outline, write one for the chapter first and then make it into a cloze outline.
Instead of working with an outline, prepare a cognitive map of the chapter. Then leave some key or supporting ideas blank in the cognitive map.
Instead of using an entire textbook chapter, students could read a much shorter passage that is written in textbook style (with clear headings and subheadings). Students then work with an outline or cognitive map as described above.
If students are shown this exercise before they begin to read, it can give them something to focus on while they are reading. Filling in the outline gaps is best done during or after reading a textbook chapter. Some ESL textbooks include excerpts from textbooks or passages written in textbook style.

Contributors

Ellen Lipp teaches linguistics at California State University at Fresno and directs its ESL program. Debbie Davis is Assistant Director of the ESL program at CSU and also an instructor.

These activities were originally published in New Ways in Teaching Reading (1993), edited by Richard R. Day, published by TESOL.

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