TEACHING READING SKILLS

READING COMPREHENSION ASSESSMENT

Introduction:

Measuring reading comprehension may be complex, because of all the characteristics we need to take into account when designing tasks to measure students’ ability to decode written messages, to infer meaning from context, to use the necessary strategies to comprehend the whole message. According to Dr. Melissa Farrall different reading tests measure different types of reading skills.

Comprehensive assessment in reading should include: word recognition, silent reading comprehension and oral reading comprehension to demonstrate the development of micro skills such as: understanding the scrip of language, deducing meaning and the use of unfamiliar lexical items, understanding the cohesion devices, interpreting text and distinguishing the main idea.

Another important aspect to consider is the time given to answer the test, given the difficulties test takers may encounter trying to get a meaning out of the reading; it would be a good idea to assign about an hour depending on the type of text it would be a little shorter or longer.

Abstract:

In this document I suggest a set of assessment tasks to be applied to a group of beginner learners from high school education, each of these is designed to measure a certain micro skill in reading comprehension, considering the learners previous knowledge, about the language, the world and the written code.

The main purpose of this sample test is to measure understanding the main idea of the text by asking comprehension questions. I will avoid other kinds of tasks such as cloze items since they just measure how much test takers can remember about the exact words in certain passage. I will also avoid true false questions since they can be answered at random and even get some correctly guessed. At the end of the questions, I suggest to set a summary task in which test takers choose among three options, the one which best summarizes the whole reading.

Keywords: assessment, measure, comprehension, skills, cloze test, summary, reading.

READING COMPREHENSION EVALUATION

TABLE OF SPECIFICATIONS

No. of students: 22 Age: 17-18 Level: Upper Beginner

Reading material: Chapter 1 a strange meeting of the book ‘’How I met myself’’ David A. Hill. Cambridge Readers. Level 3. Cambridge University Press. 2001

Purpose	Micro skills	Type of item	No. of items	Percentage	Estimated time
To measure learners ability to comprehend reading in the form of a story.	Understanding the main idea Deducing lexical meanings from context Understanding the cohesion devices.	Multiple choice questions	5	15% each	10 min
To measure learners ability to distinguish important information	Understanding the main idea		1	20%	5 min
To measure learners ability to summarize the important information extracting the main idea	Understanding the main idea and express it in the written code	Open writing	1	20%	10 min

Test takers characteristics:

The students who will take the test are adolescents that study in a technical high school; they were very reluctant towards reading at the beginning of the course. However step by step they have learned to enjoy some kind of readings as short stories. As they have more experience in these kinds of readings I decided to test them with one of these. I consider this story very interesting for my students since there is suspension and may cause expectation and a desire to continue reading. The language of this extract is not difficult nor so simple, there may be some words students do not understand but which are easily inferred by context that is one of the micro skills I have been working with as well as some cohesive devices which help us to follow the story.

Report:

The students’ reactions towards the test were of some anxiety at the beginning, once I told them it was just an activity they were more relaxed. They normally relate tests as something difficult to achieve, so I prefer to call them exercises.

I assigned them fifteen minutes to read the story before they started to answer the questions, they finished before I expected. The results were not excellent but not bad either. The main difficulty they had in the first part was that they did not understand the word colleague, so may answered that he was argued with his boss which is a word they are familiar with. In the second part of the test some answered with the wrong option, many chose the letter a, which would be acceptable just for one detail, he was not Hungarian. Just some of them understood that he was arrived there, so if he arrived, then he was from another place. They needed to assimilate that. In the third part most of them answered correctly, however it was difficult to me to interpret their writings.

Observations:

Students tried to understand all the information in the story, I observed when there were a difficulty in understanding because of his body language. Sometimes they went back the reading; we can see it in their face when there is something they want to recheck because of a gap of information necessary to assimilate the meaning. We can also observe when someone wants to peek at a partner’s answer to be sure mainly if it is individual and it is not allowed to share answers.

Conclusion:

Measuring reading comprehension needs a good plan, we need to know exactly what we want to measure, what skills are we going to weight, what is the purpose of it, what kind of items will be set in the test, what percentage are we going to assign to each one and how much time will we give to answer.

In this reading there are many features to exploit for those who want to test other students abilities, for example what happened before what, or to interpret it may cause different suppositions in different students, we can ask the student to continue the story or to give a rationale of the event. The options are many, but the more important thing is to know exactly what we want students to do and that they have that knowledge to complete it successfully, if not it would be better to simplify the exercises according to their level.

APENDIX 1.

HOW I MET MYSELF

A strange meeting

I was walking home from my office one January evening. It was a Monday. The weather was very cold, and there were some low clouds around the tops of the buildings. Once I’d left the main road, there weren’t many people in the dark, narrow streets of Budapest’s Thirteenth District. Everything was very quiet. It felt as if the city was waiting for something.

As I walked I thought about what had happened at work. I had argued with one of the Hungarians I worked with. It was the first serious problem since I’d arrived. I was trying to think what to do about it, and I was also hoping that my wife, Andrea, had made one of her nice hot soups for dinner.

After about five minutes it started to snow heavily, so that the streets were soon completely white. As I was walking along a very dark part of one street there was the noise of a door shutting loudly inside a building. Then I heard the sound of someone running.

Suddenly, the street door opened and a man came out of it and ran straight into me. I fell over into the snow, shouting something like, ‘Hey, watch where you’re going!’-my words were loud in the empty street. The man turned to look at me for a moment. ‘Sorry’, he said very quietly, in Hungarian, before walking quickly away.

What I saw at that moment, in the dark winter street was very strange, and I felt very afraid. Because what I saw was me. My face looking down at me. My mouth saying sorry.

APENDIX 2.

Sample questions:

I. Instructions: Underline the correct answer

1. - Where was he walking?

a) In a street

b) In a path

c) In a little park

d) In his house

2. - Who did he argue with?

a) A friend

b) His wife

c) His boss

d) A colleague

3. - When did it start snowing?

a) In the morning

b) In the afternoon

c) In the evening

d) At night

4. - Why did the man fall over into the snow?

a) Because he was very tired

b) Because he was drunk

c) Because a man ran into him

d) Because he slipped in the snow

5. - How many people were there in the street?

a) A lot o people

b) Just police officers

c) Some tourists

d) Nobody

II. Instructions: choose the statement that best summarizes the story.

a) A Hungarian man was walking when suddenly a man ran into him making him fell over the snow, this man was himself.

b) Someone meet a person in an accident realizing he was that person.

c) A man was running when he crashed with another man who results to be someone he had met in the past.

III. Instructions: Write the main idea of the text with your own words.

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REFERENCES:

Reading Tests: What They Measure, and Don't Measure
by Dr. Melissa Farrall at: http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/test.read.farrall.htm

TEACHING READING SKILLS

READING LESSON CLASS

In this reading activity I tried first to increase my students’ motivation towards reading giving them choices. I wanted them to practice past tense and to see this structure in context. So, I decided to work with biographies of interesting people in history. I took them from the book ‘’What a Life’’ Stories of amazing people by Milanda Broukal. Longman. This is a graded book for beginner students, as I mentioned in my previous tasks my students are beginners, just a few of them has reach the intermediate level.

By giving them choices to read I think they will be more willing to carry the activities. I chose six people for the choices: William Shakespeare, Louis XIV, Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Pele and Princess Diana. I gave these choices to six groups that are in the same level, the opinions were divided, one chose William Shakespeare, one Albert Einstein, two chose Pele and the other two chose Princess Diana.

‘’Sequence of a reading lesson plan’’

Facilitator: Erika Narez Melgoza Level: Beginner
Topic: Pele’s biography Grammar: Simple Past Tense
AIM	STAGE PROCEDURE	ORGANIZATION	TIME	STRATEGIES OR TECHNIQUES USED	MATERIAL
To get the students ready for the reading part by previewing the language brainstorming ideas related to this person or to soccer.	PRE-READING T asks Ss what they already know about this person, and about soccer. Then students pass to the board and brainstorm words related. Ss look at a poster of Pele and say what they think about him.	Whole class	10 min	Previewing, predicting.	Poster of Pele or it can be projected in an OHP.
To make use of bottom up processing by recognizing verbs in past. To process the information just read to report it in a response to the teacher’s questions.	WHILE READING Students start reading aloud taking turns, at the end of each paragraph the teacher asks comprehension questions to check understanding, as well as any doubts about vocabulary. It can be easy questions to prove the students that they don’t necessary need to understand every single word. E.g. Did he finish High School? They are also asked to circle any verbs in past tense as well as the negative form. For example: ‘’He didn’t play the first games’’	Whole class taking turns Individual work when they answer questions orally and circle or underline past structures.	20 min	Retrieve information read and report it. Bottom up processing Distinguish between language functions.	One photocopy of the biography of Pele for each student.
To make use of the top down processing	POST READING When they finish reading, they will write a description of Pele, this description needs to be not only physically or about what they read; it needs to be about his personality, information that is not explicit in the reading.	Individually	15 min	Top down processing.	Pieces of paper and pencils.

As I expected, students were willing to carry the activities, I felt enthusiastic about their reactions. I applied this plan with a group of 22 students, all of them males. They are in the electronics major, so normally there are no girls there.

When I first showed the first picture and asked about him, they started to participate, almost everyone said the same but I felt pleased to hear them participating like that. Then we continue with the reading part, here some of them told me to continue asking questions instead of reading, so I asked two more and went through the next stage. In this part, I saw they understood the majority of the material, they asked me some questions about vocabulary as injury, scored and some others. They answered the questions correctly.

Finally in the last stage, they wrote the description of Pele, they did it pretty well. Some of them started writing about soccer and how it is the best and most popular sport in many countries; even though the activity was not exactly that, they were happy writing this information, so I accepted it.

CONCLUSION

I am sure this activity went well mainly because they were engaged with the topic. They chose to read it and the language were graded to their level, most of these students practice soccer and for many of them Pele is an idol.

I will apply the same activity with another group where there is a mix of girls and boys; I am not sure what will be the reaction. However, I will do some adjustments in the post stage and maybe I will use more time in the pre reading if they are engaged with this. Besides, I will try to manage better the participation because there were some students who participated less. So, I will take care of these details.

I think what I achieve best with this activity was to change my students’ opinion towards reading, I wanted them to succeed in this activity to build their confidence; that is why I designed it as simple as possible trying to use the strategies and techniques I considered best for the situation.

REFERENCES:

· Christine Nutall. Teaching Reading skills in a Foreign Language. 2000. Heinle & Heinle Pgs. 1-19.

· Farrel, Thomas. Teaching Reading to English Language Learners. A reflective guide. Corwin. 2009. pgs. 13-33.

· Franҫoise Grellet. Developing Reading Skills. Cambridge Language Teaching Library. 1996. pgs. 3-12.

· H. Douglas Brown. Teaching by Principles. An interactive approach to Language Pedagogy. 2^nd Edition. Longman. 2001. pgs. 298-316.

· Milada Broukal. What a Life! Stories of amazing people. Longman. 2001. Pgs. 77-78.

· Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Retrieved: September 24th, 2010. http://www.sdkrashen.com/Principles_and_Practice/index.html

· Wallace. Language Teaching. A scheme for teacher education. Oxford. 1992. pgs. 3-6, 14-18.

· http://www.seduca2.uaemex.mx/sistemas/Foro/arbol_foro2.php?iCveForo=58379&iForPdr=58379&iCveAct=23783&iTpoAct=4&sNav=Exp&sesComunidad=4584&equip=0

TEACHING READING SKILLS

READING COMPREHENSION TECHNIQUES AND STRATEGIES

Techniques for beginner to intermediate students

By Erika Narez

Reading comprehension is associated with a developing in the overall language proficiency, as learners learn and acquire new vocabulary, language structures, paragraphs’ features and culture. This skill should be linked with others in an interactive set of activities carried to increase language awareness.

Learners always benefit with the use of strategies when they read, to be more effective readers, teachers are responsible to teach such strategies and use the correct techniques according to their level, age and background knowledge and culture.

Most of my students are in a beginning level, just some of them have reach a low intermediate level; mainly because the time in front of the group is not enough, the curriculum is heavy in content-based and there is always loss of time because of other activities of the institution. Classes take place in big and bright classrooms with an average of thirty students between fourteen and nineteen years old. I teach each group three hours per week. They are in the school eight hours with a break of thirty minutes; so they are really tired in the last hours; in these cases I must be very careful with the kind of activities I assign to them. Interesting and motivating activities are recommended.

The following techniques and strategies have been collected from some of my colleagues and classmates that have been used them as well as the ones I have been using according to my teaching situation. I have divided these techniques in terms of before, during and after reading with the techniques I consider more appropriate for my students.

As we discussed in the previous forum it is important to use techniques such as previewing, skimming and scanning; these allow the learner to get familiar with the text. (Richards 2001). By predicting, the learners get an idea of what they are going to read, their schemata is activated and therefore they can use their background knowledge to understand the text. (Nutall 2000). By skimming the reader do a quick search to prove if the prediction was correct.

We also agreed that one of the main difficulties our students present is the lack of vocabulary; for this is very useful to present vocabulary games, this way learners are able to acquire indispensable vocabulary first and the rest will be tried to infer from context. Besides, the fact that they can understand longer texts does not mean that they will understand every little item of vocabulary. ‘’The ability of inferring meaning from the context is required to not be dependent of the meaning of words’’. (Gretel 1996).

During reading, students will be asked comprehension questions to check understanding. They also will be assigned to read a different part of the text to later report what they read. I have chosen the technique of comparing their personalities with the character as I have seen that this increases their motivation and also they work on the top down processes; finally by classifying different kinds of words or structures, they work with the bottom up processes. Richard (2001) pp.314 stated that in our craze for communicative, authentic language activity in the classroom, we sometimes forget that learners can indeed benefit from studying the fundamentals.

The best techniques to do after reading for me are to write or answer questions from the reading, write the title and describe the characters. With these techniques, students process writing, skim, scan, depending on the questions, they infer context that is not explicit by using background knowledge and distinguish between literal and implied meaning.

TECHNIQUE	PROCEDURE	STRATEGIES
Before reading
Predict	Teaches ask students to look at the front page and guess what the book is about. As well as checking the chapter’s titles.	Previewing, predicting.
Skim	Students skim the first chapter to see what the main idea is. To facilitate it teacher can give three options.	Skim the text for main ideas.
Look for the word	In a competition game grouping in teams of three or pairs, students need to find the word given by the teacher, as quickly as possible, who find it first gets a point. At the end the team with more points wins.	Scan the text for specific information.
Vocabulary games	Teacher selects important words to teach before reading, present them to the students with pictures and do choral drills. Students play a guessing game, one student describe one of the words to see who can guess it. Another option is to mimic the word to guess what it is.	Create an image to relate it to the word. Choral drills.
During reading
Read and report	Students report to the class what they read with their own words. This can be done with a short piece of writing or with a complete book for extensive reading.	Use efficient silent reading techniques for comprehension.
Ask comprehension questions	Students are asked comprehension questions by the teacher at the end of each page of chapter if they are short.	Retrieve information read and report it.
Compare student’s personalities with the characteres	Students do an analysis of the character’s personalities and compare with their own personalities. Answer questions as: What characters are you most like? What characteristics of this character do you feel more identified with?	Top down processing
Classify things	Students classify words such as: verbs, adjectives and nouns. They will extract ideas expressed in present, past or future tense. Another option is to classify functions such as: apologizing, complaining, giving advice, offering help, asking for information. Students draw or complete a chart to classify.	Bottom up processing Distinguish between language functions
After reading
Write and answer questions from the reading	Students answer a comprehensive questionnaire in written form. Students elaborate their own questions in teams and give their questions to other team to answer.	Process information of the written code.
Write a title	Students write the title they think is the most appropriate for the reading.	Process written information. Summarize important information. Distinguish main ideas.
Write a description of the characteres	Students write a description of the main characteres, physically and personality.	Top down processing.

Chart 1. Techniques and strategies to use with beginning students.

The techniques and activities describe above are just an example of many variations we can make to each one. It will depend also of the students’ mood at the moment if we decide to assign the activity just as we planned or maybe smooth it a little bit or by the contrary raising the dynamisms of the same.

We as teachers may surmise what to do in the moment based on our previous experiences. We need to be careful not to surpass the learner’s abilities with our activities; they can feel frustrated and lose motivation. However, the level should not be low or very easy. Many learners are able to surmount difficulties if they have a clear purpose to do it.

REFERENCES:

· H. Douglas Brown. Teaching by Principles. An interactive approach to Language Pedagogy. 2^nd Edition. Longman. 2001. pgs. 298-316.

· Christine Nutall. Teaching Reading skills in a Foreign Language. 2000. Heinle & Heinle Pgs. 1-19.

· Franҫoise Grellet. Developing Reading Skills. Cambridge Language Teaching Library. 1996. pgs. 3-12.

· Wallace. Language Teaching. A scheme for teacher education. Oxford. 1992. pgs. 3-6, 14-18.

· Farrel, Thomas. Teaching Reading to English Language Learners. A reflective guide. Corwin. 2009. pgs. 13-33.

· Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Retrieved: September 24th, 2010. http://www.sdkrashen.com/Principles_and_Practice/index.html

· http://www.seduca2.uaemex.mx/sistemas/Foro/arbol_foro2.php?iCveForo=58379&iForPdr=58379&iCveAct=23783&iTpoAct=4&sNav=Exp&sesComunidad=4584&equip=0