TOPIC 3

READING SKILLS IN THE MALAYSIAN PRIMARY SCHOOL ENGLISH LANGUAGE CURRICULUM

&SELECTING, ADAPTING AND PRODUCING ACTIVITIES & MATERIALS FOR DEVELOPING READING ALOUD AND

COMPREHENSION SKILLS

SYNOPSIS

Topic 3 introduces you to the key concepts and issues related to teaching reading in the Malaysian English primary curriculum. The module provides insight into the nature of reading skills, strategies for metacognition, and describes characteristics of effective reading pedagogy in the primary school context.

This will be followed by a section on selection, adaptation and production of activities and materials for various reading activities.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

By the end of this topic, you will be able to:

define the purpose of reading activities in the primary classroom

articulate and deepen primary pupils appreciation and understanding of

reading

identify the learner characteristics that enable effective reading

differentiate types of activities and questions that enable higher order thinking

in reading

reflect on what you have learnt.

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FRAMEWORK OF TOPICS

Session Notes: During this module it is expected that course participants will

self-study and be prepared to do these activities in the tutorial in groups or pairs

to construct additional meaning with classmates.

Preview: Reading Survey

Fill out the reading survey below1.

Be prepared to discuss answers with the class.

1Survey from 中学英语教学法 Unit 10 Teaching Reading: sfs.scnu.edu.cn/chendm1/PPT/Unit%2010.ppt. Module 3 adapts several materials from this PPT source accessed from the world wide web July, 2012.

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Reading SkillsReading

Comprehension SkillsReading Aloud Skills

Reading skills in the Malaysian primary school English language curriculum

Reading Activity Chart2

Task

Work with a partner, fill in the chart below with what you already know about

reading.

Once complete, discuss answer together in group.

Add any new information you hear in class.

Next, discuss the question that follow the reading chart.

2Adapted from 中学英语教学法 Unit 10 Teaching Reading.

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Exercise: Reading Activity Chart

Reading ActivitiesAspects

Reading Aloud Silent Reading Skimming Scanning Comprehension

Objective

Technique

How & why do I do it?

Usually a group activity…

Usually an individual activity…

Problems with the activity

Question: What makes effective readers? What skills do effective readers use?

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Reading Activity Chart

Check and review your answers below.

Answers may vary.

ReadingActivities

Reading Aloud Silent Reading Skimming Scanning Comprehension

Objective Reading aloud is used to practice enunciation, stress, intonation and reinforce what has been learnt in class. Reading aloud allows pupils to hear contents several times and rephrase their English pronunciation and enunciation internally and in spoken language.

Silent reading can be used for a variety of purposes, including reading for specific information, enjoyment, and self-study.

Silent reading gives pupils the choice to select what they want to read, that brings joy and interest to our pupils.

Skimming is used to check readers get the main idea, or gist of a text.

Skim a newspaper report if you wish only to understand the main events

Scanning means to read to locate specific information.

Move your eyes across sentences and entire paragraphs, noticing only the clue words to locate an answer.

Comprehension is used to check reader’s reconstruction of texts that have been read.

Teachers ask for reconstruction of meaning, inferences predictions, and conclusions to be made inside the lessons to show pupils cognitive process.

Technique

How & why do I do it?

Usually a group activity…

Usually an individual activity…

However can be used in class or in groups to achieve learning outcomes.

Look for the most important ideas.

Read for main ideas.

Skip facts and details.

Read the title or legend of graphics.

Read the beginning and last paragraph or summary

Scan for a specific word, phrase, name, date, or place name, etc.

Use the arrow scanning pattern… straight down the column.

Focus on the first letter of each line.

Questions to follow up, and discussion.

What would you do if you were the main character in this story?

Comprehension can be shown by asking pupils to write in their own words or draw a picture of the story sequence in lower primary.

Problems with the approach

Teacher needs to be sensitive to pupils who cannot read aloud well.

Reading aloud can make readers nervous and therefore does not accurately represent student reading ability.

Teachers cannot tell what the student has learnt or read without a system of evaluation and checking to ensure pupils are actually learning from what they read.

I can learn to skim without actually understanding any of the text.

Difficult for the teacher to determine what the student knows.

I can learn to scan without actually understanding the meaning in the text.

Difficult for the teacher to determine what the student knows.

Some pupils can read, but do not understand what has been read. This is really difficult for the teacher to ascertain.

Therefore, teachers must ask for reconstruction of meaning, inferences, predictions and conclusions to be made inside the lesson. Pupils must not be allowed to just repeat verbatim.

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What do effective readers do?

Effective readers

• read silently and aloud• have a clear purpose in reading• read phrase by phrase, rather than word by word• concentrate on the important bits, skim the rest, and skip the insignificant parts• use different speeds and strategies for different reading tasks• perceive the information in the target language rather than mentally translate them• guess the meaning of new words from the context, or ignore them• use background information to help understand the text.

Exercise: Skimming & Scanning

Task

Read the Reader’s Digest article, Extraordinary uses for dishwashing soap, to practice skimming for information.

Answer the skimming questions that follow. Next, read the New York Times article, Marriage trends in the United States, to

practice scanning for information. Answer the scanning questions that follow.

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Extraordinary Uses for Dishwashing Soap3

1. Kill weeds kindly

Be gentler to the environment—not so much to weeds—by using a natural plant killer rather than harmful herbicides. Mix 1 teaspoon of dishwashing liquid with 1 cup of salt and 1 gallon of white vinegar. Pour the solution on weeds sprouting in the cracks and crevices of sidewalks, front walks, and patio pavers.

2. Wash away ants

Outdoor ants can be just as annoying as indoor ants, particularly if they've invaded the crevices in your patio where you eat. Get rid of them with a simple 50/50 solution of water and white vinegar with a dash of dishwashing liquid. (You can substitute glass cleaner for the vinegar if you want.) Spray the affected area with the mix, wait a few minutes, then happily return to your picnic.

3. Add life to your locks

If your hair isn't looking so lovely, try mixing a dollop of dishwashing liquid into your shampoo. It fights grease in hair, as well as on dishes!

4. Clean your blender

Forget about taking your blender apart to wash it thoroughly. Instead, fill it partway with warm water and dishwashing detergent, cover it, and run it for a few seconds. Empty it, rinse it, air-dry it, and call it a day.

Skimming Questions

What are 4 additional uses for dish soap?

What are the main ideas behind this article?

How can I clean my blender with dish soap?

3 Readers Digest: http://www.rd.com accessed July 2012.

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Exercise: Scanning

Marriage Trends in the United States4

ANN ARBOR, Mich. Jessica Schairer has so much in common with her boss, Christine Faulkner, that a visitor to the day care center they run might get them confused.

They are both friendly white women from modest Midwestern backgrounds who left for college with conventional hopes of marriage, motherhood and career. They both have children in elementary school. They pass their days in similar ways: juggling toddlers, coaching teachers and swapping small secrets that mark them as friends. They even got tattoos together. Though Ms Faulkner, as the boss, earns more money, the difference is a gap, not a chasm.

Ms Faulkner is married and living on two pay checks, while Ms Schairer is raising her children by herself. That gives the Faulkner family a profound advantage in income and nurturing time, and makes their children statistically more likely to finish college, find good jobs and form stable marriages.

Ms Faulkner goes home to a trim subdivision and weekends crowded with children’s events. Ms Schairer’s rent consumes more than half her income, and she scrapes by on food stamps.

“I see Christine’s kids — they’re in swimming and karate and baseball and Boy Scouts, and it seems like it’s always her or her husband who’s able to make it there,” Ms Schairer said. “That’s something I wish I could do for my kids. But number one, that stuff costs a lot of money and, two, I just don’t have the time.”

But striking changes in family structure have also broadened income gaps and posed new barriers to upward mobility. College-educated Americans like the Faulkners are increasingly likely to marry one another, compounding their growing advantages in pay. Less-educated women like Ms Schairer, who left college without finishing her degree, are growing less likely to marry at all, raising children on pinched paychecks that come in ones, not twos.

“It is the privileged Americans who are marrying, and marrying helps them stay privileged,” said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University.

About 41 percent of births in the United States occur outside marriage, up sharply from 17 percent three decades ago. But equally sharp are the educational divides, according to an analysis by Child Trends, a Washington research group. Less than 10 percent of the births to college-educated women occur outside marriage, while for women with high school degrees or less the figure is nearly 60 percent.

Motherhood outside marriage now varies by class about as much as it does by race. It is growing fastest in the lower reaches of the white middle class — among women like Ms Schairer who have some postsecondary schooling but no four-year degree.

4 New York Times accessed July 2012.

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Married couples are having children later than they used to, divorcing less and investing heavily in parenting time. By contrast, a growing share of single mothers have never married, and many have children with more than one man.

Scanning Questions

What are the names of the women in this story?

Who is a single mother?

What does Andrew Cherlin from Johns Hopkins University say about

marriage?

What percentage of births occur to women with college degree?

Now, take a break before you move on to the next topic.

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Reading Comprehension: The Process5

Be prepared to discuss the reading comprehension process.

Next, read the skills, examples and complete the task that follow.

Skill Example Question Types

Main ideas and supporting details

Main Idea: The main message the author is conveying to the reader.

Supporting Details: The information that "backs" up the main message.

What are the main ideas in this text?

Who are the main characters? What details support the main

ideas?

Inference, predicting and drawing conclusions

Inference is using all the clues in the text and arriving at a conclusion of what will happen. There may be some degree of truth in the decision made. Inferring is reading between the lines.

Inference and prediction are NOT the same. Inference allows for many more questions than prediction.

Predicting is making an educated guess on what will happen based on your background knowledge. Predictions are answered at the end of the story.

Drawing conclusions is using evidence in the story to draw logical conclusions about what happened. The author often gives away hints during the story and this makes it exciting to read. When we draw a conclusion, we take the clues the author has given us and use it with what we already know from our experience to help us understand what is happening in the story.

What clues lead you to think that?

How does that character feel? Why did the author write this

story? What would you do if you were

the main character?

Predicting Questions What is happening in the story? What will happen next? What else could happen?

SequencingSequencing refers to the identification of the components of a story, such as the beginning, middle, and end, and also the ability to retell the events within a given text in the order in which they occurred.

The ability to sequence events in a text is a key comprehension strategy, especially for narrative texts. The ordering of events in a story, along with connecting words such as once upon a time, then, later, afterwards, and in the end, are good examples of textual features.

Teacher may organize a lesson that pre-teaches transitional vocabulary to showcase sequencing in reading.

What happens first? (Once upon a time). How do you know?

Where is the middle of the story (then, later, along with)?

How does the story end (In the end)?

Cause and effect Cause and effect is to demonstrate to children that our actions have measurable results and they need to make a link between actions and effects.

We teach cause and effect every time we help a young child

What happens if you go outside in the rain without an umbrella?

What happens if you don’t eat lunch?

"If you drink your milk, you will

5 This section adapted from google web search July 2012.

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recognize a relationship between two things, or when we demonstrate that one event is the result of another.

grow big and strong!" "If you clean up your toys, you

can go play outside."

SynthesizingSynthesizing recognizes that the thinking process evolves during the learning process. The reader's thinking changes as they gather more information. New information makes the reader re-evaluate and increase what they know.

Synthesizing is closely linked to evaluating. Basically, as we identify what’s important, we interweave our thoughts to form a comprehensive perspective to make the whole greater than just the sum of the parts.

See Vygotsky’s (1978) zones of proximal development for further information.

Ask for a prediction, inference and then when the pupils realize the story changed they can revise their reading schema.

Reflection can also be another way to synthesize information after the lesson.

Reflection: KWL:

What I know What I want to know What I learnt from this story

Evaluating Evaluating and determining importance has to do with knowing why you’re reading and then making decisions about what information or ideas are most critical to understanding the overall meaning of the piece.

What is the most important information in the story?

What order do events occur in this story?

Draw me a timeline of events to show what you think is most important.

Comprehension Task

Return to the New York Time article, Marriage trends in the United States, and answer the following comprehension questions.

Questions

In your own words, write down the main point that the article is making.

What is happening to marriages in the United States with women who do not have college degrees?

Compare marriage trends in the United States with those in Malaysia. Are they similar or different? Why do you think so?

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Practical example: Main Ideas

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Example: Main Ideas

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Inferring – Reading between the lines

Task

Read the text below and then answer the questions that follow.

It was 3.15 p.m. Miss Hindon left the room. She was not gone long. When she returned ten minutes later, she saw that the board was not the same. Who erased the notes she had written?

Miss Hindon looked at her pupils. Ban Min was reading a book. Danny’s head was on his desk. Jamri was drawing a dragon. The others sat very still. No one would tell Miss Hindon who had erased the board. She had a plan. “Who wants to go for recess?” she asked. Ban Min’s hand was dirty. Jamri had pencil smudges on the side of his hand. Miss Hindon knew who had erased the board.

Questions

1. Who erased the board?

2. What clue told Miss Hindon the person who had erased the board?

3. At what time did Miss Hindon return to the class?

4. How did you get the answer to question 3?

5. What is an inference? How do we make an inference?

6. “Proficient readers make inferences”. Why is making inferences important for effective reading?

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Example: Predicting Outcomes & Drawing Conclusions

Predicting outcomes and drawing conclusions are two specific types of inferencing skills. In both instances, the reader has to make use of information and clues from the text and combine these with his previous knowledge to either make a prediction or to draw a conclusion.

Predicting Outcomes

The prediction equation

Drawing Conclusions

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information and clues in the

reading

what you already know PREDICATION

information and clues in the reading

what you already know CONCLUSION

Task: Predicting & Drawing Conclusions

A text is provided below. Formulate as many questions for predicting and drawing conclusions as you can.

Malik was returning home late after visiting a friend when he suddenly realized that he was being followed by a small group of men. He knew that they were a gang of robbers. He ran dodging in and out of alleys trying to shake them off.

Just when he thought he was running out of breath, he spotted a graveyard. He heard the clock strike twelve. Quickly he ran into the graveyard, found an open grave and jumped in! He hid there and waited. Nothing happened. Everything was quiet and still.

Nearby he heard the sound of crickets. In the distance, an owl hooted. He decided to take a peek.

At that moment, the robbers saw his head above the edge of the grave. They surrounded him.

“What are you doing here?” they asked.

“This is my grave,” replied Malik, “I just came up for a breath of fresh air.”

The robbers…………………………………..Malik………………………………..

From: Longman Primary English, Pearson Education Asia Pte. Ltd.

My questions

-

-

-

-

-

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Cause and Effect

There are several cause and effect patterns. Writers may explain causes only, effects only or a cause and effect chain.

1) Causes only

This type of explanation focuses on two or more causes of one effect.

Example:

2) Effects only

This type of explanation focuses on two or more effects and one cause.

Example:

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good eating habits

cause

effect

exercise

cause

good health

strength

cause

effectgood

coordination

effect

gymnastics

3) Effects only

In this explanation one cause leads to an effect, which causes another effect, and so on.

Reading Aloud5

Definitions

enunciation: — 1) To articulate or pronounce (words), clearly and distinctly2) to state precisely or formally

pronunciation: the act, instance or manner of pronouncing sounds

intonation: the pattern or melody of pitch changes in connected speech, especially the pitch patter of a sentence

rhythm: a pattern of beat, accent evident in speech forms. Flow, pulse, cadence of speech. In music, rhythm, the beat.6

Reading Aloud Benefits

encourages independent reading increases the quality and quantity

of independent reading helps pupils with pronunciation creates interests in books is useful for pupils to read

independently improves listening and provides

pronunciation practice enables teachers to model good

reading helps pupils internalize language

and structures they will apply to their own reading one day.

Reading Aloud Self-study

6 Definitions, Dictionary.com, July 2012.

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cause effectcause

practising soccer

you get to play on the school

team

your skills improves

Task

To find reading aloud activities please consult Google and YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/

Search for read aloud activities with key words such as: enunciation,

pronunciation, intonation, or rhythm.

Now, take a break before you move on to the next topic.

Criteria for Evaluating Text for Reading Development

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Read the following text and answer the questions that follow.

Why teachers need to assess texts?

Even if you have little control over the choice of textbooks, it helps to be aware of

their strong points and limitations so that you can exploit them effectively,

supplement them if necessary and perhaps argue the case for their replacement.

The three main criteria for evaluating texts for reading development:

suitability of content

exploitability

readability

Suitability of content

The most important criterion is that the text should interest the readers. It is possible

to develop reading skills on a text that bores you or the readers but interesting

content makes the learner’s task far more rewarding. EFL readers are increasingly

offered well written gripping stories, presented to look like real paperbacks, which

attract pupils to read out of class.

Find out what pupils like

One way to double check is to find out what pupils actually read, bearing in mind that

books read in the L1 may tell you more about reading tastes than those in the foreign

language. Find out which books are borrowed most often from the library: this is

usually a good indicator of preferences. Keep an eye on what pupils read in class. If

pupils want to read this material, half the battle has been won. You can take care of

text with literary merit once pupils already enjoy reading.

Selecting texts for classroom study

It is often better to begin with material chosen chiefly for enjoyment (intrinsically

motivating) until reading skills improve. And even if you are training pupils

specifically to read, for instance, university level medical texts, you may get better

results if you use simpler and more motivating materials to begin with. School

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textbooks often provide simple models of academic discourse; it is useful to have a

collection of them on subjects suited to the class.

Exploitability

Also known as facilitation of learning, exploitability is the most important criteria after

interest (intrinsic motivation). Pupils learn by focusing on the meaning and purpose

of the text. The focus of a reading lesson is how language is used for conveying

content for a purpose. We want pupils to develop the ability to extract the content

from the language that expresses it—to become effective readers.

Simulating real-life purposes

Authentic texts can be motivating because they are proof that the language is used

for real-life purposes by real people. How can the text be used in a foreign language

environment? In the case of functional texts, this is straightforward: a travel

brochure, magazines, newspapers, etc. Text of this kind lend themselves to

outcomes of integrating many skills.

Readability

This often refers to the combination of structural and lexical difficulty. It is important

for the teacher to assess the right level for the pupils you teach; to do this you must

assess the pupils themselves.

Many teachers have to cope with classes where the gap between the strongest and

weakest pupils is very wide. A library for extensive reading should cater for the full

range of levels of pupils in the class. Most teachers, however, work in circumstances

where it is not possible to provide differentiated materials for regular classroom use.

We shall assume you will have to compromise by choosing material that suits most of

the pupils in the class, and that you compensate for this by giving individual attention

to pupils who are behind the others, or are capable of handling more difficult

materials. Be prepared ahead of time with strategies to teach reading to both the

advanced and emerging readers in the classroom.

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Structural difficulty

Readability also involves structural difficulty, which is harder to assess. New

grammatical forms (tenses, structural words, etc) often cause no problems if the text

is comprehensible in other respects. A more likely cause of structural difficulty is

sentence length and complexity. Experienced teachers can usually assess whether

a text is structurally about the right level without using formal methods. But it is also

possible to work out its readability index. This is a way of assessing a text by giving

it a kind of score. To make use of it, you first need to work out the readability index

of texts that you know are suitable for the students. This gives you a yardstick

against which to measure the readability of texts you are considering using.

Calculating the readability index

Typically, measuring readability is based on counts of average word length and

sentence length. The assumption is that if you pick a typical stretch of 100 words of

text, the more syllables there are in it, the more difficult it will be. This is because

more syllables = longer words, and longer words tend to be less familiar. Similarly,

the fewer the sentences in the 100–word stretch, the more difficult it is, because

fewer sentences = longer sentences, and thus more complex ones. To assess

books, the viable methods suggest you choose three typical 100-word passages from

the near the beginning, middle and end and average the count of these.

Cloze as an indicator of readability

A readability index is useful because it enables you to compare new texts with

familiar ones which you know are at the right level. An alternative measure is the

cloze test; it does not permit you to make comparisons, but is often favoured

because it needs little computation and is useful in an extensive reading program.

A text for classroom use should be such that a typical student could score about 45

percent on a cloze extract; it would be challenging but not too difficult to read with

support from the teacher. For independent reading (self-study), texts need to be

easier; students should be advised to choose books on which they score at least 60

per cent.

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Reading Development Questions

What are the three criteria that teachers should use to evaluate the value of a

reading text?

What should teachers consider when selecting reading materials for the

class?

What are authentic texts and why are they important in teaching reading?

What is readability index?

How do I calculate the readability index in a text?

What is readability and why is it important in teaching reading?

Example: Cloze Test

In cloze tests, the words are deleted systematically. The interval at which words are

deleted is usually between every fifth and every ninth word. However, if every

seventh word has been deleted in the first few sentences, then every seventh word

must be deleted for the rest of the text. The most common purpose of the cloze test

is to measure reading comprehension.

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Task

The cloze test contains a passage with 12 gaps which you have to complete

from a selection of words or phrases in the box.

Read the passage, then fill in the gaps with one of the words or phrase.

outletwhichwhileextent

sourceunlikelykeen to reaches

offalongdue to

sought

Cambridge Cloze Test7

How do you turn something from yellow to green? Your art teacher would tell you to add blue, but American Kevin Newman would disagree. He would point to the pair of water heaters installed in his garage, which, 1)________with a hose and some chemicals, turn the fast-food by-product yellow grease into ‘green’ biodiesel.

Yellow grease is waste cooking oil from restaurant fast food fryers. It is a marginally valuable commodity, 2)__________its use as an additive in animal feeds and cosmetics, but it can only be sold if it 3)_________a certain standard. In the past, a lot of yellow grease went to waste, to the 4)_________that restaurants had to pay for it to be taken away.

This was ideal for home-brewers like Kevin Newman, who picked up gallons of grease from their local fast food 5)________, and turned it to clean fuel at a cost of about $1 a gallon. These days, governments are 6)_________ find alternatives to petroleum, and waste vegetable oil has become highly 7)__________after. That’s great news for the restaurants, 8)________ can sell to the highest bidder.

It’s good for the environment too, as the fuel is renewable, local, and gives 9)___________ far less pollution than petroleum. It isn’t great for Kevin though, as he loses his cheap 10)________of yellow grease to the bigger companies. It's 11)_________ to make much difference to the general public either. Biofuels may be cheap, but currently only 150 million gallons of them are produced per year, 12)_________diesel consumption is a staggering 38 billion gallons.

7 Cambridge cloze test, adapted from: http://www.examenglish.com/ECPE/ECPE_cloze.htm, July 2012.

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Cloze Test Answers

How do you turn something from yellow to green? Your art teacher would tell you to add blue, but American Kevin Newman would disagree. He would point to the pair of water heaters installed in his garage, which, along with a hose and some chemicals, turn the fast-food by-product yellow grease into ‘green’ biodiesel.

Yellow grease is waste cooking oil from restaurant fast food fryers. It is a marginally valuable commodity, due to its use as an additive in animal feeds and cosmetics, but it can only be sold if it reaches a certain standard. In the past, a lot of yellow grease went to waste, to the extent   that restaurants had to pay for it to be taken away. This was ideal for home-brewers like Kevin Newman, who picked up gallons of grease from their local fast food outlet, and turned it to clean fuel at a cost of about $1 a gallon.

These days, governments are keen to find alternatives to petroleum, and waste vegetable oil has become highly sought after. That’s great news for the restaurants, which can sell to the highest bidder. It’s good for the environment too, as the fuel is renewable, local, and gives off far less pollution than petroleum. It isn’t great for Kevin though, as he loses his cheap source of yellow grease to the bigger companies. It's unlikely to make much difference to the general public either. Biofuels may be cheap, but currently only 150 million gallons of them are produced per year, while diesel consumption is a staggering 38 billion gallons.

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Module Reflection

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What I learnt:

What I want to learn / know more about:

What I think about what I learnt:

Extension Activity

KBSR Year 6

Task Summary

You have just completed part of the module on reading skills. The next section is designed for you and a partner to use the materials provided to create a micro teaching lesson.

Procedure

Read the KBSR Year 6 text below.

With a partner, select ONE of these activities: skimming & scanning,

comprehension or reading aloud.

Create a micro reading lesson based on the text provided.

Present the lesson in class.

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Reference

Dictionary.com: http://dictionary.reference.com downloaded from the World Wide Web, July 2012.

中学英语教学法 Unit 10 Teaching Reading, sfs.scnu.edu.cn/chendm1/PPT/Unit%2010.ppt. PPT downloaded from the World Wide Web, July 2012.

KBSR Malaysian primary school textbook year 6, access from IPGKBL campus.

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com downloaded from the World Wide Web, July 2012.

Nuttal, C. 2005. Teaching Reading Skills. Macmillan Books: Oxford.

Reader’s Digest: http://www.rd.com downloaded from the World Wide Web, July 2012.

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Appendix

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