Creating pre, while, post reading activities

Lesson 13

1. Lesson 13 Topic: Creating pre, while, post reading activities

2. OVERALL OBJECTIVES: To raise students’ awareness of the importance of teaching of reading To let students practice different ways of reading To guide students to work on exploring the effective ways of teaching reading.

3. STEPS: familiarizing students with different pre, while and post-reading activities, having students distinguish types of reading activities, getting students analyze different reading activities, their types, aims and stages (pre, while, post-reading), getting students to practice designing pre, while and post-reading activities and getting students conducting feedback on each other’s designed activities

4. BACKGROUND: Reading is not a passive skill. It is an incredibly active occupation. To do it successfully, we have to understand what the words mean, see the picture, the words are painting, understand the arguments and work out of we agree with them. There are many reasons why getting students to read English texts which is an important part of the teacher’s job. In the first place, many of them want to be able to read texts in English either for their careers, for study purposes or simply for pleasure.

5. Pre-reading activities cover a range of possibilities, all directed at helping learners engage in a process of discovery and to feel authorized to engage with the form and content of the text. Two pre-reading activities are very commonly used: Brainstorming Skimming

6. • Brainstorming Students pool what they know about the topic of a text and share their knowledge in the native or target language. The goal is to activate the learners' horizon of expectation, and help learners identify what the text is about. Pre-reading exercises can take different forms, but ideally they are learner-centered rather than teacher-centered. • Skimming The second pre-reading activity is skimming. In class, allot a short period of time (two minutes or so) for the learners to skim the first paragraph or page of the text, look at illustrations and subtitles, and identify the words in the text that explain the "who," "what," "where," and "when" of the text content. Pre-reading helps students a ctivate their horizon of expectation (background knowledge, syntactic and semantic resources, cognitive strategies), take charge of their own learning, and become willing to tolerate ambiguity.

7. In while-reading activities, students check their comprehension as they read. The purpose for reading determines the appropriate type and level of comprehension. When reading for specific information, students need to ask themselves, have I obtained the information I was looking for? When reading for pleasure, students need to ask themselves, Do I understand the story line/sequence of ideas well enough to enjoy reading this? When reading for thorough understanding (intensive reading), students need to ask themselves, Do I understand each main idea and how the author supports it? Does what I'm reading agree with my predictions, and, if not, how does it differ? Post-reading: The activities in this section are generated by the text and extend its potential for meaningful language work. The tasks cannot be performed without the text, that is, they cannot replace the text.

8. Why teach reading? Reading texts also provide good models for English writing. When we teach the skill of writing, we will need to show students models of what we are encouraging them to do. Reading texts also provide opportunities to study language: vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, and the way we construct sentences, paragraphs and texts. Lastly, good reading texts can introduce interesting topics, stimulate discussion, excite imaginative responses and be the springboard for well-rounded, fascinating lessons.

9. Thanks for your attention!