Following on from his previous post about not drowning in a text, Peter Redpath, co-author of Incredible English, now suggests strategies for moving learners from the shallow to the deep end of a reading text.
In my last blog post I used the image of a swimming pool to represent a reading text. A swimming pool is full of water and a text is full of language: it is possible to drown in both! In this post I’d like to stay with that image and think about how we can take the learners from the shallow end to the deep end of the text. I’d also like to ensure they are never in danger of drowning in the language.
My teaching aim is to develop different swimming strokes or reading strategies so that they learn to move comfortably through the water/text.
What are the reading strategies that competent readers bring to a text? They can:
- Predict content. We don’t usually read a text without some idea of its content. A headline or a title or pictures usually gives us some idea about the content of the text.
- Skim a text for an overview of what it’s about.
- Scan it and pick out specific information or detail.
- Read from beginning to end of a selected passage, drawing out the author’s message and intention.
- Read carefully to understand how that message has been constructed and the language used.
In points 1, 2 and 3 my learners are in the shallower end of the swimming pool. In 4 and 5, they have moved into the deep end. (You may have noticed that I have dropped the terms extensive and intensive reading. Do you use these terms or something different? Leave a comment and let me know).