A.

General techniques for handling any main reading passages 1 Using Listening Files These days, popular market demand has resulted in most (quality) reading textbooks including an audio CD with each reading passage read aloud by a narrator. If you are fortunate enough to have audio tracks to play to your learners, it's a good idea to make the most of them. They can make an excellent link between reading and listening, and are a great resource in classrooms where "reading out loud" is a common technique. If you are using reading textbooks or materials that do not have audio support, you might like to consider recording your own. These can be done on an MP3 player or online, then placed onto CDS, sent via email, or placed online via a website or blog. A great (and very easy!) place to do this is Voxopop, where all of your listening tracks can be placed in one easy-to-find thread. There are a variety of ways you can utilize recordings in application to reading passages: (a) Ask students to listen to the recording at home prior to coming in to class the benefit here is that students can get some initial exposure to the passage, the disadvantage being it is hard to check or know if students have actually done this pre-listening aspect before they come to class. (b) Play the listening track through and allow students to read along through the text before asking students to read aloud or do main reading applications. (c) Play the listening track following the main reading activity, to provide some follow up consolidation and integration through listening. (d) Play and pause the listening track before or after dealing with each paragraph in the main reading providing a preview or follow up at paragraph level. (e) Play the listening track through and pause after each sentence, creating a listenand-repeat style activity at sentence level that could be beneficial in helping students improve their reading aloud performance. (f) Before even looking at the main reading, keep students books closed and play the listening track. Ask the students to try and picture what is happening in their minds while they listen. This can be a valuable technique in encouraging initial visualization that can be drawn on again when the main reading text is being tackled (note that visualization when actually reading is very hard for EFL learners to accomplish, as they tend to focus on specific words and phrases in front of them so listening and imagining can be a valuable visualization tool). (g) Following the main reading, have students close their books and listen to the sound track on its own. This again can promote visualization that may not have occurred when reading.

(h) Play the sound track before and after the main reading activity, without students having the benefit of seeing the written text while they listen on one or both occasions. In this case, the main reading activity can help to build on the initial visualization through listening, and the follow up listening allows students to listen again with the benefit of having seen the text and talked/thought about it a little. Remember to try and maintain a variety of approaches using the listening tracks, to alleviate possible boredom, to keep students on their toes and attentive, and to achieve different kinds of integrated comprehension in reading classes. 2 Applying Main Reading Passages There are a variety of ways to engage the main reading passage in a unit or worksheet with your learners. You may like to experiment with different approaches until you find one that seems to create a productive and engaging rhythm with the class, but it is important to slightly twist your approach in new directions at times to create a sense of variety and to provide exposure to different purposes for reading. The suggestions for the listening tracks above can be useful in combination with this section. A main/standard approach to handling reading passages could be summarized as follows: (a) First have students read through the passage silently on their own. (b) Ask the students, on their own, to try and quickly answer any questions that follow or accompany the reading after the initial silent reading (this is good for encouraging initial individual/ independent attempts at reading and comprehension). (c) Have the students compare their initial answers to any comprehension questions with classmates nearby. (d) Go back to the start of the reading and utilize a read-around approach, whereby students in turns read sentences aloud (including titles and headings) from the text in sequence. During this reading, the teacher only helps with pronunciation if students become completely bogged down, but otherwise circles words and phrases in his/her book that appear to be problematic. (e) Following the read-around, the teacher models pronunciation of the words students had difficulty with during reading aloud, and has students briefly practice them chorally (this approach does not put individual students on the spot whilst reading aloud and makes pronunciation practice a group-oriented rather than individual activity). (f) Commence a general discussion about the reading, beginning with main ideas and important details, leading on naturally into any comprehension or skills-based questions, which can now be corrected or added to as a group activity.

(g) Conclude with some attention to any highlighted vocabulary (either highlighted in the actual textbook, or that you as the teacher have highlighted and want the students to dedicate some attention to) and links to parts of speech and English definitions. There are a couple of other adaptations you might like to implement: (h) Leap-frog read-around instead of one student after another reading aloud in a sequence that corresponds to the physical outlay of the classroom, have every third or fourth student read in sequence. This moves the reading aloud role around the room more rapidly and avoids having a large portion of the classroom doing nothing for an extended period of time. (i) Spiral read-around - you can also try a more "literal" read-around (if you have many students seated at random or in rows), going across the front row of students, up the left side of the classroom (near the wall or window), across the back, and back down the other side to the starting point. This is great for involving those "fringe" students who like to sit near the far edges or far back of the classroom (thinking they can escape attention or being called on by the teacher!). It can also be extended to include the centrally-seated students by continuing the ring, one row back and in from the sides, so to speak, with the turn gradually spiralling into the very center of the classroom. (j) "Random" read-around as per above except students are chosen (seemingly) completely at random. This gives a teacher more power to control attention around a classroom, allows him/her to discreetly avoid weaker/newer students when/if necessary, and/or allows for students to be allocated sentences to read according to their relative proficiency. (k) Questions First have students look at and discuss any accompanying comprehension questions before they do any of the main reading. This is a valuable exam skill which can help them to keep in mind which parts of the reading text they need to pay more attention to as they appear during the actual reading process. (l) Vocabulary Preparation 1 discuss the any highlighted or teacher-selected vocabulary items in before reading (making guesses about English definitions prior to reading) to help the students quickly understand particular words as they occur in the main reading activity. (m) Vocabulary Preparation 2 following the silent reading portion of the lesson, allow students to ask you questions about words they have encountered and cannot understand (they can be asked to circle such words while they are reading along silently) before or after trying to answer any comprehension questions, but before the reading aloud section of the lesson. (n) Allocated Reader it is an option to have a single student read aloud from half to all of the main text. This role can then move to a different student each lesson.

This gives individual students intense practice with extensive reading aloud. It can be made less intimidating by forewarning in advance who is going to read aloud the text in the next lesson, giving that student time to practice at home, possibly in conjunction with any listening tracks provided on accompanying CD (if such are available). (o) Allocated Readers as per (n) above except focused on particular paragraphs. This can then play a similar role requiring preparation and practice, but reduces the potential stress involved! (p) Echo Reading as an adaptation of the regular read-around, allocate main readers and echo readers. After a student reads aloud his/her sentence, the delegated echo reader repeats this sentence straight after. The echo reader could have access to their book for this (easier) or no access to the written text (harder needs to repeat based on listening and memory). Great for adding a new twist on the reading around procedure. (q) Content/Summary Reading this one is a little more bizarre, so it is only recommended as an occasional application. Before reading aloud, the students go through the entire text and circle the words they believe to be important content words (nouns, adjectives, main verbs, adverbs, negatives, etc). When it is their turn to read aloud, they first read aloud the full sentence, then repeat it only saying the key content words they have circled. This is good for drawing attention to important content and meaning-carrying words versus grammatical/functional words in a reading text, and can be initial step towards learning how to summarize information well in note form. B. Additional creative techniques to apply in your reading class The activities that follow generally promote consolidation of top-down, bottom-up or language and comprehension aspects related to reading passages. They can make excellent follow-up activities to the more general techniques mentioned above, and most of them also promote integrated skills and interaction amongst your students. 1 - Main Ideas and Details (Recognition and Sorting) Allow students to quickly read through the text(s) presented in one (extended) or several (shorter) units (and/or a review unit if this is featured). While they are doing this, the teacher makes a chart on the whiteboard indicating (a) the main reading title(s), under which are (b) either the sub-headings for that reading or the first sentence in each paragraph. In essence, the chart indicates the main ideas of each text. Once the students have finished reading, they close their books. The teacher places students into groups of 2-4 students. The teacher then opens the reading book and selects sentences at random from the reading(s), reading them out loud for the class to hear. Groups take turns trying to guess (a) which reading the sentence came

from, and/or (b) which part of the reading it belongs to - refering to the chart the teacher has pre-prepared and presented on the whiteboard. The activity can obviously be made easier by focusing only on one reading (or a very limited number of shorter readings) at a time. This activity promotes main ideas and details connections, but can also brings listening skills and discussion/debate into the mix. 2 Main Ideas and Details (Recall) Slightly similar to the Main Ideas and Details activity above, except this asks students to try and recall details they have read. Following a review of the text, the students close their books. The teacher reads aloud the main idea of each paragraph (sub-heading or main idea sentence). In their own words, students in groups try to add as many relevant supporting details to the main idea as they can recall. 3 - Piecing it together Photocopy one of the readings. Cut the text into chunks (either individual sentences or small groups of sentences) with a pair of scissors. Ask students in groups of 1-4 to put the text back together again without looking in their textbooks. On the whiteboard you could write either the paragraph subheadings or the first sentence of each paragraph to help the students get started. This helps reinforce the idea of selecting correct details to support main ideas in a text. Getting the order right also helps promote an awareness of text cohesion and how ideas are built up, reinforced and extended in reading texts. For more variety, you could copy and cut out more than one reading passage at a time. You could allocate a different reading to each group and ask them to put the sentences back together again. In this way, the class will have reconstructed a series of texts. One way to make the activity easier for the students, but also to get them physically active and to pay fiercer attention to the base reading text, is to have the students leave their books on one side of the classroom and the cut out sentence strips on tables on the other side. Every 5-10 minutes, the teacher makes a signal that tells students they can go over to their books and re-consult the original text(s) (without being able to sort the sentence strips in front of them). Give them 2-3 minutes for this re-consultation time, then ask them to go back and continue sorting their strips. This can be great to encourage teamwork, as groups may catch on to the idea of individual students focusing on specific parts (or main ideas) of the text while they consult the book, increasing the chance of remembering precisely which sentences go where in their sections. 4 - Interactive Dictation Put students into pairs, and have them face each other across the classroom. Using two different reading texts, allocate the first text to student A, and the second text to

student B. The students job is to then basically dictate their reading to their partners. To make this happen, each student will need a piece of writing paper, and the teacher needs to make sure each only looks at the text they are responsible for dictating. In 5 or 10-minute slots, one student reads his/her text aloud, while the other writes it down interrupting for spelling, clarification or repetition of course! When the time is up, the roles reverse, except now using the other text. This works well as a friendly classroom competition, with the winners basically being the team who got all (or the most) of the two texts down on paper the fastest. But be careful it can get really noisy! For the third wheel (in a classroom where you have an odd number of students), you can make one student the helper. This student (probably better if it is a stronger/more able student) takes a turn with each pair, helping the person who is writing. To make the task easier and/or to promote a deeper familiarity with a particular text, allow both A and B students to write and dictate the same text. While they are writing, they have their book closed, whereas while they are reading aloud, their pen is on the table. The text they dictate is also then the text they need to listen to and write down, so the experience of reading the text out loud can help their own chances of remembering it when their turn to write comes. 5 - Missing Chunks Place the students in A/B pairs. Choose a text covered in class and allocate one part or paragraph to each student (this obviously requires a reading passage with at least two separate paragraphs!). Instruct them to go through their allocated text portion and place a slash between words somewhere in the middle of each sentence they can choose exactly where but it should always be after at least 3-4 words in the sentence. The texts are now ready to become an oral memory quiz for the students to use on each other. Taking turns, the students look at their allocated portions but only read out the first portion of each sentence (up to the point they have marked with a slash). Their partner needs to try and complete it by saying the second half of the sentence, but without looking at their book. The roles then reverse, with the second student applying the same quiz to the first student, but using a different portion of the text. The handy thing about this activity is that when it is each students turn to read out loud and quiz their partner, they can spend time looking at the other portion (the one they are about to be quizzed on during the next turn) and try to guess where the break/slash will come. They can also try to quickly memorize the parts they think will be missing, though they will not have a lot of time.

For the third wheel (in a classroom where you have an odd number of students), it is easy to make groups of three if you have texts with at least three paragraphs (alternatively, you could use three different shorter texts). The group of three get three different portions of the text (or three readings), with A then quizzing B, B quizzing C, and C quizzing A. The student having a break each turn gets a little extra time to pore over their text and try and guess what they will need to be able to remember. A different (or additional) variation is to have students read the second half of their sentences out loud, with the partner trying to remember and state the first part (the opposite to what has been described so far). 6 - Scrambled Chunks This is very similar to Missing Chunks described above, but instead of slashing and burning a portion of a sentence, the students select sentences from their allocated part of the reading and jumble the words. Each turn, one student reads out the words in jumbled order and the partner tries to work out how to put them back into the correct order to reconstruct the sentence. 7 Sentence Sleuth I: The Search for the Missing Word! Following a quick review of the reading text(s), the students close their books. The teacher then selects a sentence from a reading, and reads it aloud without saying one key word. In small groups, students then re-open their books and try to track down the missing word, using their memory of the sentence they heard read aloud. In the sleuth theme, the missing word is the suspect and the surrounding sentence is the group of witnesses! The activity can be made more or less difficult basically by selecting the scope of readings the sentence/missing word comes from (i.e., it will be easier if students are focusing on a single shorter text but progressively harder if they asked to consider one longer or multiple texts). The focus can be on both content and function words, depending on the emphasis desired by the teacher. Omitting either a content (meaning) or function (grammarbased) word will result in more attention from students on that particular aspect of sentences. It is possible to alternate, with one sentence omitting a content word and the next omitting a function word. Also, as an extra challenge, a teacher could omit more than one word on each round, and/or make sure to include an even balance of content and grammar words from the one sentence. Note also that students can become more involved by taking turns being the person choosing the missing word and delivering the hint sentence from which it is missing. The rest of the students in the class try to hunt down the word, and once it is found a different student chooses a word and delivers the next hint sentence.

8 Sentence Sleuth II: The Search for the Missing Sentence! This is similar to Sentence Sleuth I except the teacher selects a sentence from a reading, and reads aloud the sentence before that sentence and the sentence that follows. Note that the teacher does not read the actual selected sentence only the sentences preceding and following it. In small groups, students then re-open their books and try to track down the missing sentence, using their memory of the sentences they heard read aloud. In the sleuth theme, the missing sentence is the suspect and the surrounding sentences are the witnesses! Note also above in Sentence Sleuth I about increasing or decreasing the difficulty level and involving students in the selection of missing sentences and delivering the search hints. 9 Sentence Sleuth III: The Word in Disguise! This is similar to Sentence Sleuth I except the teacher chooses a sentence and changes one of the words in it. This could involve a synonym or a small phrase replacement. The teacher reads it aloud with the word or phrase replacement embedded. In small groups, students then re-open their books and try to track down the missing word, using their memory of the sentence they heard read aloud including the substitute word or phrase. In the sleuth theme, the missing word is the suspect in disguise and the surrounding sentence is the group of witnesses! Note also above in Sentence Sleuth I about increasing or decreasing the difficulty level and involving students in the selection of missing words and delivering the search hints. 10 Sentence Sleuth IV: The Sentence in Disguise! This is similar to Sentence Sleuth II and III except the teacher chooses a sentence and changes it in some way without changing its essential meaning. This could involve using synonyms and/or small phrase replacements, or it could involve changing the word order/sentence structure, or even a combination of both. The teacher reads the sentence aloud with the changes embedded. In small groups, students then re-open their books and try to track down the missing sentence, using their memory of the sentence they heard read aloud. Note also above in Sentence Sleuth I about increasing or decreasing the difficulty level and involving students in the selection of missing sentences and delivering the search hints. C. Extensive Reading Options (Online) The texts in many reading series make ideal starting points for further reading, and one way to promote easy, accessible real-world extensive reading is through the use of web-based news articles.

There are a variety of sites on the Internet that can help you and your young or teenage learners here, but two in particular I highly recommend are: Using both of these sites also gives learners the added bonus of equal exposure to both British (through CBBC) and American (Kidzworld) English, as well as news stories and articles selected from two different parts of the globe. 1 Finding and applying articles from Childrens BBC The main site is located at (http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/). This is fine if you want learners to browse on their own and find current articles to read and discuss. However, to search for specific articles that teachers can link to particular reading texts and themes in main classroom textbooks, you will need to use the general CBBC search portal (http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/search/). Type in your general theme or an aspect from the unit you using in a main textbook and press GO. The search results will bring up a general listing, but probably the results of most practical use will be found in the right-hand column under the heading Newsround Results (immediately below Web Results). Once you start going in to look at these article results, you will also obtain links to related stories to the top right of each article, which can often help you refine your search until you find the kind of article focus and length you think will be appropriate for the learners. Even once you have found articles, getting them in front of the eyes of your students is the next challenge. If you want to use printable versions, you can print the web page as is (use landscape in your printer settings to get the full width of the article) or click on the Printable Version setting just above the title of the story. The advantage with printing as is is that you get the genuine website look plus all the pictures, whereas with the printable version you get a much clearer production of the main text but the article does not then feature accompanying pictures. Another option is to give the students the URL links to the articles so that they can access and read them independently on computers at school or home. As with most news sites, the URLs are often long and complicated, so youll probably need to find a way around this. One way is to feature the links on an online message board of some kind, or in an email to the students. Then students can simply click on the URL link rather than having to type it into the browser manually. 2 Example Childrens BBC Articles as Extensions of Boost Reading 1 Below is a selection of example CBBC Newsround articles that can be applied to each of the units in Boost! Reading Level 1 (one of the books in my own Boost! Integrated Skills Series from Pearson Longman). These were obtained simply by oing to the CBBC search portal mentioned above and entering key terms from each The CBBC stories listed above all extend the general idea of the original reading passage in the textbook, by providing additional information or being related in some way. In some cases, the articles present contrasting information or views. All of them provide valuable new reading material "at a click", so to speak, for which the

students already have some general schemata (based on the text in their reading book) and now have new things to learn about and discuss later in class. 3 Finding and applying articles from Kidzworld The main site is located at (www.kidzworld.com). As per CBBC Newsround, this main page also makes a good general starting point for students to find and read articles they are interested in. Searching for articles related to the themes and units for your original textbook-based passages here is somewhat easier, as there is a general search portal at the top of each Kidzworld page. Entering your search terms here will result in a lengthy list of Kidzworld articles. A bonus with the Kidzworld format is that a good list of related articles appear at the bottom of each article, but there are also links to other readings and definitions within the article text itself. Kidzworld does not offer a printable version function, but the articles have dark text and a pale background and are located close enough to the left margin of the page to make direct printing from the webpage possible. 4 How to apply extensive reading There are many ways extensive reading can be applied, and this really depends on the overall objectives of the teacher and coursework. It is, for example, possible to try and find articles that are conducive to extra skills practice following on from the textbook units. However, if the objective is to basically promote more and wider reading in English, a less formal approach is probably more appropriate. Below are some practical suggestions for applying and following up on extensive reading. (a) Read, Present and Discuss Present the students with a small range of articles related to the main textbook reading theme and ask them to read as many of them as they can. Then ask them to select one of the articles to present to the class. Each student can read out their article while other students listen and take notes. This can be followed up with a Q&A session where classmates ask the student questions to help them complete their notes or fill in missing gaps. The teacher can then facilitate a discussion around the article, getting the students thinking and talking about key points and applying the different reading skills (finding main ideas, making inferences, etc.) they have already been exposed to up to that point in their classwork (these skills should of course be applicable to the article in question). This could be done in an informal, oral fashion to make the activity feel less studious and intimidating. (b) Read, Present and Summarize As per (a) above except the student presents the reading and then gives a quick summary of the main ideas and important details. Another option could be to have the student present the article and classmates do note-taking and summarizing. The student could then be asked to assess how well classmates appear to have summarized the important parts of his/her article, which is a great way to facilitate more active student involvement and independence.

(c) Read, Present and Respond As per (a) above except the students present their readings and then explain why they selected the article and what in particular they found interesting about it. They could also be encouraged to say why they think their article could be important for students to read. Other classmates could be asked to listen and take notes to summarize this process, or they could be asked to contribute their own thoughts and reactions as well. (d) Read, Present and Question As per (a) and/or (b) and (c), except following up from the main presentation of the article, the student presents some questions about it. This could either be directed at quizzing classmates about details and ideas in the article (general comprehension) or become more open-ended and critical-thinking based. For example, the students could be asked to compile questions about things they did not understand in the article, things they would like to know more about, etc. This in turn can lead to general classroom discussions. (e) Group Threads Presentation This has more of a group work orientation. Students get into small groups (3-6 students) and find a thread of related articles (which hopefully in turn relate back to the main reading theme in their textbooks in some way). Alternatively, for lower level groups or those without general access to the Internet, the teacher could preprepare the threads in advance. In class, each group presents their thread, with each student presenting a different article related in some way to the article before it. This is a really excellent way to promote extensive reading, and the presented articles can then be discussed in all sorts of different ways. For example, the focus could be on recognizing what exactly in each article relates it to others in the general thread, or skills like compare/contrast, inferences, setting, etc. could be drawn on. If other groups have to listen and take notes, ask questions to the presenters to complete gaps in their comprehension, and summarize what they are hearing in each thread this also promotes more interaction and integrated language skills. (f) Read and Write Based on an article the students have accessed and read, they could be asked to write in response to it. The emphasis here could vary anything from expressing their opinion in response to the article, making a list of questions about it, or continuing or adapting the article in a creative way. This in turn can lead to a presentation of the final product for the class. (g) Read and Test Based on an article the students have accessed and read, they could be asked to make a short written quiz about it. Other classmates then read the article and attempt to answer the quiz questions. This can be a great way to review the reading skills from a main textbook, as students can be encouraged to look back through their reading units and use them as a model for composing their own questions and answers. The testing could also take on a vocabulary emphasis, with students

highlighting 8-10 words in the text and making a word-definition link table or translations into their own language. (h) Interactive Dictation Similar to the activity described in Part A, except now the students are dictating to each other the articles they found and read as part of extensive reading outside their main textbooks. (i) Documentary Presentation The theme or topic in the main reading books becomes a generic title for a documentary the students are going to present. Students become reporters chasing up relevant follow up stories related to the theme/topic. One student (or perhaps the teacher) becomes the anchor, introducing each new story, crossing LIVE to each student so that they can present their story. The activity can be a lot of fun and very motivating especially for classes where the teacher wants to (and can) incorporate video or voice recording in their classes. (j) Class Reading Summary Students are given additional articles to read either individually or in groups. They then present their articles to the class and the teacher prepares a chart on the whiteboard indicating titles, main ideas and key details. As a class, following each reading the relevant information from the article is filled into the chart (which students could also be asked to fill out on paper). The chart makes an excellent summary of the extensive reading that has taken place across the class in general, and can also be drawn on to make comparisons and contrasts, further inferences and generalizations. (k) Here and Now Stories This is similar in some ways to the class documentary activity described in (i), except it specifically focuses on students independently finding current news stories directly or indirectly related to the theme or topic presented in their textbook reading unit. This can be particularly useful in keeping the reading themes current and relevant, and to help the students keep track of here and now news stories. In searching for articles related to the main theme, the students are likely to browse many stories before they select one that is appropriate and relevant, so in essence they are applying extensive reading.