Teachers are getting better at identifying what reading skills to cover and teach explicitly in the reading passages. In the beginning, they were pretty much bound by those reading skills they selected at the beginning of the school year and their belief that they were the basic ones students had to master. As they are the more general ones applicable to most texts, teachers didn’t need to sharpen their analytical skills in making the selection.
As the project moved into Year 2, the texts covered grew in length and complexity. Teachers also began to see beyond the reading skills they usually tackle and pay attention to text organisation, especially when tackling information texts. There was much satisfaction derived from the teachers’ discovery of that and they saw it not just as a challenge for students but for themselves. The “learning-by-doing” and “learning-by-observing” modes used in the learning loop gave teachers assurance that they can continually make improvements in their teaching approaches and they need not be targeted only at the classes they teach.
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Teachers’ professional knowledge of how to teach reading is also improving. This is a result of the collaborative lesson planning routines established and the requirement shared by the team that teaching plans and teaching/learning materials for both lesson study and non-lesson study purposes should be everyone’s responsibility. After working together closely for two consecutive years, they developed a common understanding of what work patterns to follow, what directions and approaches to take and, most importantly, they developed mutual trust and a sense of collective responsibility. They no longer feel embarrassed when being observed as they know that the imperfections can be fixed by their counterparts in the next lesson of the learning loop.
Using the last lesson study on teaching the story “The Haunted House” as an example, improvements were made as follows:
| Vocabulary teaching |
When pre-teaching some vocabulary items found in the text, teachers need not teach them as discrete items. They should do it in a contextualised manner by putting the target words in a context derived from the film trailer used. |
Linkage between pre-eading and while-reading |
Students are reminded of the story elements of “setting” and “problem” by watching the film trailer and those of “development”, “climax” and “solution” can be brought up later when the story is dealt with. |
Examination of both meaning and language in reading |
Students can be guided to do story analysis at both the content and language levels. This way, they can be taught to recognise the role played by features such as the choice and use of language in conveying intentions, attitudes and feelings, as well as prepare for doing the writing task at a later stage. |
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At the beginning of the project, teachers tended to spend considerably more time on Pre-reading than While-reading.
The possible reasons for this are as follows:
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Teachers feel that having a good start amounts to attaining half success. They therefore devote more time to discussing what to do in this stage. To prepare students for the reading, they either do some vocabulary work, try to arouse students’ interest in the topic or activate their previous knowledge related to the topic. It’s not that these tasks and activities prior to the reading stage are not important, but teachers often fail to establish links between this part and what comes next in reading. |
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There are pre-reading activities given in the textbook for every unit. Teachers are not required to use all of them but somehow they tried to use as many as they could, and at times also extended these. |
The possible reasons why teachers spent less time on while-reading:
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Teachers felt that their job to teach reading was more or less accomplished if they did a lot at the pre-reading stage. However, the effectiveness of this approach depends on what kind of work teachers do. If they go through vocabulary that is key to comprehending the reading text or discuss with students what they may find in the text, the pre-reading stage is directly helping students with the while-reading. If something done is for arousing students’ interest and activating their past experience related to the topic of the reading text, that assumption can no longer be made. |
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Teachers feared that too much guidance and interference at the while-reading stage would kill students’ interest in reading and would deprive them of the chance to become independent readers. Very often, they reverted to the other extreme by throwing out a set of questions for students to answer when they were reading. These questions aim at checking students’ comprehension rather than developing the targeted reading skills. Teaching of reading was replaced by testing of reading. |
Of course there is no rule about how much time must be spent on the pre-reading stage. Rather than the amount of time spent, the problem lies in the fact that what’s done at the pre-reading stage may not be relevant to the task of reading the passage, though they are related thematically. Apart from arousing students’ interest in reading, teachers need to explicitly teach them how to extract information from texts by demonstrating how skilled readers do this.
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Teaching of reading entails the treatment of reading aloud, vocabulary and reading skills. Observations of these practices in the reading lessons, analysis and suggestions for improvement can be summarised as follows:
Observations |
Analysis |
Suggestions |
| a) |
Reading aloud from the book usually takes the form of students reading out answers to the questions in the worksheet. Teachers usually do the reading aloud themselves rather than ask students to do so. |
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Some of the common problems students have with reading aloud are, for example, pronouncing the words inaccurately and not speaking loud enough to be heard by the class. To ensure students can read aloud competently and audibly, teachers may need to devote a lot of time helping them with pronunciation, intonation, inflexion and tone. In view of the time constraints, teachers would rather spend time helping students process the text they read than digress into something they feel is less important. Of course, it is possible that students can do reading aloud well and yet fail to understand the meaning of what they are reading, or vice versa. Reading aloud can be a technique for developing reading skills, but how much lesson time should reading aloud take up is up to teachers’ priorities. |
Besides helping students learn to pronounce words more accurately, reading aloud can help with comprehension. For this to happen, teachers have to make sure that students are clear regarding the meaning of the text they are going to read aloud. On top of that, teachers should always check the text(s) used suit the aim(s), provide students with a realistic purpose for reading aloud, create conditions in which students will be reading out to a realistic audience and give them time for preparation/rehearsal before the actual reading aloud. |
| b) |
Vocabulary teaching |
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Very often students are asked to look up meanings of words as homework. Teaching of vocabulary in reading lessons then takes the form of teachers inviting students to read out the meanings or giving out direct translation and explanation themselves. Application of vocabulary teaching strategies to help students decode difficult words is rarely seen. |
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When going through difficult words found in reading texts, teachers mostly rely on asking students to look up meanings of words in dictionaries at home and report back in class. Sometimes teachers simply give the explanation or translation in Chinese. The major appeal of these methods is their being the most direct and convenient ways to help students overcome the language barrier and make sense of what they read.
Another reason is due to teachers’ unfamiliarity with vocabulary teaching approaches, like how to draw on students’ personal experience, prior and world knowledge to decode words they meet the first time, how to make use of the pictorial and contextual clues given in the text to guess meanings of words they don’t know before, etc.
Time is always a factor that prevents teachers from engaging in more in-depth treatment of vocabulary. There seems to be so many aspects of language learning teachers need to take care of that they may not attach as much importance to teaching students important vocabulary building skills such as, word formation (e.g. affixation, compounding, etc.) or word association (e.g. synonyms, antonyms, collocation, etc.). |
Nobody will deny the fact that a large vocabulary opens up a wider range of reading materials. The more vocabulary students know, the better they are able to comprehend text. What needs investment of time and effort are effective ways to introduce vocabulary, to reactivate what students already know, to retain what they learn and to provide them with a chance to apply what they acquire. |
| c) |
Reading skills development |
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In the lessons observed, teachers often taught reading through questioning. The questions set aimed at helping students comprehend the text. However, teachers might not demonstrate explicitly how to use particular skills to find answers. |
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On the whole, teachers had no great difficulty in identifying what reading skills to teach in the selected units. However, there seemed to be a gap between identifying what to teach and how to go about doing it.
There could be variations in teachers’ interpretations and emphases according to their teaching styles and students’ different needs. |
A reading lesson involves different stages: Pre-reading, While-reading and Post-reading. Teachers have different roles to play and different purposes to achieve in each stage. Instead of setting aside a fixed duration of time for each stage, it is better for teachers to explore what different approaches and strategies they can employ based on the text nature. In order to teach a good reading lesson, teachers need to have a thorough understanding of the text (text-type, gist, message, etc.). In the process of doing that, teachers can have a better grasp of the potential teaching points, what reading skills to develop and how. |
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