Katharine Scott is a teacher trainer and educational materials developer with over 20 years’ experience writing English language textbooks. She’s co-author of the 蜜桃app Primary course - English Code and is based in Spain. Katharine outlines a number of practical ways you can help English language learners develop key literacy skills.?
Teachers at all stages of education often complain about their students’ reading skills. The students are literate. In other words, they can interpret the graphemes, or letters on the page, into words. But they struggle to identify the purpose of a text or to analyze it in a meaningful way. We could say that the students have poor literacy skills.
Literacy is a term used to describe an active, critical form of reading. Some of the skills of a critical reader include:
A crucial literacy skill involves discerning whether a text is factually true or not. A critical reader always checks new information against existing knowledge. As we read, we have an internal dialogue: Where does that information come from? That’s impossible because ….???
This skill is essential for understanding many different types of texts from newspaper articles to scientific research.?
All pieces of text have a main purpose. This may be entertainment, in the case of a story or persuasion, in the case of advertising. A critical reader will know how to identify the purpose of the text.?
In the classroom, different types of text require different responses from the students. It’s important, as students grow older, that they know how to read and respond appropriately to a piece of written information.
This is an essential skill for summarizing information or following instructions. It is also important when we transform written information into something else, like a chart.
In many ways, literacy is the key skill that underpins learning at all stages. This may seem like an exaggeration, but consider the importance of the four skills outlined above.
Many teachers and parents of early learners instinctively develop literacy skills before the children can even read.?
When we read a story out loud to a child, we often ask questions about the narrative as we turn the pages: What is going to happen next? How do you think …. feels? Why is …? ?
These questions set the foundations for literacy.?
Too often, the comprehension questions that teachers ask about a text are mechanical. They ask the student to “lift” the information out of the text.
"Once upon a time, there was an island in the sea. One day, people were working in the fields. The sun was shining and there was one cloud in the sky. The cloud was a strange shape and moving towards the island. Soon the cloud was very big. Then a small boy looked up."?
Taken from English Code, Unit 4, p. 62
Typical comprehension questions based on the text would be:
These questions do not really reflect on the meaning of the text and do not lead to a critical analysis. While these simple questions are a good checking mechanism, they don’t help develop literacy skills.
If we want to develop critical readers, we need to incorporate a critical analysis of reading texts into class work through a deep reading comprehension. We can organize the comprehension into three types.
Comprehension at “text level” is about exploring the meaning of individual words and phrases in a text. Examples for the text above could be:
Other text-level activities include:
Comprehension “between the lines” means speculating and making guesses with the information we already have from the text. This type of literacy activity often involves lots of questions and discussions with the students. You should encourage students to give good reasons for their opinions. An example for the text above could be:
Other “Between the lines” activities include:
Literacy activities are not only based on fiction. We need to help students be critical readers of all sorts of texts. The text below is factual and informative:
"Ice hockey players should be very good skaters. They always have good balance. They change direction very quickly and they shouldn't fall over. Players should also have fast reactions because the puck moves very quickly."?
Taken from English Code, Level 4, p. 96
“Between the lines” activities for this text could be:
Comprehension “behind the lines” is about the information we, the readers, already have. Our previous knowledge, our age, our social background and many other aspects change the way we understand and interpret a text.?
An example for the text above could be:
Sometimes a lack of socio-cultural knowledge can lead to misunderstanding. Look at the text below.?
Is the relationship between Ms Turner and Jack Roberts formal or informal?
73 Highlands Road Oxbo, Wisconsin 54552
April 11th
Dear Ms. Tamer,
Some people want to destroy the forest and build an airport. This forest is a habitat for many wolves. If they destroy the forest, the wolves will leave the forest. If the wolves leave the forest, there will be more rabbits. This won't be good for our forest.
Please build the airport in a different place. Please don't destroy the forest.
Kind regards, Jack Robers
Taken from English code, Level 4, unit 5, Writing Lab
If your students are unaware of the convention of using Dear to start a letter in English, they may not answer this question correctly.?
Other “Behind the lines” literacy activities include:
Examples:
From the activities above, it’s clear that a literacy scheme develops more than reading skills. As students speculate and give their opinions, they talk and listen to each other.?
A literacy scheme can also develop writing skills. The text analysis gives students a model to follow in their writing. In addition, a literacy scheme works on higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, deduction and summary.
Developing literacy skills so that students become active, critical readers should be a key part of educational programs at all ages. Literacy activities based on a reading text can be especially useful for the foreign language class.?
With literacy activities, we can encourage students:
More crucially, we are developing critical readers for the future.
English Code is a 7-level course for 7-12-year-olds, offering 5 hours or more of English study per week. Available in both American English and British English versions, it promotes hands-on creative learning, investigation, fun projects and experiments.?
The course comes with twelve plays chosen from the Bug Club library to help boost literacy skills. They have been specifically chosen because of their reading level and topic area. In addition, all Bug Club plays provide support for differentiation within the classroom because each character is matched to reading ability. This allows teachers to allocate the parts according to their students' abilities. Further teaching support for the plays is also included.?
Read our blog posts 'Reading strategies for primary and secondary' and 'How can teachers encourage parents to get kids reading at home?'.
今月は、 Global Scale of English (GSE) の立ち上げから10年を迎え、その道のりはいかがでしたか。この重要な節目を祝うにあたり、過去10年間に達成されたすべてのことを振り返り、世界中の言語学習、教育、評価の進歩に貢献した仕事に誇りを持つ時が来ました。
野心的なビジネスリーダーとして、あなたは効果的なコミュニケーションの重要性を理解しています。しかし、今日のグローバル化されたビジネス環境では、コミュニケーションは組織内の単なるやり取りをはるかに超えています。言語の壁を打ち破り、国際市場に参入することが必要であり、国際市場では、 英語 トレーニングが前例のない拡大と成長の鍵を握っています。ビジネスオーナーやリーダーにとって、グローバル市場をナビゲートするには、言語能力だけでなく、多様なビジネス慣行や規制を深く理解する必要があります。
世界的な傾向は明らかで、職場 英語 のスキルは必須です。 英語 世界で最も話されている言語であり、 しています。 英語 習熟度の向上は、コミュニケーションの道幅を広げ、ビジネスのあらゆる側面にプラスの影響を与えます。 英語 適性があれば、文化理解の深まり、生産性の向上、効率的なチームワーク、サービス部門からのポジティブな顧客体験の向上が期待でき、最終的には組織全体が合理化されます。
世界中の先生方、伝统的な学校教育と现代の职场の実践的な言语要件との间の言语教育のギャップを埋めるという重要な课题に直面しています。英语が国际ビジネスの言语として确立され、私たちの画期的な新しい研究に照らして、この格差に対処するための教育の必要性はかつてないほど重要になっています。
このブログ記事では、実社会での応用というレンズを通して 英語 を教えることがなぜ必要なのか、言語教育における現在の格差について私たちの研究が示すこと、そして 英語 教師がエンプロイアビリティに焦点を当てた授業を自分の 英語 教育カリキュラムに統合する方法について、いくつかのアイデアを探ります。
