warming up for readings

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DILM 2002

Warming-up for reading: how can we help studentsdevelop an effective approach to reading?

Catherine Blundell

[email protected]

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Contents

1.0 Introduction ...................................................................................... 3

2.0 Part One - Theory

2.1 What are pre-reading activities?....................................................... 42.2 Why use pre-reading activities? ....................................................... 5

3.0 Theoretical Approaches3.1 Schema Theory ............................................................................... 73.2 Top-down approach.......................................................................... 103.3 Bottom-up approach ........................................................................ 113.4 The Interactive Approach ................................................................. 123.5 Cognitive & Meta-cognitive strategies ............................................. 13

4.0 Part Two4.1 Sample lesson ................................................................................. 17

5.0 Conclusion ....................................................................................... 23

6.0 Bibliography ..................................................................................... 24

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1.0 Introduction

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every ESL reading comprehension must be in wantof a warm-up activity.

It seems that, thanks to its almost universal presence in course books and on teacher-training

courses, the warm-up activity or pre-reading task has become a confirmed feature of every

EFL lesson. However, experiences in the classroom have shown me that it is not always the

useful tool it is supposed to be. Unsuitable activities can hinder learner comprehension rather

than helping it. In this paper I intend to look at the issues surrounding this subject.

In Part One, I will be looking at the theory behind pre-reading tasks; what are they exactly

and why do we use them? What schools of thought have influenced them? What effect has

recent research had on their use in course books and in official examinations? In Part Two, I

will give an example of how I have used pre-reading activities in the classroom and look at

how we can evaluate their success.

For the purposes of this paper, I shall only be looking at the activities which students

undertake prior to reading a text. Thus, cognitive skills which form part of the actual reading

process such as skimming and scanning, though important, will not be dealt with here

although I will be looking at the use of meta-cognitive skills such as the choice of reading

techniques. In addition, I will not be looking into the issues surrounding the choice of material

to read (and whether it is authentic or not) nor will I be examining post-reading activities.

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PART ONE

2.1 What are pre-reading activities?

Pre-reading activities (sometimes known as warm-up activities) are any types of activities

which students engage in as preparation for a reading task. The activities proposed may vary

greatly in their length and in the amount of student input needed to complete them. They

could require a low-level of student interaction (e.g. showing a photograph or picture to aid

understanding of the context) or they could involve using other skills and require more student

input (e.g asking students to complete a class survey about a relevant topic). The type of pre-

reading activity proposed will depend largely on the type of text to follow, the types of learners

who are doing the task and the aim of the pre-reading task. Williams1 gives the following

reasons for using pre-reading activities with learners:

• To stimulate interest in the text:

We are usually more interested in what we are going to read if we already have an

idea of what the text is going to be about. Furthermore, research shows that when we are

asked to predict what is going to happen in a text this facilitates our comprehension when we

actually read it. Activities that aid this process of "psychological sensitising" (see Urquhart &

Weir2) include; showing learners a visual stimulus, playing music or speech, asking learners

what they know about a particular topic, asking them about a situation in their own experience

(e.g. related to their culture/country) before reading about a similar situation in a different

cultural context.

• To give a reason for reading.

Again, this is related to motivation. In our mother-tongue we do not read unless we

have a reason for doing so. This reason could be pleasure (e.g. reading a novel), it could be

to find out how to do something (e.g. reading the instructions on a packet of custard) or it

1 Williams, E. Reading in the Language Classroom. London: Macmillan, 1984.(p37)

2 Urquhart, Sandy, and Cyril Weir. Reading in a Second Language: Process, Product and Practice. New York:Addison Wesley Longman Ltd, 1998. (p185)

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could be to look for something specific (e.g. looking up a number in the telephone directory).

None of us read in a vacuum and learners also need a reason to read if they are to be

genuinely motivated. One of the ways in which a pre-reading activity can provide a "reason

to read" is by asking questions about the text (or getting learners to set their own questions

according to their own interest in the text). Another way would be to create an "information

gap" activity where students have different information and have to read and exchange

information to complete a task.

• To prepare the reader for the language of the text.

Whilst it is not necessary (nor even desirable!) that the learner understands all the

language presented in the reading text, too much unknown language can present the learner

with a heavy cognitive load and inhibit comprehension. To avoid this, pre-reading activities

can be used to prepare the reader for the language in the text. Such exercises might include

pre-teaching vocabulary by presenting key-words in a familiar context or contrasting them

with known antonyms and introducing new words through hyponymy or meronymy. They

might also be used to pre-teach a grammar point which is needed to fully the comprehend the

text. However, such activities are not only limited to preparing the learner for the grammar or

vocabulary: they might also involve a pragmatic approach such as helping learners to

recognise what social context they are dealing with.

2.2 Why include pre-reading activities in the classroom?

As a starting point I want to look at the reasons why pre-reading activities have been almost

universally adopted in EFL teaching. A quick look through the course books on the market

today demonstrate that it has become the norm to include pre-reading activities before

working on any piece of a text which is more than a couple of paragraphs long. These

activities are either presented directly to the learners or suggested to the teacher in the

accompanying handbook. However, this has not always been the case and this phenomenon

can probably be interpreted as one of the results of the so-called communicative teaching

approach. The ideas behind this approach can be said to have permeated, to a greater or

lesser extent, almost all areas of English language teaching over almost the last three

decades.

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It could be argued that language teachers really have no place to be teaching reading skills to

students who, in the majority of cases, are already proficient readers in their first language

(L1). It is the teacher's role to teach the foreign language (L2) itself and not the mechanics of

the reading process. There are two basic problems with this argument. Firstly, it is not

necessarily true that language learners are proficient at reading in their L1. By proficient, I do

not mean simply literate. Many adult students will not have been taught reading skills since

they were at school (if then) and although they may cope very well with the type of material

they read on a daily basis, they may lack the meta-cognitive skills needed to deal with

unfamiliar tasks. This is particularly important if they are studying for a language exam which

necessitates a particular approach to reading. Urquhart and Weir3 highlight the dangers of a

non-interventionist approach to reading; although students who can already read well will

probably make progress without being taught explicit reading skills, the students who lack

those skills will gradually fall behind. Secondly, reading in L2 is not, at least during the

learning stage, exactly the same as reading in L1 precisely because the learner does not

have the same relationship with the foreign language that he or she has with L1. By

definition, the reader is not as comfortable with a text in a foreign language and this can raise

levels of anxiety and slow-down reading speed. It has been demonstrated that most people

read text several words at a time (in 'chunks') without moving their eyes. Slower readers tend

to read just one word at a time because they take longer to process each word. They have to

add its meaning to each previous word. They also have a tendency to 'back-skip'; that is

reread words and letters to try and understand them better. As a result, they find reading

more tiring and tend to lose concentration more easily.

According to Ellis & Sinclair4, "90% of back-skipping is done only because the reader is

anxious and it is unnecessary for understanding". Once a learner begins to read in this way it

can become a vicious circle; reading slowly and back-skipping leads to frustration and

decreased language acquisition which, in turn, leads to reading even more slowly and so the


4 Ellis, G. and Sinclair, B. Learning to Learn English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. (p82)

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chain continues. Thus, I would suggest adding another reason for teaching pre-reading

activities to learners to those suggested by Williams on page 4:

• To help anxious learners approach reading in an 'anxiety-free' way and thus encourage

faster reading and, eventually, increased automaticity.

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3.0 Key Theoretical Approaches

The pre-reading activities proposed in EFL course books have been influenced by theories

relating to how we read and learn to read. Some of the most important of these theories are

examined here.

3.1 Schema theory

Many of the pre-reading activities suggested in course books today are based at least

partially on the concept of Schema theory which has been around in one form or another

since the 1920s but has enjoyed a particular boom since the late 1970s with the gradual

espousal of communicative approaches to language teaching and a move away from the

more rigid grammar-translation approach. As McDonough and Shaw5 point out, there has

been a significant change in the importance given to the role of the reader over the last few

decades. Whereas the reader was traditionally seen as an 'empty vessel' who passively

receives information from a given text, it is now clear that the reader takes a much more

active role in the reading process. Each reader will interact with the text in his own way,

according to his own intelligence, cultural awareness and general knowledge.

This knowledge is, according to the theory, based on structures (schemata) that we all hold in

our memories. So we can say that 'the knowledge that we have of the world is organized into

interrelated patterns based on our previous knowledge and experience' (McDonough and

Shaw6). In practice this means that when we read a text, our comprehension is aided and

influenced by the memories we have of other experiences stored in our "schemata". By

activating our knowledge of the "known" it will be easier for us to understand the "unknown".

For example, if I read the weather report in an unfamiliar language, I may still be able to

understand something because I will use my "weather report schema" to predict what the

unfamiliar content is about.

5 McDonough, Jo, and Christopher Shaw. Materials and Methods in ELT - A Teacher's Guide. Oxford: BlackwellPublishers Ltd, 1993.

6 idem p107

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Schema theory is not just related to the content of text however. Fillmore7 divides our

schematic knowledge into three main areas: content, genre and text. A text schemata

includes knowledge of a syntactic and grammatical nature whereas a genre schemata

enables the student to recognise the type of text. For example; we might use our genre

schemata to recognise that a story which begins "Once upon a time..." is a fairy tale and thus

is probably going to end with "and they all lived happily ever after".

According to Widmayer8, schema must be activated for comprehension to occur. This does

not mean that we have to share the same schemata as the author, that would be impossible;

after all we all bring our own life experiences to the reading of a text. We must, however, be

able to relate it in some way to our own knowledge of the world (even if we only acknowledge

that it is very different from what we know) in order to comprehend it in any meaningful way.

In EFL textbooks, learners are often asked to activate their personal schemata by thinking of

a personal experience before reading a text. For example;

7 cited in Kramsch, Claire. Context and Culture in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

8 Widmayer, Sharon Alayne, "Schema Theory: An Introduction". George Mason University InstructionalTechnology Program.

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From Clockwise - upper-intermediate, Jon Naunton, OUP.

In this example, learners are encouraged to think of their own memories of childhood before

reading about Joss Ackland's childhood. This exercise has a dual purpose; it can elicit useful

vocabulary (or pre-teach it) as well as stimulate interest in the text.

Problems can arise if students schemata differ greatly from the author's. Various studies

(Price and Driscoll 19979, Bartlett 193210) have shown that a background knowledge of a

topic or format can greatly improve comprehension. Consequently, if we are unfamiliar with

the author's cultural schemata, comprehension can be far more difficult. This is why novels

translated into a language are often more difficult to understand. Although the language itself

may not be a problem we may lack the necessary background knowledge to make sense of it

which may result in us "misunderstand[ing] the topic, the tone, the genre, or the purpose of

the text, or the intentions, goals, and plans of the characters in a fictional text"11 . This is both

9 Cited in Widmayer, Sharon Alayne, "Schema Theory: An Introduction". George Mason University InstructionalTechnology Program.10 Cited in McDonough, Jo, and Christopher Shaw. Materials and Methods in ELT - A Teacher's Guide. Oxford:Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1993.

11 Kramsch, Claire. Context and Culture in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. (p124)

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true of longer fictional texts and informative texts. When I first came to Italy and consulted the

railway timetable I found the words 'feriale' and 'festivo'. Whilst my knowledge of Italian

vocabulary (and my dictionary) tells me that 'feriale' means weekday, my British cultural

knowledge tells me that weekdays are from Monday to Friday. I later learnt that in Italy

weekdays, at least on railway timetables, include Saturday.

If warm-up activities use material which is completely unfamiliar to students and which is not

present in any of their schemata then they can leave the student feeling decidedly cold. In the

highly-successful EFL course book: Language In Use - pre-intermediate there is a warm-up

activity where students are invited to "brainstorm" what they know about the aviationist

Charles Lindbergh. Unfortunately, my students seem to know very little about him or what

they do know does not necessarily help them with the reading task. It can be disheartening

for students to feel that they know nothing before even starting the exercise!

So, although schemata can facilitate the comprehension of incoming information, they can

also hinder it by providing culturally-specific models which are not universally recognised.

Although it would be impossible to always predict what students will or will not find useful,

course designers are now (when faced with a growing global market) making more of an

effort to ensure that coursebooks are not anglo-centric in design. This may not seem

especially important when we are dealing with classroom materials. After all, it is the teacher

who knows the students well and who is in the best position to make an informed choice

about which course book activities to use, adapt or skip entirely. However, this knowledge is

far more important when we look at the field of exam preparation. Examination designers

must be especially careful to create exams which test the candidates' language proficiency

rather than cultural knowledge and that do not discriminate against certain cultural groups.

Another potential problem of the use of schema theory, is supplying the student with too much

information during the pre-reading activity and leaving the student with nothing to discover.

This is especially a risk if we are dealing with a literary text which invites a personal response.

Kramsch comments:

"Some teachers advocate giving [background information] beforehand, arguing that

readers cannot understand what they read unless they can predict meanings based on

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global schemata. Others feel that they will develop the appropriate schemata precisely

through the process of reading". 12

As well as giving students the chance to develop their own schemata, their is a strong

argument for allowing students space to interpret a text as it is more motivating then having

an interpretation already given.

Care should be taken to ensure that pre-reading activities stimulate interest and activate

relevant schemata without imposing a rigid world knowledge. Duff and Maley13 comment that

"lecturers in India used often to observe that Wordsworth's Daffodils could not be appreciated

by Indian students because they had no direct experience of this exotic bloom". Clearly this is

rather ridiculous. One of the key reasons for reading is to experience the unknown and we do

not want to over explain new concepts to our students.

3.2 Top-down approach

The use of schema theory in materials design is inevitable tied up with the top-down or

psycholinguistic approach to reading. This approach first came to the forefront with research

undertaken into first language reading research. One of the researchers in this field,

Goodman, examined what is now known as 'miscue analysis' . If we misread the word

"bunny" as "rabbit" then obviously we have already processed it mentally. It is not the same

as misreading "bunny" as "funny" which would seem to be just "a slip of the eye". For

Goodman the process of reading is a "psychological guessing game". It is not about reading

each grapheme or word separately and then arriving at a meaning. Reading involves

prediction which we arrive at both through our knowledge or schemata but also through the

way that we process language by looking at larger units of meaning. This can be seen in the

following example from Anne Tyler's novel Earthly Possessions. The narrator has been taken

hostage by a bank robber and is being driven across the countryside.

"We came to one of those city-type service stations, all fluorescent lights, scroungy blue-

12 Kramsch (1993) p125

13 Duff, Alan, and Alan Maley. Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. (p7)

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jeaned boy pumping gas, German shepherd in the plate glass window. Jake Simms walked

slowly and kept looking it over, I didn't know what for. Then he said, "This'll do". He cut in

across the concrete, pushing me ahead of him. "I got to go to the john, he said. "Got some

other things to do besides. Ask the boy for the keys." "

By processing larger units of meaning at a time, I realise that a "German shepherd" is a dog

rather than a European agricultural worker. My schemata, or my knowledge of American

culture, also tell me that the "john" is a toilet rather than a name. I can also infer that the

"keys" are to open the door to the "john". If I were to read each grapheme separately this

passage would be virtually impossible to understand. Thus we can see the act of reading as a

form of reconstruction of a possible meaning rather than a decoding of a set form.

Although warm-up activities incorporating both these types of approach undoubtedly can help

students comprehend a written text, they also have their limitations. Schemata can help

learners remember what they already know and they can help them make informed guesses

about new material. Sometimes, however, it is necessary to go back to basics and approach

new material from the bottom-up.

3.3 The Bottom-up Approach

At the other end of the scale to schema theory we find what is often called the 'bottom-up'

approach. Most of us probably first encountered this when we were at primary school, or

earlier, when we first learnt to read in L1. As its name suggests, it is a text-driven approach

which starts from the very basics of reading; recognising the graphemes and matching them

with their relevant phonemes. These are then linked together to form words which are

pronounced to arrive at the meaning. Thus the symbol 'c' is recognised as the letter which is

pronounced 'ca' . If I add the graphemes 'a' and 't' I have 'cat'.

Often, little attention is paid to this process as it is presumed that the reader who can already

read in L1 can also read in L2 (unless we are dealing with a language with a different

alphabet system to the student's L1). This is not necessarily true especially if we are dealing

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with a language like English where the letters are pronounced differently to many other

European languages (e.g. ch =\ ch \ in English "church" ch = \ k \ in Italian "che").

Correctly 'pronouncing' the written word (even if it is only silently whilst reading) can help

learners relate it to words that they may already know. At a more advanced level, this type of

approach can help students to interpret a text by enabling them to recognise the function of a

word within a text according to its structure; its prefix or suffix for example. Teaching students

to approach a text from the bottom-up will ultimately allow them to be more independent and

successful readers and should not be neglected.

Perhaps not surprisingly it is now widely recognised that when we read we tend to employ a

variety of strategies to aid comprehension. Thus we can add to our list of approaches, the

interactive approach.

3.4 The Interactive Approach

Not even the most detailed schemata will enable me to read Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the

d'Urbervilles" if I am unable to decipher the words on the page or if the vocabulary used is

unknown to me. On the other hand, I may, at a basic level, be able to understand the

complete text but if I know nothing of nineteenth century rural life in Wessex then I am

probably not goint to fully appreciate the novel's meaning.

There is considerable evidence to suggest that "the strong use of one strategy can

compensate for weakness in another" (Stanovich, 1980)14. So, if our pre-reading strategies

concentrate on only one approach then we may be putting students at a disadvantage. In

addition, it is now clear that not all students have the same way of assimilating and

comprehending text and it would seem that including a variety of exercises would be the best

way to include all types of learners.

14 Cited in Tomlinson, Brian, ed. Materials Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1998.

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3.5 Cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies

The approaches outlined above all deal with preparation for reading a single text.

Increasingly however, teachers are being encouraged to train learners to make a decision on

which text to read. Most teachers are now familiar with the idea of cognitive reading

strategies. These can perhaps be best described as the mental processes that we go through

whilst reading such as skimming a text for gist or scanning a text to identify specific

information. Meta-cognitive strategies are, as defined by Urquhart and Weir15 "more

concerned with thinking about the reading experience itself". Although there is admittedly

sometimes a crossover between cognitive and meta-cognitive activities there increasing

presence in a number of pre-reading activities in ELT text books means that they cannot be

ignored.

Such activities may be seen in the pre-reading stage as encouraging the reader to choose the

right approach to the text; is extensive or intensive reading required? what objectives should

the reader have? what are the potential difficulties of the text? Although the successful

application of such techniques would be almost impossible to assess in a test, their inclusion

in class can be seen as part of a wider move which puts greater importance on learner-

autonomy. The idea is that if students can be taught to be independent of the teacher and

approach reading in an autonomous and interactive fashion then this can only be good for

their future language development.

The development of efficient meta-cognitive strategies is of particular importance when we

are dealing with reading within an academic context. Increasingly these sorts of exercise are

being included in textbooks designed for English for Academic Purposes where being able to

identify what (and what not) to read can save the reader a good deal of time and effort.

Urquhart and Weir16 give the following examples of useful pre-reading activities to be used in


16 idem. (p184)

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an EAP context:

• thinking about the title

• checking the edition and date of publication

• reading the table of contents quickly

• reading appendices quickly

• reading indices quickly

• reading the abstract carefully

• reading the preface, the foreword and the blurb carefully

In my own pre-reading activities in Part Two, I shall be looking at how these sort of activities

can be used effectively with material from the internet.

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PART TWO

4.1 Sample Lesson - Internet treasure hunt / web quest

With the increasing availability of computers in the classroom it has never been easier to

introduce students to authentic reading texts. Using texts taken from the internet can be very

stimulating for students as they know they are dealing with material which is current and not

written specifically for English learners. On the other hand, this can cause problems. It can

be difficult to structure a lesson which is based on the internet. Students who are already

used to searching the web may begin to 'surf off' and look at sites which are nothing to do

with the set task. Students who have never used the net before can find it intimidating. For

this reason, in this activity I encourage students to work in groups so that they can help each

other and decide together what they want to look at and there is less chance of them not

completing the task. Although it is possible to use web quests which have already been

created (see http://webquest.sdsu.edu/) here, I get the students to create their own web quest

as I have found that this also helps to get them more interested in the activity.

Another problem to be faced is the unpredictability of the language. A lot of the language

used on the internet is not grammatically correct and, precisely for this reason, I have heard it

argued that it is not a good idea to expose students to it, especially at a lower level of

competence. Personally, I do not think this is important. If students are encouraged to

compare their own interlanguage with the examples they find on the internet then this can

only have a positive effect on their own language development and capacity for self-

monitoring and growth. In addition to this, we cannot protect our students from the reality of

the language in use. If they want to use the language to communicate in the real world then

they will always come up against this problem but, in my opinion, the benefits of engaging in

an authentic task far outweigh the perceived "dangers" of this type of activity.

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Aims of lesson

According to the Common European Framework of References for Languages17 students at

B1 level should have the following competences:

[They] "can collate short pieces of information from several sources and summarise them for

somebody else.

[They] can paraphrase short written passages in a simple fashion, using the original text

wording and ordering".

Travel is also suggested as one of the lexical areas which should be taught. Thus the aim of

this lesson is to get students to search for information on the internet in order to plan a trip

abroad. They then have to collate the information and use it to prepare a presentation to give

to their peers.

Pre-reading activities proposed

• Learning the appropriate meta-language needed for surfing the internet

As the web quest will be carried out in English, I usually pre-teach the technical (and not so

technical) terms used for the internet (i.e. surf, home page, server, search engine, scroll, link).

Although many of these words are also used in Italian, many students do not understand their

literal meaning and thus find it difficult to remember them. It can be helpful at this stage to

provide pictures of the activities or objects (e.g. a scroll, a man surfing) and ensure that

students understand them in a literal context before using them metaphorically.

• Activating the students' schemata and giving them a reason for reading.

I have, in the past, prepared a questionnaire for students with a list of questions to which they

have to find the answer. However, I found this unsatisfactory as it did not really motivate

them. I now carry out the activity by giving each group of students a set of guidelines:

17 Common European Framework of References for Languages: learning, teaching and assessment (p96)

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1. They must decide together where they want to go on holiday.

2. They must write a list of questions which they need to know in order to plan a

holiday together.

3. They must surf the web, using a variety of sites in order to find the answers.

4. They must only use web pages written in English.

5. They have a set time in which to finish the internet-based part of the task

(usually between 30 to 50 minutes).

Students doing this task have written a wide variety of questions including:

- How can I get to [the country chosen] from Forlì?

- What language is spoken in [the country chosen] and how can I say Good Morning, Please

and Thank You in that language?

- What local festivals can I visit in [the country chosen]?

- Is it dangerous to travel in [the country chosen]?

- What can I visit in [the country chosen]?

As well as motivating the students to read in order to gather information that they are

interested in, it has the advantage of reminding (or teaching) students of key words that they

will need to complete the task e.g. accommodation, weather, tourist, souvenir, visa etc.

• Making students more aware of the sort of skills they should be using to effectively

complete the task.

By this I mean that students should be aware that often they will be scanning a large amount

of text, looking for specific information. The pre-reading activities suggested by Urquhart and

Weir on p16 can be adapted for an internet context. For example, if students use an internet

search engine such as Google to look for information about accommodation in Athens then

they will obtain the information below:

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Using the search words "accommodation" and "Athens" has brought up 94,500 possible

internet sites to consult. Clearly intensive reading is not an option here. Students must decide

which sites are worth investigating further.

One way of doing this is by looking at the website address or URL. In this case a URL which

ends in .gr is based in Greece and may contain more local information. A URL which finished

with .com is a commercial enterprise. Students should be aware that they are dealing with

information from all around the world so they should check that they are referring to the same

geographical area. For example, if you search using the key words "Venice" and "hostel", the

first two sites listed by Google refer to Venice, Italy whereas the third site is about Venice,

California.

They should also be aware that there is a difference between official sites and personal sites

as regards the reliability of the information given.

Once students have decided which sites they want to visit then they also have to decide what

to look at on the page itself. Here is one of the pages that came up from the search using the

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key words "Athens" and "accommodation".

The student can easily feel overwhelmed with the amount of information which is presented.

Banner adverts, pop-ups, drop-down menus and scrolling text all clamour for attention and it

is not necessary (or desirable) to read everything. At this stage it is useful to work on

identifying the most important features of the page. Without sufficient preparation, this sort of

non-linear reading task can easily result in wasted time and confusion.

For this reason, in the pre-reading stage I ask my students to think about the following

variables in order to help them preview material:

• What sort of site am I dealing with? Is it commercial (i.e. is it trying to sell me

something)? Is it a personal web site? Is it an official source of information? (i.e. a

government web site or a tourist board's web site)

• What key words have been selected from the search engine? Do they match my

criteria?

• Is the site easy to read and to navigate? (Life is too short to read badly presented

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material i.e. blue print on a red background!)

• Does the web site have a search engine of its own or a clear menu so I can find

exactly what I'm looking for?

• Has the site been updated regularly or am I dealing with a 'dead' site which is probably

out of date and with links which no longer function?

• Does the site take long to load? Is it possible to visualise it without frames or graphics

to save time?

Whilst I have not scientifically evaluated the efficacy of this pre-reading approach it would

seem that by spending time on these sort of meta-cognitive strategies, students become

more autonomous and more proficient readers in this context.

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5.0 Conclusion

It seems that the use of pre-reading activities have become a consolidated feature of EFL

teaching and it is now accepted that the skill of reading in a foreign language is not

necessarily immediately transferable from learners' L1 to L2. Learners can be helped to

comprehend written text through the use of pre-reading activities which vary in approach and

aim.

The influence of schema theory is definitely seen in the design of many published pre-reading

activities and has also been championed in the much-quoted Common European Framework

of References for Languages:

Successful task accomplishment may be facilitated by the prior activation of the

learner's competences, for example, in the initial problem-posing or goal-setting phase

of a task by providing or raising awareness of necessary linguistic elements, by

drawing on prior knowledge and experience to activate appropriate schemata, and by

encouraging task planning or rehearsal. In this way the processing load during task

execution and monitoring and the learner's attention is freer to deal with any

unexpected content and/or form-related problems that may arise, thereby increasing

the likelihood of successful task completion in both quantitative and qualitative terms.18

Teachers and EFL authors should not just rely on one type of approach to pre-reading as

different types of learner as well as different types of text can require a different type of warm-

up exercise. The use of new technologies further complicates matters as the types of skills

used to read a hypertext are not identical to those used to read a traditional linear text.

One of the most important aims of the pre-reading activity is that it should encourage the

learner to make his own decisions as regards the best way to approach an unfamiliar text in a

foreign language. It is only by encouraging learner autonomy that we can really prepare our

students for the reality of using English as a communicative tool.

24

6.0 Bibliography

Books and Periodicals

Duff, Alan, and Alan Maley. Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Ellis, G. and Sinclair, B. Learning to Learn English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1989.

Kramsch, Claire. Context and Culture in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1993.

Lightbown, Patsy, and Nina Spada. How Languages are Learned. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1993.

Lynch, Tony. Communication in the Language Classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press,1996.

McDonough, Jo, and Christopher Shaw. Materials and Methods in ELT - A Teacher's Guide.Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1993.

Nunan, David. Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1989.

Richards, Jack C. and Theodore S. Rodgers. Approaches and Methods in LanguageTeaching: a description and analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Tomlinson, Brian, ed. Materials Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1998.

Urquhart, Sandy, and Cyril Weir. Reading in a Second Language: Process, Product andPractice. New York: Addison Wesley Longman Ltd, 1998.

Wallace, Catherine. Reading. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Williams, E. Reading in the Language Classroom. London: Macmillan, 1984.

18 Common European Framework of References for Languages: learning, teaching and assessment (p158)

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On-line resources

Common European Framework of References for Languages: learning, teaching andassessment. Consulted on 16 September 2002 athttp://culture2.coe.int/portfolio/documents/0521803136txt.pdf

Kang, Yunkyoung. "A Review of Carrell, Patricia L. Content and Formal Schemata in ESLReading". Lore: Rhetoric, Writing, Culture 2:1 March 2002 (p39-42). Consulted on 16September 2002 at http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/drwswebb/lore/2_1/08_kang.pdf

Stott, Nigel. "Helping ESL Students Become Better Readers: Schema Theory Applicationsand Limitations". The Internet TESL Journal. Vol. VII, No. 11, November 2001 (p1-6).consulted on 16 September 2002 at http://iteslj.org/Articles/Stott-Schema.html

Widmayer, Sharon Alayne, "Schema Theory: An Introduction". George Mason UniversityInstructional Technology Program. Consulted on 16 September 2002 athttp://chd.gse.gmu.edu/immersion/knowledgebase/strategies/cognitivism/SchemaTheory.htm

warming up for readings

Documents