Reading skills
We continue our series on skills books. This time we asked publishers to send us samples of books published in the past 12 months that are designed to help students develop their reading skills. These are our first impressions of the books we received.
The
first of the titles we looked at was Topics (Macmillan).
Now here's something different - a series of magazine-style books at five
language levels designed to develop teenage students' reading skills.
There are currently 10 titles in the Topics series. Each title
focuses on a specific factual topic such as people, places, animals and
sports. The topics are explored through a series of articles presented
in magazine format.
We were interested in the magazine-style format. The books are A4-size and look very attractive, making good use of colourful visuals. They are quite slim, but this is probably an advantage, as they don't look too overwhelming.
Looking at the lower-level titles you might think the level is quite high, but this is explained in the introduction to the teacher's books in which Susan Holden, the author of Topics, says the criterion for the levels is "language for recognition" rather than "language for production". She goes on to say that if students are interested in a topic, or attracted by the look of a specific article, they will often be able to read above the apparent language level.
This
is certainly something we have always believed at iT's Magazines, but
the main reason why real magazines are able to do this is because they
are topical and touch on what is happening in the reader's world today.
It is hard for a book to provide the same immediacy, but Topics
does provide an interesting range of topical themes.
The magazine-style format means the texts have the advantage of being short, varied and supported by good visuals. Each text has a word file glossary. It's nice to see British and American variations of vocabulary and spelling clearly labelled.
The texts are factually interesting and there are some good mini-projects such as drawing or describing your personal dream room. Another project is choosing a bridge, explaining its purpose and presenting your information on a poster. Some of the projects might be harder to set up than others. For example, some students might find this one a challenge: "Find a door that makes you happy or nervous. Draw it."
A word of warning: It's not immediately obvious how to use these books. There aren't many tasks or exercises on the page so it's hard to tell if the books are for students to read on their own or to use in class. So make sure you get a copy of the teacher's book that includes teaching notes and worksheets for the whole Topics series as well as tests and CDs with audio material.
The Topics book features a "Check it out" page that includes a list of related websites you can visit to expand on the book's themes and activities. In the current world of cross-curricular teaching and the CLIL classroom, Topics is definitely worth checking out.
We
looked at two books from Oxford University Press for students studying
American English. The first of these was Panorama: Building perspective
through reading. Book 1, by Kathleen F. Flynn with Daphne Mackey
and Latricia Trites, is for "beginning level" students and
is aimed at developing reading skills for academic success and at helping
students take on board topic-related lexis. The grading in texts has
been checked with the Fry Readability Scale.
Readability formulas were first developed in the United States in the 1920s. Readability, as the name suggests, describes the ease with which a document can be read, and readability tests are mathematical formulas designed to assess the suitability of books for students at a particular level or age. The tests were originally created to help teachers decide which books to adopt.
Fry published his readability graph in 1963. The graph was revised in 1977 and then became the most widely used formula. A hand-held calculator was developed to do the Fry test, and it is now incorporated in computer programs. Today readability formulas are usually based on one semantic factor (the difficulty of words) and one syntactic factor (the difficulty of sentences).
Panorama is a very well organised book, and it's always supremely clear what you're doing, where answers are, etc. An "Essential reading skills" section at the start sets down a systematic way of going about dealing with texts. The unit structure is predictable, but this predictability can have its positive side as students become familiar with the format and feel a growing confidence as they progress through the book.
The
second book we looked at from Oxford was Read and Reflect.
This book sets out to actively develop academic reading strategies through
the exploration of U.S. culture. It is aimed at college students as
well as beginner to low-intermediate students in intensive English programs
or in private language schools.
As with the other Oxford book, Read and Reflect has a fixed unit structure that is repeated throughout the book. There are eight thematic units, each tied to a cultural concept such as family, happiness and communication. Each unit has four texts that the publisher says are adapted from authentic sources. These texts didn't look particularly appealing at first glance, but on closer inspection they turned out to be interesting and motivating. There are pre-reading tasks that provide background information, and key vocabulary and reading strategies to enhance comprehension of the texts. The texts are then followed by processing activities. One of the key features of the book is "Read and Share," in which students read a text together and then read one of two parts of a related text. They then share and discuss what they have learnt with students who have read the same text and others who have read the different text. For a book that promotes silent reading, this is a nice way to encourage students to communicate with each other about what they have read.
Series editors Lori Howard and Jayme Adelson-Golstein have created a book that is ideal for teachers who want their students to develop their reading skills and learn more about life in the United States. There are pull-out sections with an answer key and teaching notes at the back of the book - a nice feature. Both Read and Reflect and Panorama come with an assessment CD with an ExamView Test Generator.
Thomson
has published a new edition of Active Skills for Reading,
a successful five-level series by Neil J. Anderson designed to develop
learners' reading comprehension and vocabulary skills. The inside cover
lists what Active stands for: A is for Activate prior knowledge;
C is for Cultivate vocabulary; T is for Think
about meaning; etc. This is a device the authors obviously enjoy
- they do it again on pages 8 and 9 with "Tips for Fluent Reading".
F is for ....
In general, the tips are good (find time to read every day, look for a good place to read, use clues in the text to make predictions, etc.) and some are quite intriguing. Our favourite is N for Notice how your eyes and head are moving. According to the book, "good readers use their eyes, and not their heads, when they read. Moving your head back and forth when reading will make you tired. Practice avoiding head movements by placing your elbows on the table and resting your head in your hands. Do you feel movement as you read? If you do, hold your head still as you read". You'll have to buy the book to find out what the SQ3R and KWL strategies are!
As you might have noticed from the extract above, this is another book for learners of American English. The material seems to be aimed at an undergraduate-student age group as topics include a student budget, choosing to study abroad, the age of adulthood and cell-phone etiquette. The texts are quite interesting - moblogging, Internet hoaxes, sign language, etc. - and they're not too highbrow or obscure, so it's safe ground for the average teen/young adult. There's also a variety of text types. Although they don't always feel very authentic, they are accessible.
Active Skills for Reading has 12 units. After every three units there's a review unit where the strategies are practised. The texts here relate directly to the texts in the previous units. The units have a fairly standard format: picture discussion, preparation for reading, reading comprehension and an "advice box" (which relates to the reading strategy practised in the comprehension), text and more comprehension. This is followed by critical thinking questions designed to provoke discussion in response to the text.
This logical sequence of activities can help students develop various reading skills and move away from the idea of reading a text to understand every word or identify grammar.
What we liked most about this book was the way it worked with vocabulary. After the comprehension exercises in each unit, there are some great and varied vocabulary exercises that really get students to think about the meaning of words in context and to develop and expand the vocabulary they meet in the text.
As with the two Oxford titles, Active Skills for Reading has been written principally for learners in specific markets, some of which are a long way from our Barcelona office! However, they are well worth looking at wherever you teach.
We
felt we were back on more familiar ground with Simon Haines' Advanced
Skills (Cambridge), a resource book for advanced-level skills
activities. The book has photocopiable worksheets that cover all four
skills.
The book is clear and extremely easy to use. It is divided into four sections, one for each skill, and the themes for each skill are linked. For example, there's a reading lesson on dreams, a listening lesson on dreams with a slightly different angle, speaking and writing ... so a teacher can select which bits to use to build into a lesson. Each skills lesson - whether it's reading, speaking, writing or listening - always has a language focus that makes the book easy to incorporate into a course. Apart from the photocopiable pages there are well-developed teacher's notes, tapescripts at the back of the book and model answers for the writing section.
We looked most closely at the nine-section part of the book dedicated to reading. Each section has three worksheets, which consist of an introductory lead-in/scene setting task, the main text with comprehension questions, and a language development section. This is all classic tried-and-tested material that may seem conservative to some but that will appeal to a wide range of students in today's international classroom.
You will find links to publishers mentioned in this article below.