Module 3: Reading

3.1 Developing reading skills

Imagine that teaching a student to read in a new language is like building a house. You cannot start off by
building the attic; you have to work your way up from the bottom. As we discuss how to help students
develop reading skills, we will start with the basics, move on to lower-level reading skills, such as
comprehension, and eventually discuss such higher-level reading skills as identifying purpose and intent.

3.1.1 Beginning to read

As you begin to approach reading with your students, it is important to remember that all of them may be
coming from different backgrounds and therefore may need different levels of instruction. For students
whose original language does not share the English alphabet, that is where you need to start. For students
from all native languages that share an alphabet with English, though, it is important that you go over the
way words are sounded out because even if the students are familiar with the English alphabet, the sounds
of this new language will likely be unique and somewhat foreign. 

Phonemic awareness: We discussed phonemes in detail in the previous module when we reviewed
linguistics, but it is important to also mention phonemic awareness here because it is such an important
part of the reading process. To help your students improve their phonemic awareness, you will expect
your students to be able identify, understand, and manipulate phonemes. Helping your students gain
phonemic awareness will give them the ability to break down and learn new words by themselves.

 Phonemes are unique to each language, so your students may have difficulty adjusting to learning
new ones. They will likely need help understanding the structure of new phonemes and
understanding how to sound them out. 

 Your students may naturally think of the phonemes in their native language, which could be in
direct contrast with English phonemes. If you are aware of phonemes in your students’ native
languages, you can use this to your advantage. Otherwise, it may be a good idea to try to train
them to avoid this kind of thinking.

 Making the process of improving phonemic awareness more fun and active is an effective way to
increase engagement and understanding. Try activities that turn phonemic awareness into a game
or require your students to get up, move around, and be active.

3.1.2 Beginning to read

Phonics: The concept behind phonics is that students can begin to see and understand patterns
in how phonemes relate to each other. Once they recognize these patterns, students can more
easily sound out words that are foreign to them. This can also help them understand meaning
when they begin to see patterns in root words, prefixes, and suffixes. English is notorious for
straying away from patterns, however, so while phonics can be a helpful tool, it certainly has its
shortcomings.

Learning the alphabet: Some of your students may not need to learn the alphabet because the
English alphabet is the same as their native language’s alphabet. However, if your students do
need to learn the alphabet because it is very different from how their native language is
structured, you cannot skip this step. This makes learning the alphabet difficult if you have a
heterogeneous group of students. You can combat this obstacle by differentiating your
instruction, which requires more preparation but provides more individualized instruction for your
students. We will discuss differentiation in more detail in a later module. 

Letter/sound correlation: We will discuss this in more detail later in the module, but whether or
not your students are familiar with the alphabet, learning the correlation between letters
(graphemes) and sounds (phonemes) is extremely important because sounds are unique to a
language. Many of these sounds and combinations of sounds will be difficult for your students to
get used to, so make sure you practice a lot.

Concepts of print: Some of the concepts of print we discuss here will be relevant to students
who come from different backgrounds, but some of these concepts will only be relevant to
students who are learning to read for the first time. It is possible to have a student who knows a
native language but has never learned to read. Your task is a little more difficult in these cases
because this adds another layer to what you need to accomplish.

 The English language is read from left to right.

 The English language is read from top to bottom.
 Letters and words convey messages.
 When you get to the end of a line (on the right), you need to return to the beginning of
the next line (on the left).
 The illustrations in a book correspond to the words written there.

Decoding: We will discuss decoding in much more detail in a future section, so we will only
briefly touch on it here. Once your students have built up their phonemic awareness, their
knowledge of the alphabet, and their letter/sound correlation, decoding helps them put everything
together to pronounce new words.

3.1.3 Advanced reading skills

Once your students have built up confidence with the basics of reading, your next step is to help
them develop proficiency in more advanced reading skills. 

Summarizing: Summarizing is an extremely important skill because it helps your students bridge

the gap between understanding the words they are reading and understanding the meaning that
those words are trying to convey. The skill of summarizing requires students to understand
enough of what they have read to explain what the text is about in their own words. To help your
students learn how to do this, you may want to layer your summary instruction, having them
read text in English but allowing them to summarize it in their native language. Eventually,
though, you should move on to having the students summarize in English. Scaffolding your
instruction like this will definitely help your students ease into true understanding of English
texts.

Finding the main idea, important facts, and supporting details: While summarizing usually
requires a student to understand the main idea of a text, it is still important to discuss this
separately. Once students have summarized the text, you can ask questions that get to the
main idea, for example, “What is the point that the writer is trying to make?” Such questions
allow students to move from summarizing the entire text to pinpointing what is important. The
next step can be to ask follow-up questions, such as “How do you know that is the point the
writer is trying to make?” That requires a strong understanding of not only the overall meaning
of the words in a text but also how the different ideas in a text relate to one another.

Sequencing: Sequencing asks students to take a step beyond summarizing the text. Whereas
summarizing the text concerns itself with simply understanding what happened, sequencing
requires students to label, categorize, and compartmentalize what happens in the text. Students
look at textual features to try to identify the important aspects of the text, for example, the
setting, the sequence of events, and the larger context of the text, identifying how all of the parts
of the text fit within the whole. 

Relating background knowledge: It is always helpful when working with students who are
trying to learn a new language that you relate what they are learning to their background
knowledge. There are a couple of different ways that you can do this. As we mentioned earlier,
you can use cognates and your students’ native phonemes to help them understand English
root words and sounds. Another way is to help your students connect thematically to the text,
asking them to try to relate what is going on in the text to personal experiences they have had.
While this won’t necessarily directly help them learn the language, it will help them make a
stronger connection with it and therefore make it more accessible.

3.1.4 Advanced reading skills

Making inferences: Once your students begin improving in their ability to understand English
text, the next step is to help them improve their ability to make inferences. Making inferences
means reading between the lines and accessing meaning that is not explicitly stated. For
example, if a man were to walk into the room, closing an umbrella, you would infer that it was
raining outside. No one specifically told you that it was raining, but you were able to use context
clues to draw that conclusion. Once students are more comfortable understanding what they
read, working on their inferential thinking will help them learn how to see the meaning in a text
that is not explicitly stated.

Drawing conclusions: This idea goes hand-in-hand with inferential thinking. To be able to

accurately draw a conclusion, a student needs to be able to understand the literal meaning of a
text and how that literal meaning can lead to a conclusion.

Comparing and contrasting: Comparing and contrasting is the next step along the line of
textual analysis. To compare and contrast two texts, a reader needs to understand the purpose of
the text as well as the strategies that a writer uses to convey meaning. This skill can be extremely
useful, as it easily lends itself to having students identify which text is more effective. 

Distinguishing between fact and opinion: As part of the evaluative process of reading,
distinguishing between what is fact and what is opinion can be an incredibly nuanced task. It
requires your students to really understand what the text is saying to evaluate whether the text is
based on opinion or fact. This can be difficult, especially when the text is opinionated, with a
speaker who presents his or her opinions as fact. 

Self-questioning: As your students get more comfortable with reading texts on their own, it is
time to get them into the habit of reading actively. People tend to think of reading as a passive
activity because it is done quietly, but to really understand a text, you need to constantly question
what is going on. Having your students use annotations to express their self-questioning will help
them get into the habit of asking questions as they read. This is also helpful because they can go
back to the text they have previously read and easily point out the important information. 

Problem solving: While problem solving is a cognitive skill, asking our students to solve
problems in English can be complicated even for students who are natural problem solvers.
Problem solving requires true comprehension, understanding beyond the explicit, and the ability
to think critically while working with a foreign language. 

3.2 Auditory and visual discrimination

Both auditory and visual discrimination refer to our ability to perceive and distinguish between
different elements. The best way to understand these two concepts is by looking at each one
individually.

3.2.1    Auditory discrimination

Auditory discrimination refers to our brain’s ability to organize and categorize sounds, thereby
allowing us to make meaning of what we hear. While auditory refers to sounds and reading is
typically done silently, the ability to distinguish between different sounds (phonemes) can affect
our ability to sound out and identify vocabulary. The inability to effectively access one’s auditory
discrimination can impair someone’s reading tremendously, especially when students are asked
to read out loud.  If someone has trouble with auditory discrimination, they will have trouble:

 Understanding phonemes and how they are different. This is especially true with
phonemes that are similar, as we can see in the words “forty” and “fourteen.” The subtle
changes in the structure of these words may be difficult for someone who has poor
auditory discrimination to perceive.

 Learning to read. As we have already discussed, many of the early reading strategies
rely heavily on a student’s ability to understand and distinguish between different
sounds. This can add an extra hurdle for a new English language learner.

 Sometimes, struggles with auditory discrimination can affect students’ ability to focus on
what they are reading because they have difficulty blocking out background noise.

 Just because someone suffers from an auditory discrimination disorder, however, does not
mean they cannot learn a new language. Such a disorder simply provides a surmountable
obstacle on the path to success.