EFL METHODOLOGY

An Essay of a Reading Report

TEACHING READING

Alma Prisilya
1302569

SCHOOL OF POST GRADUATE STUDY

INDONESIA UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION
2013 / 2014
 CHAPTER REPORT PRESENTATION
EFL Methodology

Presenter’s Name : ALMA PRISILYA

Student’s ID : 1302569
Topic : TEACHING READING
Date : October 25, 2013

Criterion
Aspects Comments Rater’s Score
Score and Description
9
The inclusion of other
resources as well as
Content
research findings or
illustration (9)
Without enrichment (7)

5
Readability of the media
Media
Not too wordy
Effectiveness of using it

4
Limited mistakes/errors.
Language: (4)
Grammar Several mistakes (3)
Many mistakes (2)
Too many mistakes (1)

4
Pronunciation Several mistakes in
pronouncing words.

6
The concept was easily
understood by the floor.
Encoding
The presenter show his/her
knowledge about the topic
discussed.
6
The presenter can cope
Decoding
with the questions from
the floor.
6
During the presentation,
Presentation the presenter make used of
Technique the media as her/his
guidelines without reading
the transparencies.
Total Score 40:10 = 4.0 (A)

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 TEACHING READING
An Essay of a Reading Report EFL Methodology
Chapter 17: The Practice of English Language Teaching by Jeremy Harmer (2007:283-302)
Alma Prisilya (1302569)
alma.prisilya.s.pd@student.upi.edu

INTRODUCTION
Reading becomes everyone‟s needs right now. We read for some reasons; for academic,
for pleasure, for jobs (career development) and so on. We can feel someone‟s feeling just
by reading. Reading novel, for instance, we can feel the characters‟. We can master things
by reading; we have coursebook, guide book, etc. Reading helps us to be better in
mastering language, too. We can learn formal and informal language from reading
materials; it could enrich our vocabularies. Someone who reads regularly is different to
someone who read rarely in their writing. The more we read we develop our writing skill at
the same time. Teaching reading is important, because there are some clues to make
reading effective. This report is going to discuss how to teach reading to every level; Do‟s
and Don‟ts.

A. Summary of The Topic

Teaching language skills is important since language deals with four skills; listening,
speaking, reading and writing. Language teachers take part to help language learners
have good language skills. This report is going to discuss teaching reading (kinds of
reading, reading materials and teacher‟s roles in teaching reading).

The terms extensive and intensive are used in listening and reading. According to
Harmer (2007a, p.273), “Intensive reading or listening tends to be more concentrated,
less relaxes, and often dedicated not so much to pleasure as to the achievement of a
study goal”. Based on that statement, we can say that intensive reading is a kind of
reading that do not come as readers‟ internal motivation; we read because somebody
ask us to read, but in intensive reading we get guidance from expert (language

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teacher) to develop our reading skills later which are very useful in extensive reading,
too. Furthermore, Harmer (2007a, p.273) also states that extensive reading and
listening frequently take place when students are on their own, whereas intensive
reading or listening is often done with help and/or intervention of the teacher. We can
conclude extensive reading as reading that is coming as readers‟ internal motivation;
readers read because they want to and teachers also take part in encouraging them to
read extensively.

As what have been explaining that there are two kinds of reading. They are (1)
extensive reading, and (2) intensive reading. It is a common when we hear term
reading for pleasure. Many people claimed that the best reading is the extensive one;
read for pleasure; reading because we want to read; no one force us to do it. We
believe that we are good in doing everything we like. The highest place is internal
motivation. Everything we do because of our own willing will produce a maximum
product. This statement highly supported by Harmer (2007a, p.273):

What these commentators and others are claiming is that extensive reading is
the best possible way for students to develop automaticity- that is the
automatic recognition of words when they see them. It is by far the best way to
improve their English reading (and writing) overall.

Even the best is extensive reading, because it comes from internal motivation, it does
not mean intensive reading cannot be worth. That is language teacher whom being
their helper; by providing good material and guiding them during reading session.

At the very first time, teacher needs to grab students‟ attention; letting them know that
reading is a nice thing. As Harmer (2007a, p.283) states that “… a teacher encourages
students to choose for themselves what they read and to do so for pleasure …” When
students fall in love in their reading materials and fell curious to read it, it means that
we win their heart. The love reading students will be easy to be guided to develop their
specific receptive skills (reading for gist: skimming, reading for specific information:
scanning, or even reading for detailed comprehension/ inference) after that; they
change their kind of reading to intensive reading.

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Providing reading materials is not as easy as it seem. The language teacher should be
very careful in doing it. For extensive material, we have to think of our students‟
reading level, because we need to make our students falling in love in this activities;
we need to make them enjoy their reading texts. Teacher makes students enjoy by
giving suitable materials; the one that they could understand easily (special written), so
they do not feel suffering of struggling in understanding the texts. Bamford,J and
Richard,D (1998, p.61) as cited in Harmer (2007a, p.283) give the specific description
about suitable materials as they called „language learner literature‟:

Language learner literatures are often referred to as graded readers or

simplified readers. They can take the form of original fiction and non-fiction
books as well as simplifications of established works of literature. … This
means that students at the appropriate level can read them with ease and
confidence.

There are lots of ways to persuade students getting involved in reading activities. One
of them is setting up library; Harmer (2007a, p.284) states, “if possible, static libraries
is a good one but if it is not possible, carrying the books around with boxes or on
trolleys could be solutions”. Teacher should be creative; of course, we do everything to
succeed teaching- learning process. Library is the main media in teaching reading. A
neat and clean library is a comfort place for students. Organize the library is a big Yes!
Classify the books based on their genres and levels will help students in library. The
most important thing is signing- out system (procedure/ administer).

Since students need external factor to help them feel the guts in reading, teacher
could make a task whereas students are free to give their opinions about the texts
(materials) provided; whether they like or not. Giving a weekly task is one of the
examples. Students are free to choose a book they like and bring it to be read at
home. Every week there will be 3-5 students sharing their experience in reading that
book to their friend in front of the class, etc. In short, language teacher has big roles in
promoting extensive reading to students; a persuader and an advisor.

In other hand, we have intensive reading whereas students read for purpose. Teacher
will guide them in developing some specific skills. Just same as extensive reading,
teacher needs to have interesting topic. According to Harmer (2007a, p.286), there are

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some roles that need to be adopted by teacher when asking students to read
intensively. They are (1) organizer; teacher give clear instructions, telling the reading
purpose and giving time limitation in reading, (2) observer; teacher just let students
read by their own—do not interrupt them, (3) Feedback organizer; teacher makes
feedback session after reading (in pairs, group, or general), and (4) Prompter;
controller; direct students to certain language features.

Common problem in intensive reading is students tend to find every single word‟s
meaning. It is contrast to the purpose of intensive reading. As Pang, Muaka,
Bernhardt, & Kamil (2003, p.6) conclude that “Reading is about understanding written
texts. It is a complex activity that involves both perception and thought”. When students
get stuck in a certain vocabulary they will stop to look up in their dictionaries. This
pattern is not good to develop their specific reading skills. Teacher can help them by
creating such activities for example, (1) time limit; there will be a specific time to work
with dictionary, (2) word/phrase limit; students can only ask 5 vocabularies during
reading session to the teacher, (3) meaning consensus: students‟ group work in finding
meaning of difficult vocabularies (they can help each other; bargain the meaning they
already knew) as formulated by Harmer (2007a, p.287). It is also important to let
students in; do not be too strict in using coursebook, we can ask students‟ opinions/
perceptions toward every material given. Harmer (2007a, p.288) states, “The question
is important because if we only ever ask students technical questions about language,
we are denying them any affective response to the content of the text.” Another way to
let students in is by letting them create their own comprehension task. Before giving
the texts, teacher could give any clue by discuss about something related to the
materials and the materials should be in context; things that everyone knows.
We help students develop their specific skills in reading by using intensive reading
sequences. “Most reading sequences involve more than one reading skill.” (Harmer,
2007a, p.288) Language teachers can create sequences of lesson based on skills to
be achieved by their students. Any reading activities and its materials for skimming or
scanning could be the first. It depends on the goals. Sometimes, teacher leads
students to be able to read for communicative purposes.

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B. Related Theories from Other Books

Some other books also give detailed information about teaching reading. Harmer
(2007b, p.99) also differentiates kinds of reading; intensive and extensive. In this book,
Harmer stresses beneficial effects reading. It is very essential to know our reading
purposes. That is why kinds of reading explained before could help us in choosing
specific reading skills to be used in order to achieve those purposes. Of course,
teacher‟s guidance in choosing material and piloting students in such reading activities
is very meaningful in developing theirs. So the choice is very important as mentioned
by Harmer (2007b, p.100), “… the success of the activity will often depend on the level
of the text we are asking them to work with.” There are so many reading activities that
are being offered in teaching reading. Teacher could create their own as long as it is
suitable in terms of text difficulties level and readers‟ level. Here are some examples of
reading activities that could be applied in the reading class; jigsaw reading, reading
puzzles, using newspapers, following instructions, poetry, play extracts, predicting from
words and pictures, and different responses (Harmer, 2007, pp.107-109). Come up
with six principles, Harmer enlightens language teacher of how to handle reading
class. By following these principles; (1) read as often and as much as possible, (2)
students need to be engaged while they are reading, (3) students should be
encouraged to respond to the content of a text (and explore their feeling about it), not
just concentrate on its construction, (4) prediction is a major factor in reading, (5)
match the task to the topic when using intensive reading texts, and (6) good teacher
exploit reading texts to the full (Harmer, 2007b, p.110), language teacher could help
students well.

Brown (2001, pp.306-311) states that reading comprehension is primarily a matter of

developing appropriate, efficient comprehension strategies for literate students. He
gave ten strategies to language teachers to be applied to each classroom techniques.
The strategies are identify the purpose of reading; use graphemic rules and patterns to
aid in bottom-up decoding (especially for beginning level learners); use efficient silent
reading techniques for relatively rapid comprehension (for intermediate to advance
level); skim the text for main ideas; scan the text for specific information; use semantic

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mapping or clustering; guess when you aren‟t certain; analyze vocabulary; distinguish
between literal and implied meanings; and capitalized on discourse markers to process
relationships.

Since we use language firstly in oral communication, we are custom to spoken

language which is very different to written language that will become the reading
materials in teaching reading.

Student already literate in their native languages will of course be familiar with
the broad, basic characteristics of written language; however, some
characteristics of English writing, especially certain rhetorical conventions, may
be so different from their native language that reading efforts are blocked.
(Brown, 2001, p.303)

Classroom reading performance

Oral Silent

Intensive Extensive

Linguistic Content Skimming Scanning Global

According to Brown (2001, p.312), the schema above is types of classroom reading
performance. While he also informed that there are some disadvantages in oral
reading activities. For instance, it is not very authentic activity; interrupting others (get
lose attention), etc. To design interactive reading techniques, Brown (2001, pp.313-
316) guides language teachers by some principles:

1. In an interactive curriculum, make sure that you don‟t overlook the

importance of specific instruction in reading skills
2. Use techniques that are intrinsically motivating
3. Balance authenticity and readability in choosing texts
4. Encourage the development of reading strategies
5. Include both bottom-up and top-down techniques
6. Follow the “SQ3R” sequence

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 7. Subdivide your techniques into pre-reading, during- reading, and after
reading phases
8. Build in some evaluative aspect to your techniques

These principles are very helpful to teach reading. Not only encouraging students to
read only, but also we need to help them develop their specific skills.

C. Related Research Report

There are some related research reports about teaching reading.

Kenneth Goodman‟s (1970) wrote an article entitled “Reading: A Psycholinguistic

Guessing Game”. He introduced reading methodology; bottom-up and top-down
processing. Guessing game means risk according to Goodman‟s (1970) as cited in
Brown (2001, p.299). Readers should be able to infer meaning in written text to get the
meaning of it; bring our previous knowledge in reading. Goodman‟s said that readers
do top-down processing when they do things like that.

Krashen‟s (1993) in The Power of Reading as cited in Brown (2001, p.301) found out
that extensive reading (free voluntary reading) is a key to students gains in reading
ability, linguistic competence, vocabulary, spelling, and writing.

John Green and Rebecca Oxford (1995) as cited in Brown (2001, p.301) found that
reading for pleasure and reading without looking up all the unknown words were both
highly correlated with overall language proficiency.

Prisilya (2012) in The Sixth Grade Pupils Difficulties in Reading Descriptive Texts
investigated some factors cause pupils‟ difficulties in reading. One of them is reading
material that is not well- chosen by the language teacher.

All the research reports are meaningful for language teachers. They could help
teachers in conducting environment in reading class; know reading theories, and
techniques to teach reading.

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D. Critical Analysis

As I concerned to this material, knowing how to teach reading is very important for
every language teachers. Reading could also develop another language skill: writing.
The more we read, the better we get at reading; vocabularies, language constructions,
etc. For me, language teacher has very important roles in teaching reading. They
should be able to provide right reading material to each level of readers (reading
sequences). As said by Brown (2001: 303), “What would happen if you didn‟t know
some of these differences (type of written language)? ... So part of your job as a
teacher is to enlighten your students … to develop strategies for extracting necessary
meaning from each.” It means that, a language teacher should be able to encourage
students to read whether extensively or intensively. The most important thing is
teaching reading by using strategies so it will go straight to the goals of reading itself.
Teaching reading lays on teacher‟s ability; mastering types and characteristics of
written language as reading material. These competences will influence much in
readers‟ level development. Since, reading is important to enrich knowledge; the way
we teach reading should be effectives. Therefore, we need qualified or trained- well
language teacher. This importance is being supported as statements below:

Learning to read is an important educational goal. For both children and adults,
the ability to read opens up new worlds and opportunities. It enables us to gain
new knowledge, enjoy literature, and do everyday things that are part and
parcel of modern life, such as, reading the newspapers, job listings, instruction
manuals, maps and so on. (Pang et al., 2003, p.6)

The problems that are faced by language teacher in Indonesia are mostly on teachers‟
abilities and facilities. We cannot avoid discussing them all, since those are our
responsibilities, too. Yes, the quality of language teachers in Indonesia are not in the
same range, most of them are still below average; teaching by using old method that
are not effective anymore. They do need training so they could upgrade their abilities
as what government wants from them. Good teachers will not rely on government
program only; they will be creative in upgrading their abilities. This 21 st century
provides everything easily, since we have globalization. We can access any article
based on our needs in teaching; we can see simulation in online video; we can chat to

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 any other teachers worldwide in online community; we can share each other to
improve our abilities. These are just easy as long as the teachers are willing to teach
truly. “There is a will; there is a way”.

E. Conclusion

After discuss about topic: Teaching reading, we can conclude that:

1. There are two kinds of reading: extensive and intensive whereas both have benefit
in developing our language skill.
2. Reading intensively helps us develop another language skill; writing. The more we
read, the better we get at reading.
3. Language teachers should have competence in teaching reading; they should be
able encourage students to read and mastering; some strategies in teaching
reading; way of choosing right materials; knowing types and characteristics of
written language as reading materials.

F. References

Brown, H.D. (2001). Teaching by Principles; an Interactive Approach to Language

Pedagogy. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

Harmer, J. (2007a). The Practice of English Language Teaching. Malaysia: Pearson

Education Limited.

Harmer, J. (2007b). How to Teach English. China: Pearson Education Limited.

Prisilya, A. (2012). The Sixth Grade Pupils’ Problems in Reading Descriptive Texts at SD
Negeri 1 Karang Endah (Thesis, Universitas Sriwijaya, 2012, Unpublished).

Pang, E.S., Muaka, A., Bernhardt, E.B., & Kamil, M.L. (eds). (2003). Teaching Reading:
IAE- Educational Practice Series 12: Herbert J. Walberg. Chicago, IL: University of
Illinois.

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