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1

ING303Teaching Language SkillsLECTURE 3: THE TEXT

2Things to cover in this chapter

What is a text?: A definition of what we mean by text in ELT

Teaching the text: What we want learners to get from text study

Comprehension of content: Procedures that help comprehension

Language learning: Ways of selecting and teaching grammatical and vocabulary items from a text

Discourse analysis: Aspects of discourse: genres, styles and structure

3What is a text?

A text in the context of English Language Teaching is a piece of writing or speech that is used for language learning.

A text can be studied as a complete and autonomous unit: the reader or listener can understand it without knowing the context.

A text is coherent in the sense that it has a beginning, a middle and an end which make a clear sequence of thoughts or events.

Thus a text is different from a list of words to be learned or sentences that give examples.

4What is a text?

A coursebook text ranges from a paragrapgh to a page or more in length.

The text is normally used for intensive language learning in various ways: for comprehension work, for learning language items that appear in it, for analysis of content.

We make a distinction between intensive and extensive text study. Intensive means that the text is not only understood, but also studied in detail. It is also used as a springboard for further language study.

Extensive means that the text is read or heard for pleasure and/or information. The main aim is to provide reading and listening fluency and language learning is incidental.

Q: Which one do we focus on?

5Teaching the text

There are a number of reasons students read a text in class:

Students read a given text to understand its content (i.e. What the text is about)

Students then answer the questions about the text to check comprehension

Students learn new words, phrases and grammatical structures, and use them in and outside the classroom.

6Teaching the text: the goals

The main goals of teaching the text are comprehension of content, language learning and discourse analysis.

Comprehension of content

General gist: The teacher needs to make sure that students understand the general content of the text.

Detailed understanding: The next stage is more detailed comprehension of the different parts of the text. This means sentence-by sentence study, providing explanations of new words.

Reading between the lines: You could ask students to infer meanings that are not stated explicitly. In a literary text, the speech of different characters shows their personality and motives.

7Teaching the text: the goals (cont’d)

Critical analysis: The text may be studied critically: students are invited to judge how truthful, consistent or logical the text is.

Language learning

Vocabulary: One benefit of intensive study of a text is vocabulary expansion or review. All the words need to be understood by Ss. Do vocabulary-focused activities and help them learn new words!

Grammar: Another benefit is the learning of word or sentence grammar. Ss have an opportunity to learn different gramamtical features. It is useful to pay attention to ones that are harder.

8Teaching the text: the goals (cont’d)

Discourse analysis: It is the discussion of the text as a whole, rather than particular linguistic features such as grammar and vocabulary. It can only take place after students have understood the content.

Follow-up tasks: After you have finished comprehension, you may find that many texts provide rich stimuli for further language-learning tasks which involve student production (speech or writing).

(do action task on page 30)

9Comprehension of content

The priority in dealing with a text is to get students to understand it: first the gist, then in more detail.

Preparation: Preparatory work can be extremely helpful for comprehension. It can include discussing the topic, pre-teaching vocabulary and asking preliminary questions.

Presenting the topic: Previous knowledge of the topic is probably the factor which most helps text comprehension. It is a good idea to give students information about the content of the text in advance.

Pre-teaching vocabulary: A lot of books and teachers do this but teaching too many words in advance overloads students’ short-term memory. They do not remember the meanings in the text.

10Comprehension of content (cont’d)

Raising expectations and curiosity: It is important to motivate students to read the text. A useful strategy is to arouse their curiosity by giving them questions to discuss, to which the text will provide the answers.

Alternatively, let them glance at the title, headings and any illustrations, and make guesses or ask questions about the content of the text. (do the task on p. 31)

Reading for understanding: There are three ways a new text is actually read in class: (i) the teacher reads aloud while students read along; (ii) students read it silently; (iii) students read sections aloud, in turn. (do the task on p. 32)

11Comprehension of content (cont’d)

Comprehension tasks

Comprehension quesions: The most common type of text is comprehension questions following the reading. But be careful!

(do the first task on page 33)

Doing comprehension tasks does not necessarily mean your students have understood the text/passage. The reason is the questions ‘echo’ the text, and you can answer

them without thinking. Some questions do not require comprehension!

What to do then? If the questions are worded differently from the text itself, or require interpretation, then they are likely to be more effective

(do the second task on page 33)

12Comprehension of content (cont’d)

Other comprehension tasks: In pairs or small groups, students compose their own comprehension

questions, then exchange answer.

The class discusses the questions or issues that were brought up before reading (raising expectations and curiosity).

Students summarize the content orally or in writing.

Students suggest alternative titles and justify them.

Students write a continuation to the text.

Students re-present the content: as a picture, a list of point or a table.

Student translate some or al of the text to L1.

13Comprehension of content (cont’d)

Practical Tips

When doing preparatory work, tell students to close their books, and not to look at the text itself. Otherwise they might be distracted.

Feel free to pause briefly to slip in quick translation or of difficult bits if you are reading aloud a text at first encounter.

Provide glosses for unknown words in the text more than once.

Ask students to do comprehension questions on their own or in pairs before going through them with the whole class.

Adopt the ‘sandwich’ principle for text comprehension.

14Language learning

The text contains a lot of language items that we want our students to learn in order to be able to use them later in their own communic.

After we have ensured comprehension, the next stage is to spend some time focussing on lexical and other items.

Selection of vocabulary: It is important to focus on the most useful and common vocabulary especially when you are taching beginners or intermediate classes.

Grammar, spelling and punctuation: You should prioritize features tat are more important and frequent. The items you focus on should be ones you have recently taught.

15Language learning (cont’d)

Teaching selected items: Once you have selected which items from the text you will teach, you need to think about how to do it.

Q: Whether it is better to learn language implicitly or explicitly. Implicit language learning: absorbing it intuitively, through reading or

hearing in a communicative context.

Explicit language learning: receiving explanations about the new language and deliberately practising it.

A: You probably need both.

When reading a text, students see the language first within a meaningful context and need to understand it in order to comprehend the text. Then focus on specific language points!

16Practical Tips

Use online sites to check vocab. frequency: Which words are more frequent and therefore wroth teacing www.lextutor.ca/vp/bnc You type or copy-paste your text into a window and click on ‘submit’

and receive information about the frequency of different words.

Ask students to underline words they know rather than ones they do not: It is more encouraging and morale-boosting.

Note what you have taught: Make sure you note down for yourself which language items you have taught from a text so you can come back and review later.

Include whole expressions, not just single words: in the vocabulary items you select to teach more thoroughly.

17Follow-up tasks

Once your class has finished studying a text, then you can do follow-up tasks. These use text as a trigger for further language work.

Shorten the text: Delete as many words and sentences in the text as you can, but the result has to be a grammatical and coherent text!

Extend the text: Add adjectives and adverbs wherever you can. Add at least three extra sentences within each paragraph, without destoying

its coherence.

Change the text: Insert synonyms of words in the text wherever you can. Change the tense throughout. Change active to passive.

Create your own text: Write your own text based on the structure of the text you have just studied, but on a topic of your own choosing.