Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Second Edition

Teaching reading
First of all there is the question of teaching the mechanics of
reading. As was pointed out earlier, where pupils are already
literate in a language that uses the Roman alphabet the
mechanics as such present few problems. Where the Roman
alphabet is not known then the full panoply of techniques
used for teaching initial literacy must be brought into play. A
useful account of current methodology is to be found in
C.Moon and B.Raban, A Question of Reading.
The conventions of reading from left to right, and from
top to bottom may have to be taught by such devices as
simply getting pupils to follow the tip of a pointer which
moves appropriately, picture story series arranged in the
appropriate pattern, video or cine projections with moving
points or areas of brightness which follow the left to right

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Reading
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pattern all help. The shapes of letters may have to be taught
by using all kinds of mnemonics which will help to link them
with their sound values—S is a Snake, b is a big fat man with
a big belly, and so on. The visual perception may have to be
supported by the kinaesthetic, learning to write the letters as
they are recognised, sandpaper cut-outs, plastic or wooden
letters which can actually be handled, the range of devices
available is almost overwhelming. Once the basic
conventions are understood, then the combining of phonic
analytic/ synthetic approaches and global pattern
recognition approaches can proceed. It is at this point that
learners should be made aware of the most usual regular
English spelling patterns, and encouraged to recognise words
by their block shapes thus 
has quite a different
block shape from 
Flashcards, or better, flashboards are
of great use here. A flashboard is a piece of black painted
plywood or white thin melamine surfaced sheet, like
Formica, about 30 cm long and 10 cm wide. The black
painted surface can be written on with chalk and easily
erased for re-use, similarly the white Formica surface can be
written on with water-based felt tip pens. A set of nine or ten
flashboards is sufficient for most purposes and avoids the
consumption of great quantities of card. Longer boards can
be used to encourage quick recognition of whole sentences in
their written form and most teachers of complete beginners
will find a set of five of these about one metre long extremely
useful. Some teachers may have access to such sophisticated
pieces of equipment as tachistoscopes or Wordmaster talking
cards where the words or sentences being read are recorded
onto a magnetic tape strip attached to the card on which the
words are printed or written. When the card is run through
the Wordmaster machine the printed words are reproduced
in the spoken medium. The greater the variety of approaches
that can be adopted the greater the likelihood of success.
One relatively mechanical aspect of reading is that related
to reading speed. The book by Edward Fry mentioned earlier
gives sound guidance here. The simplest technique for
improving reading speed is basically to use a series of timed
texts, understanding of which is then tested in some way,
most often by multiple-choice questions, but mechanical

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Reading
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pacers which move a blind or a pointer down a page have
also been shown to be useful, as have various types of film
projection device. Obviously at very early stages it is possible
to encourage rapid recognition by using flashboards as
suggested earlier. Most teachers need to learn flashboard
technique. The key things to remember are to stand where all
pupils can see the board without the teacher having to move
the board around, and to keep the board still when showing
it. If the teacher holds the board horizontally across his chest
so that the writing is upside down and facing him, calls for
pupil attention, and then twists the board along its own
horizontal axis, a good clear ‘flash’ can be achieved with the
writing revealed right way up for just as long as the teacher
may require.
Given that the mechanical aspects of the teaching of
reading are satisfactorily dealt with how are the intellectual
reading skills to be developed? The classic approach has been
by questioning, and a great deal can be done by this means.
There are however a number of points that the teacher needs
to bear in mind when using questions to help pupils to
develop understanding of texts. The first is that there is a
great difference between questions intended for teaching and
questions aimed at testing. Teaching questions tend to be
very numerous, oral rather than written, constructed in
ordered sequences which lead the pupil to pay particular
attention to various aspects of the text, and are likely to be
provocative in the sense that they constitute the opening
move in an exchange which might grow into a discussion.
Sometimes teaching questions don’t have a ‘right’ answer
because they ask for personal reactions, and any one of a
dozen idiosyncratic responses may be equally acceptable.
Teaching questions should seek to cultivate as many as
possible of the different kinds of reading skill. It is therefore
inappropriate to tell pupils to shut their books when asking
questions which are intended to teach understanding of the
text. Questions asked with the books shut test memory,
either pure visual memory or memory of what was
understood. To learn to comprehend, the pupil must learn to
look at the actual black marks on the page and to make sense
of them, and this can only be done with the book open.
One useful technique for encouraging the pupils to

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