Teaching Reading
中国教育学会专家讲座资料：北京教育学院
袁昌寰
yuanchanghuan@126.com
13501015167
I. Warm-up
Among the four language skills ,
reading might be the most familiar
to our Chinese learners of English.
1. What is reading?
Read the following statements and decide
whether you agree with them or not.
1)Reading is recognizing the written words
in a text.
2) Reading is the ability to articulate the
words and pronounce them correctly.
3) Reading is an active process. It
constantly involves guessing, predicting,
checking and asking oneself questions.
4) Reading is the ability to understand the
written words and respond to them in
proper ways.
5) Reading means getting meaning out of
the given text.
2. Why do we read?
You may have various purposes for reading
different types of texts. In general three main
reasons why people read.
1) Reading for survival.
This kind of reading serves your immediate needs
or wishes.
2) Reading for learning and information.
It means that reading can help extend your general
knowledge of the world.
3) Reading for entertainment or pleasure.
Reading for entertainment is done for its own sake.
The readers don’t have to do it.
3. Why teach reading in YL classes?
1) Many students show both interest and enthusiasm in
doing reading when they start English.
2) Reading can help to reinforce what they are learning
orally.
3) Being able to read something meaningful in English,
such as a party invitation, an email, short message, or
shopping list, can give students a real sense of
achievement.
4) Exposure to the written record of what is being learnt
can be important for those whose learning is more visual
and who like to see the words and phrases written down.
4.How do we read?
The traditional ways to teach reading in a Chinese
middle school.
1.The “new words” from the text are learnt in lists with
their Chinese translations.
2.The teacher asks the students to read the text aloud
sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph,
interrupting them to correct their pronunciation.
3.The teacher explains the meaning of words and
phrases in English and Chinese and draw the
students’ attention to certain grammatical points.
4.The students’ comprehension of the text
is checked by the teacher asking
questions and nominating students to
answer.
5.After this, the teacher and students will
do the language exercises from the
textbook.
• Questions:
1.What do you think are the problems with this way
of teaching reading?
2.How motivated do you think the students are to
study this text at the beginning of the lesson?
3.Does the teacher do anything to increase their
motivation?
4.How do you think the students feel during the
teacher’s lengthy explanations of the phrases
and grammar points in the text?
5.Is this interesting for them?
6.Will they remember and use what is being taught
to them?
7.Has any effort been made to make the students
remember what they have read and learned
from the text?
8.Can they use it the next time they have to use
English?
9.Do you think it is clear to them what they have
gained from this lesson?
II. Approaches to reading
1. Read the following descriptions, tick those
which suit your situation.
1) I usually start reading a text by
recognizing words, word connections, and
phrase patterns as well as sentence
patterns, then I can rapidly and
automatically get meaning from the text.
2) When reading a text, I first identify the
topic, purpose and structure of the text,
then I make guesses, predictions during
reading. In this way, I create meaning from
the text as a whole.
3) I think the meaning of a text is more than
the sum of the individual words and
sentences. When reading a text, I start by
predicting the probable meaning, then I
get to read and understand the words and
phrases in the text to check whether that is
really what the writer means. Sometimes I
go the other way round. That’s to say, I
combine the above 2 ways in my reading.
2.Three approaches to reading:
Bottom-up approach: Decode and understand words,
phrases and sentences in the text in order to
understand the text.
Top-down approach: Use our expectations, previous
knowledge to understand the general ideas of the
text first.
Interactive approach: The reader uses bottom-up and
top-down approaches together, and two approaches
interact with each other in understanding a text. The
reader may shift from one focus to another during
the process.
3. Overcome the bad habits of reading
1. We should enlarge the distance between
eyes and the reading passage.
2. We should not always do reading aloud.
3. We should not read word for word.
III. English Reading requirements for
middle school students
课标三至九级的阅读要求：
英语阅读教学目标.doc
阅读教学目的
培养阅读技能、策略;培养语感;特别强调培养
学生在阅读过程中获取和处理信息的能力。
IV. Reading skills
略读 （Skimming）
找读、查读、寻读（Scanning）
预测下文 （Prediction）
理解大意（Understanding the gist）
分清文章中的事实和观点（Understanding facts and
opinions）
猜测词义（Guessing the meaning of the vocabulary）
推理判断（Inferring）
了解重点细节（Understanding the detailed information）
理解文章结构 （Understanding the structure of
the text）
理解图表信息（Understanding the information
in the diagram）
理解指代关系（Understanding the reference
words）
理解逻辑关系 （Understanding the logical
relations）
理解作者意图 （Understanding the writer’s intention）
评价阅读内容 （Evaluating the content of the reading
text）
V. Training Ss’ Reading skills
1. Guessing the difficult words
1)
Understanding a word from its context
(1) 根据同义关系猜测词义
例如：
1. In order to discover who had a natural ability to
learn languages, the students were given tests to
determine their language aptitude.
2.The job applicant sat in the personnel office and
filled out a vita. When she finished the resume, she
gave it to the secretary.
3.Tom answered quickly. But after he thought about the
matter more carefully, he regretted having made
such a hasty decision.
(2)
根据反义关系猜测词义
例如：
1. She has a love of rote work, but no fondness for creative
jobs. Rote means ______.
a. creative
b. mechanical
c. fondness
2. It is better to be reflective about problems than to be
thoughtless. Reflective means _______.
a. thoughtful
b. uncaring
c. problem
3. Today’s teenagers seem to be more liberal in their ideas
than their conservative grandparents. Conservative means
________.
a. free-thinking b. traditional
c. old
(3) 根据整个句子的意思猜测词义
例如：
1.She loves music: she can play the guitar,
the piano and the cello.
2. He walked into the sitting-room and sat
down on the settee.
3. Look! There’s a big fly on the window.
(4) 根据段落或篇章的上下文来猜测词义
Zip was stopped during the war and only after
the war did it become popular. What a
difference it has made to our lives? It keeps
people at home much more. It has made the
remote parts of the world more real to us.
Photographs show a country, but only zip
makes us feel that a foreign country is real. Also
we can see scenes in the street, big occasions
are zipped, such as the coronation (加冕典礼)
in 1953 and the Opening of Parliament. Perhaps
the sufferers from zip are the notable people,
who, as they step out of an areoplane, have to
face the battery of zip
cameras and know that every movement, every
gesture will be seen by millions of people.
Politicians not only have to speak well, they now
have to have what is called a “zip personality”.
Perhaps we can sympathize when Members of
Parliament say that they do not want debates to
be zipped.
Zip means a. cinema.
b. photography.
c. television.
d. telephone.
2)
Understanding a word from its form
（1）根据前缀来猜测和推测词义：
例如：
Read the following sentences， and guess the
meaning of the italicized words.
1. An education enriches the mind.
2. He did not write his composition well and the
teacher told him to rewrite it.
3. Mr Smith unlocked the safe and took out five
thousand dollars.
4. He had been overworking and fell sick at last.
5.We disapprove of middle-school students smoking
cigarettes.
6. At midnight, several hours after the ship had left the
port, she ran into bad weather.
7. The country is underdeveloped and the living
standard of the people is rather low.
8. It is impolite to turn your back on someone who is
speaking to you.
9. Those old people are very active in anti-pollution
activities.
10. Don’t let his friendly words mislead you into
believing him.
（2）根据后缀来猜测和推测词义：
例如: Read the following sentences, and guess
the meaning of the italicized words.
1.You must stop dreaming and face reality.
2.Travel broadens the mind.
3.My work is still in the experimental stage.
4.He did too little preparation for his examination.
5.The line of waiting people seemed to be endless.
6.I was very much impressed by the
friendliness of the people there.
7.The country is trying to popularize
education.
8.Our troops won a decisive victory in that
battle.
9.They were very friendly and even offered
assistance.
10.The magazine is called ‘English
Language Learning’ and is published
monthly.
3)
Compound words
例 如 ： Identify and underline the compound
nouns in these sentences. (Not all the
sentences have compound nouns in them
and some have more than one.)
1.We bought a town plan at the corner shop.
2.I’d like a return ticket to London, please.
3.Do you want to go to the sports center this
evening? There’s a good tennis match on.
4.He was wearing a brown coat and a pair of jeans.
5.We decided to meet in the hotel bar.
6. There was a small gas fire in the corner of the
town.
7.There’s a lovely little fruit market on
Wednesdays. It’s very cheap and the fruit is
really nice.
8. He walked in, sat down, and started reading a
magazine.
9. I took the film to a photo shop, but the shop
assistant said it was too old to develop.
10.Please do not make copies for personal use
with this machine. It is for office use only.
2. Predicting
例1：Imagine you are going to read an article
with the title “Some Rules for Living Longer”.
Try and think six points the article will make.
2. Predicting
例2：初二下 M2 U2
Look at the title
“A beautiful smile”.
and guess what the
text is about.
2. Predicting
例3：高一下学期 必修3 M3 P23
The Violence of Nature
Look at the pictures of the reading text
and guess what the text is about.
2. Predicting
例4：高二下学期 顺序选修8 M 1 P11
Welcome to the South Poles！
Look at the title of the passage. Write down
a question which you hope the writer will
answer.
3. Understanding the reference words
例如：
Mr. and Mrs. Smith visited Paris last week. They liked
the city very much.
A myth suggests that both the poor and the wealthy
are criminals, or at least potential lawbreakers,
because the poor are pressed to crime by their poverty,
and because the latter could hardly have gained their
possessions with honesty and constructive work. The
fiction also …
Exercise: Read the following sentences and find
out what the
italic words refer to in the passage. Write the
meaning of the
italic words on the line beside the sentence.
1) … because the poor are pressed to crime by
their poverty…
____________
2) … and because the latter could hardly have
gained their possessions… ____________
_____________
3)The fiction also … _____________
4. Skimming
略读的三种模式：
1）通读文章的起始段（opening paragraph）和
结尾段（ending paragraph）。
2）细读其他段落主题句（topic sentence）。
3）浏览一些与主题句相关的信息词；等等。
例1：
Body Language
Read the opening and ending paragraphs of the text and find
the main idea of it.
Although we may not realize it, when we talk with others
we make ourselves understood not just by words. We send
messages to the people around us also by our expressions
and body movements. A smile and handshake show
welcome. Waving one’s hands is to say“Goodbye”.Nodding
the head means agreement, while shaking it means
disagreement. These gestures are accepted both by Chinese
and English speakers as having the same meanings.
When one uses a foreign language, it is important
to know the meanings of gestures and movements
in the foreign country. Using body language in a
correct way will help communicate with people and
make the stay in a foreign country easy and
comfortable.
例2：
高二下学期 顺序选修8 M 2 P25
The Puzzle of the Mona Lisa
Read the opening and ending paragraphs of
the text and find the main idea of it.
Beginning
The Mona Lisa is the subject of many stories,
but there is one anecdote which remains a
puzzle. Is the painting in the Louvre the
authentic work by Leonardo da Vinci…or
just a copy?
Ending
• But there is still a puzzle. There were a
number of precise copies of the Mona Lisa
painted by gifted students of Leonardo da
Vinci. Part of the painting’s fascination is
whether the one in the Louvre was
authentic … even before it was stolen. And
if Perugia stole a copy…who has the
authentic Mona Lisa?
例3：
初一下 M7 U2
1. It‘s the fastest train in the world. It goes
from
Shanghai to Pudong Airport in 8 minutes.
2. More than 32 million passengers travel on
British Airways planes every year.
3. It’s the most famous ferry in the world.
4. These fast, comfortable buses go to 2,500
places in USA.
Task: Read and match the paragraphs with
the headings.
A. British Airways
B. The Greyhound Bus
C. The Shanghai-Pudong Express
D. The Star Ferry
例4：初二下 M8 U2
people world
celebrate New Year
begin family day
make resolution
say goodbye
welcome
例5：
高一下学期 必修3 M3 P23
The Violence of Nature
Read the subheading and see your
prediction:
1.What Is a Tornado?
2. What Is a Hurricane?
3. An Extraordinary Event
Topic sentence:
1. A tornado is a rotating column of air from
a thunderstorm to the ground.
2. Hurricanes are strong tropical storms,
and they usually occur in the southern
Atlantic ocean.
3. This is a story about the 1900 Galveston
hurricane.
例6：高二下学期 顺序选修8 M 1 P2-3
Task: Read the passage and choose a
heading for each paragraph.
A. A great place for researchers
B. Plants and animals
C. The Antarctic Treaty
D. The discovery of Antarctic
E. The land
例7：高二下学期 顺序选修8 M 2 P25
The Puzzle of the Mona Lisa
Read the passage and choose the best
summary.
5. Scanning 例1: 初二上 M11 U2
例2：初三下M2 U3
例3：高一下学期 必修3 M1 P2
• Great European Cities
Read the passage and match the photos with
these descriptions.
Pictures:
A. The Eiffel Tower
B. The Parthenon
C. The Uffizi Palace
D. The Sagrada Familia
Reading:
Paris
Barcelona
Florence
Athens
6. Looking for detailed information
1)先读题，了解题旨，做到对所寻读的具体细节心中有
数
例1：Smoking
How many packets of cigarettes are smoked each
day by Chinese？
2) 用目光扫寻全文，快速寻读到一个数字
3)当找到这个带数字的句子，看是不是所要回答的问
题的答案。如果是，可以把答案写下来，这个寻读的
任务就完成了。如果不是，那么就要继续快速搜寻、
查阅，直到找到答案为止。
例 2 ： Read the newspaper article carefully, and
complete the table underneath.
例3：初一下M2 U2
例4：高二下学期
顺序选修8 M3
P29-33
Foreign Food
P32 Ex6
Passage 1:
1. What mistakes did the writer make at the
Chinese banquet?
2. What impressed the writer at the banquet?
3. What did the writer find shocking at first
but then got used to eating.
• Passage 2:
4. What does the writer say about the
appearance of food?
5. What does the writer think about eating
cold food?
6. What does the writer think about the way
British people eat?
例5：高一下学期
必修3 M5 P42-43
• Philosophers of Ancient China
P42 Ex 3 Read the passage again. Choose
the correct answers.
例6：高一下学期
必修3 M4 P32-33
• Sandstorms in Asia
• P33 Ex 4 Read the text again and
complete these sentences.
7.Inferring
opinions and
attitudes
例1：初三下M6U3
例2：初三下M2U3
例3：高二下学期 顺序选修8 M3
P30-31
Foreign Food
P31 Ex3 Choose the best summaries.
1. The writer of passage 1 ____.
a. doesn’t like Chinese food
b. hasn’t got used to most Chinese food yet
c. Likes most Chines food
2. The writer of passage 2_____.
A. doesn’t like British food
B. doesn’t like the way British food is
prepared and swerved
C. doesn’t like the way British eat
8.Comment on the content of
reading
• 例1：高二下学期 顺序选修8 M3 P30
Foreign Food
P30 Now read passage 1 and 2 and say
whether they are humorous sketches or
serious essays.
VI. The three stages of
teaching reading
1. Pre-reading stage
1) Purpose of this stage
(1)Arousing the students’ interest in the
topic of the text
(2)Motivating students to read the text by
providing a purpose for reading
(3)Preparing the students for the content
of the text
1) The skill can be practiced on this stage
Predictions about what to read
2) The activities can be done at this stage
The students can be asked to:
(1)examine the accompanying visual information
(diagram, maps, photographs)
(2)reflect on the title or the topic
(3)state what they already know about the topic
(4)state what they would like to know about the topic
(5)write their own questions that they want the
text to answer
(6)answer the teacher’s general questions about
the text type or topic (oral or written)
(7)brainstorm the topic in groups or whole class
(8)guess the topic by looking at key words from
the text (given, and if necessary taught, by the
teacher)
读前活动
1、明确目的
2、熟悉话题
3、预测内容
4、激发兴趣和欲望
5、布置任务
2. While-reading stage
1)Purpose of this stage
It aims to help the reader to understand the
content and structure of the text, as well as
the author’s purpose in writing it.
2)The skill can be practiced on this stage
Skimming, scanning, reading for detail,
drawing inferences about the author’s purpose
and intention.
• 3)The typical sort of activities to train such skills
are:
(1) skim reading to get the gist (main idea) of the text
(2) locating specific information
(3) transferring information from the text to a diagram,
table, form, map, graph or picture
(4) taking notes on the main points, or on specific
points of the text
(5) drawing a diagram to show the text structure
(6) answering factual questions on the text
(7) answering inference questions on the text (reading
between the lines)
(8) putting the events in the correct order
(9) stating if statements given about the text are true or
false
(10) working out the meaning of words and phrases in the
text from the context
(11) examining referents in the text and stating what they
refer to
(12) putting the paragraphs of a jumbled text back in the
correct order
(13) giving sections of a text appropriate headings
(14) giving the text an appropriate title (also possibly a
post-reading activity)
阅读活动
1、略读
2、寻读
3、根据所读内容画图、标图、连线、填表、排
序、补全信息
4、为课文选择或添加标题
5、根据所读内容制作图表
6、边读边操作
7、判断真伪
3.Post-reading stage
1)Purpose of this stage
Quite different from the pre-reading and whilereading stage, post-reading work is not directly
connected with the text, but usually “grow out” of
it.
The aims are:
(1) to consolidate or reflect on what has been
read in the text
(2) to relate the text to the students’ own
knowledge, interests, or views.
(3) If you have used the text to teach new
language, then the post-reading stage should
also give the students the chance to
consolidate that language by using it freely.
2) The kinds of post-reading activities
(1) oral discussion
(2) role-play a different situation from that of the
text but using the same characters, or roleplay the same situation as in the text but
using different character
(3) writing a summary of the main content of the
text
(4) comment on the content of the text
(5) retelling the story of the text
(6)finishing the story (orally or in writing), that
means either predicting an ending or changing
the ending to one of your own choice
(7)listening to or reading some supplementary
materials about the topic
读后活动
1、Retelling 转述所读内容
2、Role play 根据所读内容进行角色扮演
3、Discussion 讨论
4、Rewrite the text 改写
5、Write the ending 续尾
6、Write the summary 写摘要
VII. Teachers’ role in reading class
Encourage 鼓励
Enlighten 启发
Direct
引导
Facilitate 帮助
Monitor
监控
Participate 参与
Give feedback and evaluation 反馈与评价