TEACHING READING COMPREHENSION IN THE SECONDARY ESL CLASS:THE CHALLENGE OF NEW MATERIALS AND METHODS

William Cheng

Reading in ESL

Reading has been the subject of researchstudy for over a century. An article by HarrySinger (1983) entitled 'A centruy of landmarksin reading and learning from text at the highschool level: Research, themes and instructionalstrategies' contains over a hundred references.Mark A. Clarke (1980) calls reading 'the mostthoroughly studied and least understood processin education today'. Unfortunately, it is onlywithin the last 10 to 15 years that attention hasbeen focused on teaching reading skills in ESL(See C. J. Brumfit (1978) 'The teaching ofadvanced reading skills in foreign languages, withparticular reference to English as a foreignlagnuage'. Note especially the last paragraph).The last 3 to 5 years have witnessed a dramaticincrease in the number of articles on teachingESL reading in language teaching journals suchas Modem English Teacher, Practical EnglishTeaching, English Language Teaching Journal,English Teaching Forum, TESOL Quarterly,World Language English and Modern LanguageJournal. This paper attempts to give a briefsurvey of recent trends in the teaching ofreading comprehension in the secondary ESLclass and their applicability to the Hong Kongsituation. Reference will be made to the moreimportant books and articles on teaching readingin English as a second or foreign language,especially those published within the last five orsix years. I should also like to express my debt tothe speakers in the World Congress on Readingwho gave me valuable insights into the teachingof reading. This article reflects some of theirviews.

Importance of the Reading Skill

Reading is important at all levels. Itsinstrumental use is particularly important at thesecondary shcool stage and in tertiary education-Even in this technological age, books are anessential tool of learning. 'Learning to read andreading to learn' is not an outworn slogan. The

need for developing the reading skill is all themore urgent because of the ever-increasingamount of reading our students are called uponto do. The problem is more acute as one goeshigher up the education ladder; most referencebooks in tertiary institutions are in English.

Reading Texts in ESL Textbooks

There is a Chinese saying: "The artisanmsut first sharpen his tools before he can do agood job'. It is appropriate to examine the typeof reading texts one finds in ESL textbookscurrently used. The two most popular secondaryESL coursebooks are New Access andIntegrated English. Both of them were originallywritten to fit the requirements of the oldsecondary syllabus which reflected the principlesof the oral-structural approach. The new syllabuswhich reflects the principles of the communi-cative approach will be implemented in 1986.New textbooks will not therefore be availableuntil next year at the earliest. This must be bornein mind when we criticize existing books forbeing uninspiring as far as reading comprehensionlessons are concerned.

Teachers are probably aware that ESLtextbooks currently used are not particularlyhelpful in respect of comprehension teaching.A detailed listing of some of the characteristics(or weaknesses) of conventional ESL textbookscannot be given here but the reader is referred toChristine Nuttall (1983), Mike Beaumont (1983)and Norman Whitney (1983). Some of the moreobvious limitations are: insufficient variety oftext types, rather uninspiring exercises; insuffic-ient reference to reading skills, low value ofcomprehension questions.

The limitations mentioned above and someof the other characteristics mentioned by thethree writers are found in the coursebookscurrently used. However, I must also point outthat public examination papers are keepingabreast with developments overseas, and togetherwith the new syllabus, will have a healthy

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influence on the writing of new textbooks.

Traditional Approach to the Teaching of ReadingIn the course of my teaching practice

supervision visits, I have seen a number of veryinspiring and imaginative reading comprehensionlessons. At the same time I have to add thatmany teachers still use an approach which israther traditional and unimpressive. The teacherasks the class to turn to a certain page orannounces that he is going to teach a certainunit. He than explains some of the more difficultvocabulary items. This is followed by silentreading on the part of the class. The teacher thenreads part of the text and comments on what hefeels is difficult for the students. He may ssome-times ask a few questions, which are usuallyanswered by a few bright students, or if he failsto get the necessary response, he answers themhimself and proceeds to the next sentence orparagraph. A question and answer session followsin which the teacher does the questioning and aselected number of students supply the answers,often by lifting a few sentences straight from thetext. If there is sufficient time left, the teacherasks different students to read aloud. Finallythe class is asked to do the written exercises,which are often on vocabulary and structure.

Some of the weaknesses of the approachmentioned above or variations of it are:1. The teacher concentrates on teaching content

rather than reading skills. If the text is onMaro Polo, for example, an independentobserver may feel that it is in essence a historylesson rather than a lesson on reading com-prehension.

2. There is no attempt to establish a purpose inreading. In real life one reads for a variety ofreasons. In the classroom, students apparentlyread in order to answer comprehensionquestions, which is not what one usually doesin real life. There is a place for the use ofcomprehension questions as I shall explainlater, but there are other tasks or exerciseswhich the teacher can ask the class to dowhich are perhaps closer to what one doesin real life and which are related to specificpurposes in reading.

3. While there is obviously a place for readingaloud in the language lesson, not every kind of

text lends itself to this kind of practice.Drama and short stories containing a lot ofdialogue naturally require reading aloud.Expository, argumentative and descriptivepassages do not readily lend themselves tosuch Vocal practice'. In any case the readingaloud attempted by students is all too oftenstultifying and undirected and of little profitto the students who read and to those wholisten. For reading aloud to be truly purpose-ful and effective, the teacher should selecta small section of the text, demonstrate howit should be read, and direct the students'attention to pronunciation difficulties,problems of stress and intonation before heasks them to read. If a tape is available, thisshould be played to the students as a model.In this way students will really profit fromreading aloud.

4. The approach does not challenge studentsto really come to grips with the text. There israrely any group discussion of the text. Afterthe silent reading by the class the teacher asksindividual students to answer the questionsin the book. If a student gives a correctanswer, the teacher passes on to anotherquestion without bothering to find out ifother students have worked out the correctanswer on their own. The situation is moreserious if the questions are in the multiple-choice format. If option C is the right answerand a student selects it, the teacher may justrespond by saying *yes' or 'correct'. Usuallythere is no attempt to see if other studentshave chosen the wrong option. If MC questionare well set, reasons for rejecting the dis-tractors are just as important as reasons forchoosing the right option.

5. The reading text is often used as a vehiclefor the teaching of vocabulary and structures.The textbook writer is partly responsiblefor this as the exercises following the text andcomprehension questions are normally thosedealing with lexis and grammar. There is aplace for language exercises but these shouldnot be looked upon as the main componentsof a reading lesson. The traditional approachwhich focuses on the language part of thetext exemplifies what T. Johns and F. Davies(1982) describe as TALO (Text as LinguisticObject).

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6. There is a common fallacy that silent readingfollowed by comprehension questions is com-prehension teaching. This will be discussed inthe next section.

Dealing with Text - Use of ComprehensionQuestion

Earlier ESL methodology books concen-trated on the design of comprehension questionsand questioning techniques. An example is D. C.Miller's (1966) Teaching the Reading Passage.The view that silent reading followed by com-prehension questions is comprehension teachingis an indequate one. In real life one rarely reads atext, a story or a novel in order to answer com-prehension questions. One reads for variouspurposes and responds to what one reads indifferent ways. It is significant that the HKCEEquestion papers have already set a new trendin the format of the reading comprehensionquestion. Candidates are often asked to do taskscloser to true-life situations, such as completinga table, composing a letter in response toinformation in the text, etc. An article languageteachers should 'chew and digest' is I. S. F.Nation's (1979) The Curse of the Comprehen-sion Question: Some Alternatives'. Nation pointsout the weakness of the traditional approachwhich places such a heavy emphasis on com-prehension questions and puts forward practicalalternatives.

Judiciously used, comprehension questionshave a definite place on the teaching of reading.There are quite a member of books giving veryuseful suggestions on questioning techniques inteaching comprehension. Two examples willsuffice: Teaching Reading Comprehension byP. D. Pearson and D. D. Johnson (1977) andTeaching Reading in a Foreign Language byChristine Nuttall (1983). This is not the place togo into details about question types orquestioning techniques. However, teachers shouldremember the following points concerning theuse of comprehension questions. Firstly,question can be asked before, during and afterthe reading of a text. All too often in textbooksthe questions come at the end. Pre-readingquestions can help students to focus on thecrucial points of a text. They may also helpto develop prediction strategies. The students are

required to search for information relevant tothe pre-question and exclude information notrelevant. They are trained to perform a non-linguistic act: that of reading purposefully inorder to select the required information. Onthe other hand if we ask the questions after thestudents have read the text, their work is one ofmatching the question with the answer.Questions asked during the reading can also helpto enhance comprehension. Secondly, there isa need to distinguish between questions thatteach comprehension and those that test com-prehension. Questions in a reading comprehen-sion text should be used to teach comprehensionand not merely to test it. However, somequestions that test comprehension may be usefulif they are used diagnostically, e.g. to seewhether the class have really understood a point.Such questions should be followed by otherquestions which help students to make theright interpretation. Thirdly, the teacher shouldknow how to deal with wrong answers. Thereis a very strong temptation for the teacher to givethe right answer and pass on. However, it is muchmore profitable for the teacher to use furtherquestions to deal with the mistake. He can use:

(a) support questions- 'Why do you say they?''What does line - say?'

(b) back-tracking question —'If the answer is -, doesthis agree with theanswer to a previousquestion?'

(c) projection questions 'Look at line — furtheron. Does this matchyour answer?'

Finally, the teacher should encourage studentsto ask questions. This, unfortunately, occursall too rarely. Yet purposeful reading requiresa student to read critically, with a searchingattitude. The teacher should therefore provideopportunities for students to take the initiativehi asking questions.

RECENT TRENDS

Recently, a new appraoch to teachingready has been developed based on severalprinciples:—— analysis of the reading process— analysis of relevant text types

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— analysis of reading purposes, tasks and enab-ling skills

— grading of tasks rather than skills

For a more detailed listing of the effects ofrecent trends on language teaching and learningon the design of reading comprehension materialsteachers are advised to read Norman Whitney's(1983) 'Reading Comprehension: The challengeof new materials and methods'.

The Reading Process

The new syllabus gives this definition of reading:'It is fundamentally an active creative processin which the reader interprets a message in thelight of his previous knowledge, predicts andanticipates subsequent rhetorical strategy andinformation (making use of the linguistic cuesthat the writer provides), selects informationrelevant to his reading purpose, matches inform-ation with his previous knowledge and experi-ence, evaluates it in the light of that knoweldgeand then applies this information to newexperiences'. This is substantially the view ofK. Goodman and F. Smith. Goodman's seminalarticle: 'Reading: a Psycholinguistic GuessingGame' has exerted considerable influence onreading instruction and the design of readingcourses in LI but attempts are now being madeto apply the theory to the teaching of readingin ESL.

Text Types

If one examines the text types in existingtextbooks and compares them with some of thenew books on reading published overseas, one isimmediately struck by the fact that texts inbooks currently used are much too restrictedin scope. Books like Skills for Learning (1980);Reading and Thinking in English by J. Moore,et al (1980); the Heinemann Reading Compre-hension Course by Evelyn Davies and NormanWhitney Reasons for Reading (1974), Strategiesfor Reading (1981) and Study Skills for Reading(1984); Authentic Reading by Catherine Walter(1982), Making Sense of Reading by SusanMaingay (1983) and Intermediate LanguageSkills: Reading by Frank Hey worth (1982)contain examples of a rich variety of text typesthat can and should be used to teach readingcomprehension. It can be seen that text variation

and variety is important. One can also noticefrom examining the text types that attempts aremade to ensure that authentic texts are re-produced in a form as close as possible to theorignal. Many of the texts are illustrated and theillustrations are often an integral part of thetext. Students of science and technical subjectswill realise the importance of recognizing this.The language teacher should also bear this inmind.

Reading Purposes, Tasks, Enabling Skills

The traditional approach to comprehensionteaching ignores the importance of establishingpurpose in respect of reading. It is necessaryto alert the students to different purposes inreading different texts. The new syllabus pointsout quite appropriately: The traditional practiceof having the students read a text and thenanswer questions does little to help them developthe reading skills necessary to cope with differentreading materials for different reading needs.When the practice is followed, the students read:(i) with no specific purpose and therefore with

no knowledge of what skills they should beusing:'

From the definition of reading givenearlier, it can been seen that the main aim ofthe reading lesson is to teach appropriate readingstrategies (or enabling skills) that will help thereader to comprehend texts and not just thetext being studied. The difference between theold approach TALO and TAVI (Text as a vehiclefor Information) is described in T. John and F.Davies (1983) Text as a Vehicles for Inform-ation: the Classroom Use of Written Text inTeaching Reading in a Foreign Language'.

Since the prime purpose of the readinglesson is to develop reading strategies, teachersshould be aware of such strategies (or enablingskills) and how to teach them.

Munby (1978) has a very comprehensivelist in his book Communicative Syllabus Design.Two books on teaching reading strategies areStrategies for Reading (15 Strategies) by EvelynDavies and Norman Whitney (1981) and 25Strategies: Reading Skills for IntermediateAdvanced Students of English as a SecondLanguage by Jacqueline Neufeld 'and MarionWebb (1984). Christine Nuttall (1982)categoris-

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es the skills into two major types — (a) wordattack skills and (b) text-attack skills: (i) under-standing sentence syntax, (ii) recognizing andinterpreting cohesive devices, (iii) interpretingdiscourse markers, (iv) recognizing functionalvalue, (v) tracing and interpreting rhetoricalorganization, (vi) recognizing the presuppositionsunderlying the text, (vii) recognizing implicationsand making inferences, (viii) prediction, (ix)integration and application. Familiar techniqueslike shimming and scanning are dealt withseparately in her book.

Tasks and Exercises for Developing Comprehen-sion Skills

Teachers who have had a chance to lookat some of the books mentioned previouslywill have realised that there are many types oftasks and exercises for promoting reading com-prehension. A book I thoroughly recommend isFrancoise Grellet's (1981) Developing ReadingSkills, which probably contains the most com-prehensive taxonomy of reading comprehensionexercises ever listed. It contains a goldmine ofideas on the design of reading exercises whichthe teacher can readily adapt and use.

Schema Theory and Reading Comprehension

The study of the role of background know-ledge in reading comprehension has resulted inthe formulation of the schema theory. Severaluseful articles on the subject are 'Scheme Theoryand ESL Reading Pedagogy' by P. L. Carrell andJ. C. Eisterhold (1983), 'Schema Theory andReading Comprehension' by Pedro Obando(1983) and more recently 'Schema Theory andESL Reading: Classroom Implications andApplications' by Patricia L. Carrell. The lastarticle gives a most comprehensive survey of thesubject and is highly recommended. Certainlyteachers should be aware of the implicationsof such a theory.

Researches into Students' Reading Strategies

Before discussing different techniques ofteaching reading comprehension, it may beworthwhile to point out that researchers havetried to find out the reading strategies of goodforeign language readers. By using student

introspection as a source of information, Hosen-feld (1981) and her co-workers identified 20such strategies including such obvious skills asskipping unknown words, identifying grammaticalcategories of words, using context clues, makinginferences and using knowledge of the world, etc.

Van Parreren and Schouten-Van Perreren(1981) find that subskills are vital to intensiveas well as cursory reading. They include 1)recognizing text type; 2) recognizing textstructure; 3) predicting or summarizing thecontext of the text; 4) making inferences 5)using the context to determine the meaningof unknown words and 6) analyzing the wordform of unknown words. They also point outthat reading strategies operate on hierarchicallevels and skilled readers do not go through thedifferent levels in a set order.

Two other research articles are worthmentioning. They are 'Investigating the readingproblems of ESL students: an alternative' byYeghia Aslanian (1985) and Taking the EasyWay Out: Non-Use and Misuse of Clues in EFLReading' by Batia Laufer and Donald D. Sam(1985).

In the first research students (only 3,admittedly a small sample) were asked to reada passage and then fill in several blanks from achoice of options. They were then askedindividually to give reasons for their choices.Finally they were asked to tell what they hadunderstood from the text. This student-orientedway of examining the readers' comprehensionlevel enabled the investigator to find out thespecific strategies used by the reader and whetherthey helped or hindered comprehension.

In the second research the investigatorsset out to study whether students used textualclues or their extra textual knowledge to getmeaning from the text. The aim was to seewhether students really read in the way theirteachers hoped they did. As in the firstexperiment, students were given a detailedinterview so that it was possible to discoverthe reasoning by which they arrived at theiranswers. At the same time the factors thathampered comprehension were also identified.

Admittedly the samples used were verysmall, 3 and 15 respectively. But the researchesshed valuable light on how students try to tackle

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text and arrive at their answers to comprehensionquestions. The researches are obviously worthreplicating.

Dealing with Texts — New Approaches

The Intensive Reading Lesson

One of the most useful articles on teachingintensive reading skills in John Munby's (1968)'Teaching Intensive Reading Skills' in Read andThink. Chapter 11 of Christine Nuttall's (1982)Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Languageentitled 'An intensive reading lesson' is alsowell worth reading as she incorporates Munby'sapproach and explains it with useful illustrations.A study of the chapter together with the textsin the Appendix will be most rewarding for theESL teacher.

Munby's approach is useful in that it makesgood use of group discussion. The teacher asksa few signpost questions which help the studentsto focus on the essential points. Silent readingis followed by group discussions of the answersto questions, the group leader checking thatthere is general agreement on the answer beforeproceeding to another question. The teachercirculates among the groups and helps studentsto come to grips with the text. He/She does nottell them the right answer if they have selectedthe wrong option (if the questions are in M. C.format) but challenges them to check againstthe text. When all the groups have decided on theanswers, the teacher puts their choices on a gridon the blackboard. If all groups agree on theparticular answer to a question, there is noproblem and the teacher passes on to the nextquestion. If there is some disagreement, theteacher puts the different answers e.g. 5Cs and2Es on the grid without comment. He/She theninvites the class to disucss which choice iscorrect. This will allow these who have madethe wrong choice to see precisely where theircomprehension has failed. In this way thestudents are given an opportunity to grapple witha text. After all, reading is not a passive skill;rather a good reader interacts with a text. AsMike Beanmont points out: 'Readers are simul-taneously engaged in processing, selecting,storing, retrieving, reviewing, predicting andevaluating both the factual and attitudinal

context of a text'.Munby's article has been much antho-

logised. His approach has also been made popularby the film 'Reading Comprehension' in theTeaching observed series, available from theBritish Council. One of My Dip. Ed. studentsfound it effective and wrote a detailed critiqueof the method and contrasted it with the rathersterile traditional approach. Teachers who intendto use the approach should not only see theBritish Council film but should also endeavourto read the actual article as Munby analyses inconsiderable detail some of the most commonerrors in reading comprehension.

I will now suggest six or seven ways ofdealing with text. Fuller details can be foundin the articles and books mentioned in this paper.But whatever techniques one uses, it must bebone in mind that reading is a private activity,it is something the student must do for himself.As S. Gika (1985) points out the learner shouldbe motivated so that he (a) wants to read thetext he is given, (b) wants to work through thetext both extensively and intensively and (c)wants to go beyond the text and infer thingsfrom it. It is hoped that the techniques whichare described will provide the motivationmentioned above.

(a) Non-fiction TextIn the case of non-fiction text that deals

with topics which are not exactly unfamiliarto the students, the teacher can announce thetopic or title and ask the class to write downwhat they already know as well as what theywould like to know about the subject. The pointscould be built up on the board and the studentsread the text to see if the passage contains theinformation mentioned or required. Thisapproach establishes a purpose for readingbefore the students tackle the text. Slightvariations of this approach are not difficult todevise. For example if the subject is onCantonese Opera, the teacher can list a numberof statements and show them on OHP and askstudents to indicate whether they agree with thestatements or not. They indicate agreement bya + and disagreement by a —. Then they areasked to read to find out if the writer of thetext shares the same views. The students are thusmotivated to complete the reading task.

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Notice that in this approach, we make useof the reader's background knowledge. Readingspecialists have pointed that the reader's priorknowledge is a crucial factor in text comprehen-sion. Langer (1981) suggests using a three-phase"pre-reading Plan" (PReP) which makes use ofthe reader's prior knowledge and activates hismemory and expectation. Swaffer (1981) alsosuggests using previewing activities that enablethe reader to formulate hypotheses about a text.

(b) Narrative TextI once asked a prospective AEO candidate

who was an English major how he would teacha comprehension passage. His answer was veryinteresting, 'If the passage is a story,! will usethe 2 Ps I T 2 Fs and 1 A formula. You seethere are people in a story and the story hasa setting, a place or a location where the actiontakes place. A, of course stands for action oractions. A story takes place in time, hence theT. The two Fs stand for facts and feelings,also necessary ingredients in a story. The aboveis not a magic formula, of course, but it is goodto help students keep those points in mind whenreading and 'enjoying' a story. A most interestingapproach can be found on pp 62-63 of' Reasonsfor Reading'. It is also included in the Appendixof Christine Nuttall's book mentioned earlier.The students are directed to look on the title ofthe book and the illustration on the cover andon the theme of the story. They are then askedto read the first chapter where the two protagon-ists are introduced The task they have to doconsists of completing a table on the salientpoints presented so far — information aboutthe people, the time, the place and the feelingof the 2 main characters. Only one word answersare required. They are then directed to read apivotal chapter, but before this they are givena few additional facts about the characters. Thenafter reading the chapter they are asked tospeculate on the ending. They are give fivechoices and asked to speculate whether theyare possible, impossible, probable or certain.There can be no doubt that students will bemotivated not only to read the sections givenand complete the tasks; they will want to readthe book and find out the ending.

(c) Information Transfer and Problem Solving

For texts which describe the organizationof actions and arrangement of things, inform-ation transfer activities such as labelling a pictureor completing a diagrammatic summary could beused. An article entitled 'Information Transferfor Listening and Reading' by David Palmer(1982) contains a number of examples ofinformation transfer activities. Mike Beaumont(1984) describes in detail how such activitiescan be used in a reading lesson. More examples ofsuch exercises can be found in Grellet's book. Arecent article which appears in 'World LanguageEnglish' 4:1, 'Re-establishing Reading Needs,Priorities, Techniques' by Sissy Gika (1984) isworth recommending as it contains manyexamples of imaginative techniques to motivatestudents to respond effectively to reading tasks.These include use of (a) problem-solving activity,(b) false summary (c) personal questions (d) list

of relevant and irelevant words (e) building upa story through pictures (f) multiple-choicequestionnaire, (g) completing forms, flowcharts,tables (h) drawings (i) role-play (j) interview(k) notetaking.

(d) Predictive ReadingGoodman's seminal article (1967) 'Reading

a Psycholinguistic Guessing Game' puts forwardthe view that reading constantly involvesguessing, predicting and checking one's anti-cipations concerning the form and content ofa text. This has given rise to the use of predictionas a technique in teaching reading. For advancedreaders, a list of key words taken from a passagecan be put on the board and students are askedto arrange the words into categories and predictthe content of the text. The students themread to see if the text confirms or disconfirmstheir anticipations.

Richard Young's (1980) article 'PredictiveReading' describes a technique that can be usedin intermediate forms. In the sample lesson bedescribes, he exploits a sequence of pictures ina newspaper for sequencing and discussion.This is followed by the reading of a 'gapped'text containing the details of the story. Withthe aid of an OHP the teacher exposes the textline by line stopping at places with gaps andasking the students to guess what folows. Thedifferent versions offered by the students are

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written on the board and then discussed. Afterthis the actual portion of the text is shown.

(e) Reading of Split TextsThis is ideal for pair work. A text and the

comprehension questions are cut into two.Student A gets the first part of the text and thequestions on the second half of it. Student B getsthe questions on A's text and the second halfof the text. They then question each other andfind out the main details of the text. See 'Read-ing it together' by Johanne McComish and MariaStabbs (1983) and, making the reading compre-hension communicative' by J. Miller (1984).

(f) Jigsaw ReadingThe principles in jigsaw listening can be

applied to reading. The class is divided intothree groups and each group is given one of thethree jigsaw texts. The students take notesand answer questions. The teacher then regroupsthe students so that they can exchange inform-ation with member of the other groups and buildup a complete picture of the information in theseparate texts. A book containing jigsaw textsin Reading Links by Marion Geddes and GillSturtridge (1982).

(g) Ooze ProcedureThe cloze procedure was first used to

establish readability. Later it became a populartesting device. Interest in the procedure as ateaching device is gaining ground. Two usefularticles on the use of the procedure is 'theCloze Procedure as a Teaching Technique: TheState of the Art' by Jesus Alirio Bastidas A.Universedd de Narino, Pasto (1983) and 'TheCloze Procedure as a Techning Technique toImprove Reading Comprehension' by Jesus A.Bastidas A. (1984).

In this paper, I have attempted to highlightsome of the recent developments in teachingreading to ESL students. I have pointed out theimportance of motivating the student andestablishing specific purposes in reading differenttexts. The emphasis on developing readingstrategies and creating reading tasks or exercisesinstead of relying solely on comprehensionquestions makes the teacher's work more onerousat first. But the ultimate results will more thanjustify the time and effort spent on it.

References

Aslanian, Y. 1985. 'Investigating the reading problemsof ESL students: an alternative' in English

Language Teaching Journal 39: 1. pp. 20-27.

Bastidas, A., Jesus, A. 1984. The Cloze Procedure as

a Teaching Technique to Improve ReadingComprehension' in English Teaching Forum

22: 2. pp. 20-24.

Bastidas, A., Jesus, A., & Universided de Narino Posto.1984. The Cloze Procedure as a TeachingTechnique: The State of the Art' in HOW 47.pp. 22-28. ASCOPI.

Beaumont, M. 1983. Take it from the text: an approachto the teaching of Reading' in Case Studies in

ELT edited by R. R. Jordan, pp. 26-34. CollinsELT,

Brumfit, C. J. 1978. The Teaching of Advanced Read-

ing Skills in Foreign Languages, with specialreference to English as a foreign language' inLanguage Teaching and Linguistics Surveys

pp. 173-184.

Carrell, P. L. 1984 "Schema Theory and ESL Reading:

Classroom Implications and Applications inModern Language Journal 68:4. pp. 331-343.

Carrell, P. L. and Eisterhold, J. C. 1983. 'Schema

Theory and ESL Teaching Pedagogy' in

TESOL Quarterly

Carrell, P. L. and Eisterhold, J. C. 1983. "SchemaTheory and ESL Teaching Pedagogy' inTESOL Quarterly 17:4. pp. 553-573.

Clarke, M. 1980. The Short Circuit Hypothesis ofESL Reading or When Language Competence

. Interferes with Reading Performance' in Modern

Language Journal 64. p. 203.

Davies, E. & Whitney, N. 1979. Reasons for Reading

Heinemann.

Davies, E. & Whitney, N. 1981. Strategies for ReadingHeinemann.

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Davies, E. & Whitney, N. 1984. Study Skills for ReadingHeinemann.

Gika, S. 1984. 'Re-establisling Reading Needs, Tech-niques' in World Language English 4: 1. pp. 163-179.

Goodman, K. 1967, 'Reading — a PsycholinguisticGuessing Game' in Journal of the ReadingSpecialist pp. 259-264, 266-271.

Grellet, F. 1981. Developing Reading Skills - a practicalguide to reading comprehension exercises Cam-bridge.

Heyworth, F. 1982. Intermediate Language Skills:Reading Hodder and Stoughton.

Hosenfeld, C. et al 1981. 'Second Language Reading:A Curricula! Sequence for Teaching ReadingStrategies' in Foreign Language Annals 8. pp.227 -232.

JohnsT. & Davies, F. 1983. Text as a Vehicle forInformation: the Classroom Use of Written Textsin Teaching Reading in a Foreign Language* inReading in a Foreign Language 1: 1. pp. 1-19.

Lanfer, B. and Sam, D. 1985. Taking the Easy WayOut: Non-Use and Misuse of Clues in EFLReading' in English Teaching Forum 23:2.pp. 7-10.

Langer, J. 1981. 'From Theory to Practice: A Pre-reading Plan* in Journal of Reading 25. p. 452.

Maingay, S. 1983. Making Sense of Reading. Harrap.

Millar, D. C. 1966. Teaching the Reading PassageOxford.

Miller, J. 1984. 'Making the Reading ComprehensionCommunicative' in Modern English Teacher11: 3. pp. 23-24.

Moore, J. 1980. Reading and Thinking in EnglishOxford.

Munby, J. 1982. Communicative Syllabus DesignCambridge.

Munby, J. 1968. Read and Think Longman.

Nation, I. S. P. 1979. The Curse of the ComprehensionQuestion: Some Alternatives' in Guidelines No. 2Teaching Reading Skills pp. 86-103.

Neufeld, J. & Webb, M. 1984. 25 Stategies: ReadingSkills for Intermediate-Advanced Students ofEnglish as a Second Language. Holt, Rinehart& Winston.

Nuttall, C. 1982. Teaching Reading Skills in a ForeignLanguage pp. 19-20, 146-166.

Obando, P. V. 1983. 'Schema Theory and ReadingComprehension Teaching' in HOW 47. pp 18-21

Palmer, D. M. 'Information Transfer for Listening andReading* in English Teaching Forum 20:1.pp. 29-33.

Pearson, P. P. and Johnson, D. D. 1977. Teaching Read-ing Comprehension Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

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Mr. William Cheng is Senior Lecturer in Educationand Supervisor of the English Language Unit at Schoolof Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

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