Teaching Reading in an ESL and EFL Setting: A Comparison€¦ · in the EFL classroom and the...
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ELTWorldOnline.com August 2009 http://blog.nus.edu.sg/eltwo/2009/08/22/teaching-reading-in-an-esl-and-efl-setting-a-comparison/ Volume 1
Copyright © 2009, ISSN 1793-8732 1
Teaching Reading in an ESL and EFL Setting: A Comparison
by Chitra Varaprasad
National University of Singapore (Singapore)
Keywords: discourse-based teaching, schema theory, teaching reading, text structure
Abstract
This paper explains the use of a discourse-based method to teach reading in ESL and EFL
settings and shares insights from the classroom about this teaching experience in both these
settings. It compares students’ backgrounds, the teaching methods and materials with a
special focus on the modifications made in the EFL setting. It also discusses group dynamics
in the EFL classroom and the implications for teaching and learning.
Introduction
Having used a discourse-based method to teach reading in an ESL setting, I attempted to use
the same method to teaching reading to students in an EFL setting. This paper will share
insights from the classroom about this teaching experience in both these settings. It will first
discuss a few relevant reading theories pertinent to the pedagogy used. Next, it will provide
comparative information on students’ backgrounds, the teaching methods and materials used
in both the settings, with a special focus on the modifications made in the EFL setting. It will
also discuss group dynamics in the EFL classroom and the changes that needed to be made.
The paper will conclude with implications for teaching and learning, especially in an EFL
setting.
Reading theories
Of the two approaches mentioned in reading research and literature, the bottom-up approach
focuses on language elements such as grammar, vocabulary and cohesion, while the top-
down approach includes a focus on background knowledge about content and organization,
generally referred to as content and formal schemata respectively. A combination of these
two approaches is generally known as the Interactive Model of Reading. The pedagogy in
this study was based on the Schema Interactive Model of Reading (Simonsen and Singer,
1992).
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Text structure and Schema Theory
Text structure or formal schemata is an important concept in Schema Theory. As a cognitive
process, reading has been characterized as building a mental representation of text. Readers
possess schemata that represent their knowledge of conventionalized texts (Kintsch & van
Dijk, 1978). For example, knowledge of the schema of expository texts will enable students
to act on the different propositions at the level of the paragraphs to come up with a thesis or
the macro-gist of the writer and to see the connections between the gist and the
propositions. According to Kintsch (1987), the successful reader needs to decode text at the
“overall, between-paragraph” level (p. 7) to arrive at this coherent whole.
The Schema Interactive Model of Reading considers reading as a communicative act of
discourse. As a result, reading pedagogy incorporated the concept of reading as a discourse
act because writers write for a purpose and texts are the result of certain communicative acts.
As a result, pedagogy also drew upon assumptions from the Rhetorical Structure Theory of
Mann and Thompson (1992, 1988) that
writers have certain communicative goals; and
readers can interpret these globally (the function of the text) and locally (the function
of the different parts contributing to the global whole).
Theory-driven pedagogy
Based on reading theories and concepts explained above, pedagogy focused on activating
students’ background knowledge about content and organization, followed by identifying the
writer’s thesis, the purpose of the writer at the level of the paragraphs and the connections
between paragraphs, based on their purpose. The table below provides a list of the approaches
and the relevant strategies against each of the approaches used in strategy training.
Table 1: Approaches and strategies
Approaches Strategies
Top Down # Generating questions from title
# Skimming for content, based on questions generated
# Skimming for writer’s thesis
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Bottom Up # Guessing meanings of words from context (vocabulary)
# Understanding how language functions in context. E.g. use
of modals, tenses
Schema Interactive
(text as discourse)
# Concepts of cohesion and coherence and connections
between paragraphs
# Text purpose and purpose at the paragraph level
Features of strategy training
Two features characterized the training procedures. Generally used for teaching writing
across the curriculum (Rothery, 1990), the three phases of the Genre Teaching and Learning
Cycle of Modelling, Joint Negotiation of Text and Independent Construction of Text
(Flowerdew, 1993; Johns, 1997) formed the basis for training. Teacher modelling, advocated
by Janzen, (2002) and Grabe (2002b), was based on talking aloud and demonstrating strategy
use. The three phases of the teaching and learning cycle were modified to Teacher Modelling,
Joint Analysis of Text and Independent Deconstruction of Text to reflect the reading focus.
Secondly, the questioning strategy advocated by Nuttal (1996) and modelled by the teacher
for raising students’ awareness through the use of ‘Wh’ questions, provided the basis for
training. The purpose was to develop in students the habit of raising questions as such
questions can trigger students’ mental processes and enable them to see connections between
segments of a text.
Based on the analysis modelled, a joint analysis of text was generally performed as a group
activity wherein students attempted analysis of paragraphs assigned to them with input,
guidance and discussion with the tutor. When confidence level among students was raised,
they set out to independently deconstruct texts through analysis. In short, training methods
consisted mainly of teacher modelling and group work.
Classroom applications
Training modified in terms of the pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading phases
(Urquhart & Weir, 1998) is presented here in a linear form for ease of understanding only. It
would be misleading to assume that strategies can be neatly pedagogized and taught to
learners in a straightforward manner (Rees-Miller, 1993; Tudor, 1996). In actual practice, the
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training was more interactive and less linear as the students became more comfortable with
the procedures.
Pre-reading phase: As a first step, students were trained to generate ‘wh’ questions based on
the title of the text. For example, if the title of the text was Genetic Engineering, the teacher
modeled questions such as “What is genetic engineering? What are its applications? What are
the effects?” by talking aloud. In a typical lesson the teacher modeled the skimming
procedure twice: first to obtain answers to the generated questions and the second time to
obtain the writer’s thesis or gist. The latter too was done by the teacher talking aloud such as
“I’ll skim through the introduction and conclusion sections, first to get a tentative thesis….”
(The thesis ‘Genetic engineering has found wide applications. Hence all sections of the public
should work together to derive the most from it’ would be written on the board). The teacher
would talk aloud again to say “I’ll skim through the paragraphs now to get an idea of what
the writer is doing (not saying) and see if the thesis needs to be made more specific . . . . the
writer discusses the concerns of the public, so that needs to be part of the thesis”. ( Now the
tentative thesis on the board is modified to ‘in spite of the concerns of the general public
about GE technology, all sections of the society should work together to benefit from this
powerful technology’).
While-reading phase: At this phase, the purpose of teacher modeling was to raise students’
awareness about the writer’s organization at the level of the paragraphs, the inter-relations
between paragraphs and the support provided to the writer’s thesis. Since there were many
steps involved in this phase, I coined the acronym SPORM (skim, purpose, organization,
relation and main idea) for clarity in application. As such, teacher modelling of the analysis
of the first few paragraphs consisted of talking aloud through the questioning strategy using
the acronym SPORM as explained below:
S Skim through the paragraph
P Identify the writer’s Purpose (based on the concept of discourse structure)
The writer’s purpose refers to the communicative purpose or rhetorical function of the
paragraph expressed in acts of discourse such as the writer provides ‘reasons’, ‘causes’
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or even expressed as ‘the writer further elaborates’ or ‘brings in a another point of
view’.
O Organization
Identify logical connectors/ key lexical words (textual cues, Urquhart and Weir, 1998)
Identify meaning relations (based on the concept of paragraph structure)
The focus here was on identifying the writer’s claims and supporting
elaboration/evidence. The analysis was at the level of individual paragraphs but focus
of instruction was also on the connections between paragraphs and in relation to the
writer’s thesis as seen in the instruction that follows:
R Relation
How does this section relate to the writer’s thesis? (based on the concept of genre
structure)
How does this section relate to the earlier section? (based on the concept of discourse
structure)
The focus here is on raising students’ awareness about the connections between
different paragraphs in the text and also between the writer’s thesis and the different
paragraph sections in the text. The purpose is to enable students to see how these
different segments function in isolation and in combination to support the writer’s
thesis.
M Main Ideas
Using the derived meaning relations as clues, teacher modeling focused on the main
meaning relations such as claims, reasons and conclusion to derive the main ideas of
the paragraphs and to ignore supporting evidence or examples. The objective here
was to enable students to differentiate between main claims and supporting details.
The above steps were modeled for the first few paragraphs. Modeling (Janzen, 2002)
consisted of the teacher talking aloud, elaborating and demonstrating the processes involved
in SPORM. It involved the teacher demonstrating how to work through the strategy. The
steps involved in the acronym SPORM formed the scaffolding activity. Gradually students
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learnt to work in groups followed by interactions with the tutor resulting in a joint analysis of
text.
Discussion also focused on other obvious discourse features such as cohesion and coherence,
anaphoric and meta-discourse aspects to show how the writer uses them in that particular
context. Where they were not explicitly signaled, students in their discussions were able to
infer. This was the pattern of activity with the first few texts. When confidence and comfort
levels in the use of the strategy was achieved, the students were asked to work on their own
as was the case with the last two texts, resulting in independent de-construction of texts
(modified version of Genre Teaching and Learning Cycle).
Post-reading phase: All the above concepts were reinforced by an organization flow diagram
showing connections between different parts of the text. It is at this stage that the writer’s
tentative thesis would be either confirmed or modified as students’ understanding of the
support provided by the writer at the paragraph levels would be more clear. See Appendix B
for a sample template of the organization flow diagram used in the EFL setting.
Comparison of ESL and EFL settings
Student background
Student backgrounds in the ESL and EFL settings were very different, especially their
language proficiency. The students in the ESL setting were mainly undergraduates from the
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences who were assigned to take an academic reading and
writing module EA1101 at the National University of Singapore (NUS). They were assigned
this module based on their Qualifying English Test performance. Prior to taking the module,
they had had 12 years of schooling in the Singapore education system, where the medium of
instruction is English. Their level of English language proficiency could be rated as
intermediate as they would have otherwise been assigned to a basic level English proficiency
course.
The students in the EFL setting were Japanese students from Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific
University who had enrolled for an Academic English Programme at the Centre for English
Language Communication, NUS. These students were in their first year of university. Their
TOEFL scores were in the range of 400-450. Their English language proficiency could be
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said be at Grade Seven (American system) or Secondary One (Singapore system) level.
Teaching of reading was one component of the programme.
Teaching materials
The length and the difficulty level of the expository texts were also varied. In the ESL setting
five academic texts on general issues such as environment and population growth were used
for strategy training. They averaged about 800 words in length. These texts were extracts
from larger ones, but no changes were made to either organization or language. The students
received around 15 hours of training spread over five weeks
In the EFL situation, four texts on topics such as stress and water pollution were used. The
initial text used was about 700 words in length. Since the text was found to be rather
challenging in the first session with no input from the students during strategy training, it had
to be modified for length, vocabulary and for explicit organization. For example lexical
words representing the rhetorical functions of the paragraphs, such as problem, solution,
cause and effect had to be explicitly inserted for easy identification of the writer’s purpose for
each paragraph. Similarly, transition markers such as on the other hand, however and in
addition indicating connections between ideas and paragraphs were also inserted. The thesis
statement had to be also inserted in both the introduction and concluding sections. In short the
text had to be simplified, modified and reduced to a length of around 350-400 words. See
Appendix A for a sample of one such text. Lessons on reading were conducted for five hours
once a week, spread over four weeks, constituting twenty hours of classroom teaching,
discussion and learning.
Modifications to strategy training
In the EFL setting, a few modifications in approach and strategies had to be made at the pre-
and while-reading stage as shown in Table 2.
Table 2: A comparison of strategy training
Stages Strategy Training: ESL Strategy Training: EFL
Pre-
reading
# Generating questions from title
# Skimming for content, based
# Generating questions from title
# Skimming for content, based on
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on questions generated
# Skimming for writer’s thesis
questions generated
While-
reading
S
P
O
R
M
# Paragraph-level analysis
- skimming and identifying
writer’s purpose using
lexical clues, if any
- identifying paragraph
organization
- identifying paragraph thesis
support
- identifying relations
between paragraphs-
Obtaining main idea of each
paragraph
- identify language functions
in context: e.g. use of
modals/tenses.
# Identifying and finding meaning
of difficult words
# Paragraph level analysis
- skimming and
identifying writer’s purpose
using lexical clues
- identifying paragraph
organization- identifying
connections between paragraphs
- obtaining main idea of each
paragraph
# Identifying writer’s thesis
- identifying paragraph thesis
support
- identifying language use in
context: e.g. use of
modals/tenses.
Post-
reading
# Information flow diagram # Information flow diagram
While most of the strategies used in both the settings were similar, three modifications
indicated in bold had to be made. Firstly, the strategy of skimming for the writer’s thesis at
the pre-reading stage was followed for ESL students, but had to be delayed and moved to the
while-reading phase for the EFL students. The cognitive demands of using a global strategy
as early as at this stage, even before they had become comfortable with the text, was very
challenging for EFL students.
Secondly, at the while-reading stage, it can be seen that with the ESL students I was able to
delve straight into paragraph-level analysis. However, with the EFL students, I had to take a
bottom-up approach by focusing on difficult vocabulary (identified by them) in the text. This
is because I noticed that they were psychologically more comfortable only if they had an
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understanding of the difficult words. Thirdly, identifying the writer’s thesis came in only
after the paragraph level analysis using SPORM, as this would give the EFL student some
idea of the information in the paragraphs which can help them identify the thesis statement.
This understanding from the paragraph-level analysis can also enable them to identify
paragraph-thesis support. As can be seen the approach at this phase was more bottom-up.
Teaching methods
I had to modify my speed of utterance in the classroom. Salim (2004) in the context of
“anxiety of FL learning” mentions a rise in students’ anxiety levels “when speech in the FL is
fast for the listener”. I could sense this anxiety on students’ faces. When asked if students
understood some of the explanation, I was asked to slow down. In addition to speaking
slowly and articulating words clearly, I also used the whiteboard extensively to write down
words and phrases that emerged while I talked-aloud. This was just to make sure that they
understood some of them. I sensed that such visual input can lessen their anxiety and serve as
explicit aids to their understanding. The ESL setting, however, did not require me to make
such changes.
Group dynamics
In the EFL setting, unlike in the ESL, group work was one area where I had to make several
changes. The initial reaction of the students to group work in the first morning session was
total silence with no verbal contributions forthcoming. I could see anxiety and lack of
understanding writ on their faces. This is when that afternoon during lunch time, I made all
the changes to the teaching materials mentioned earlier such as shortening and simplifying
the text. While the tension in the afternoon session had lessened, I could sense a struggle and
hesitation in students to express themselves as they looked at each other and struggled for
words. Horowitz et al. (1986) identify apprehension of verbal communication as one
expression of FL anxiety. I sensed that they were cognitively and linguistically challenged.
Empathizing with this situation, I asked the students to use their first language (Japanese in
this context) during discussion and to also use their electronic bilingual dictionary (Japanese
English/English Japanese), which they all had. I told the students that while the discussion in
groups could be in Japanese, the reporting to the class had to be in English. The use of the
first language to address FL anxiety is supported by Ganschow and Sparks (1996). This
approach worked wonders and gradually contributed to their comfort level and confidence as
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they gradually resorted to using English, but with the help of the dictionary sometimes.
Initially, I had to give them ample time to process their understanding of the text and to
verbalise their thoughts.
Implications for teaching and learning in an EFL Setting
Theoretically, while a top-down approach was effective with ESL students, with the EFL
students I had to use a more bottom-up approach because they needed the focus of teaching to
be on the word and sentence level. This could be because of their limited linguistic resources.
Though cognitively challenged by the content, the use of their L1 enabled them to understand
content and to express this understanding in English in spite of their language constraints.
Allowing them to use their L1 and the bilingual dictionary transformed the classroom
atmosphere into a more participatory setting.
It is obvious that materials have to be learner and learning-centred as the lessons and lesson
plans were driven by the students and the classroom situation. However, the reading
strategies used in both the settings remained unchanged. It was the order in which they were
introduced that had to be changed to suit the situation. The students easily identified with the
acronym SPORM. This enabled easy analysis of texts at the paragraph levels.
Conclusion
Teaching reading to EFL students can be a very challenging experience. It is also a humbling
experience wherein the teacher needs to be as much a learner willing to be part of her
students’ learning experience. He/she needs to be flexible with her teaching materials and
methods, try to make the classroom atmosphere less threatening for the students. This can
make teaching and learning more rewarding both for the teacher and her students respectively.
References
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genres. ELT Journal, 47, 305-316.
Ganschow, L., & Sparks, R. (1996). Anxiety about foreign language learning among high
school women. The Modern Language Journal, 80, 199-212.
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Grabe, W. (2002b). Narrative and expository macro-genres. In A. M. Johns (Ed.), Genre in
the classroom: Multiple perspectives (pp. 249-269). London: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Horowitz, E., Horowitz, M., & Cope, M. (1986). Foreign language classroom anxiety. The
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(Eds.), Methodology in language teaching: An anthology of current practice (pp. 287-
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& N. M. Judy (Eds.), Understanding readers’ understanding: Theory and
practice (pp. 5-14). NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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Appendix A
Text One: Water – Everybody’s Problem
Text Pre-
reading
While-
reading
Vocab
/language
1 People in almost every part of the world have had their problems with
water. Developed and developing countries alike are now talking about
a water crisis. However, fortunately, the water problem is being tackled.
2 Specialists in many countries are developing methods to improve
supply and protect the quality of water, and a number of ambitious
programs have been started. Good forecasting – including predictions of
snow, rain, river levels and soil loss can help scientists prevent, or at
least cope with, floods. Canals can ease one of the major water -related
problems: drought.
3 Research into removing salt from seawater also continues along with
inventing new and improving existing desalination methods although no
method can yet promise truly low-cost fresh water. Fossil water —
underground water dating from the ice age – could be drilled for in
some areas, but supplies are non-renewable. Work continues in all these
areas. It is obvious that a lot of time, money and research are going into
finding solutions for some of the problems.
4 However, worldwide, the ugly fact remains that something like 250
million new cases of water-borne diseases are discovered every year –
and 25,000 people die from them every day. Pollution continues to
affect us – all of us. Whether polluted by industrial waste, sewage or
other pollution, water supplies can allow deadly water-borne diseases to
develop when safety and purification methods are poor.
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5 The water crisis will continue to become worse as people continue to
pollute the waterways and as the demand for clean water increases.
Although some solutions are currently in place and others may be
coming in the near future, most are costly and may be only partly
effective. They also mainly deal with the effects and not the causes of
the crisis.
6 To solve the problem, we also need to reduce the wastes that go into
our rivers and lakes and reduce the pollution that goes into the air,
which can cause acid rain and erratic weather patterns. Only with a
wide range of solutions can the crisis be solved.
Appendix B
Post-reading strategies
Information flow diagram
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About the Author
Chitra Varaprasad is a senior lecturer at the Centre for English Language Communication
(CELC), National University of Singapore. She has taught academic literacy, communication
and language proficiency courses. Her research interests are teaching methodology and
materials development. She has presented and published several papers on teaching reading
and writing. Chitra’s doctoral thesis was on reading for macrostructure. She is currently
CELC’s Head of Professional Development.