«Education has produced a vast population able to read,
but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.»

- G.M. Trevelyan, in
A.Word.A.Day

title

ANGLAIS LANGUE SECONDE -COMMENT ENCOURAGER LA LECTURE

A FEW QUOTES, AND LINKS ABOUT READING AND READERS

  • When Benjamin Franklin was dining out in Paris, one of the other diners posed the question: "What condition of man most deserves pity?" Each guest proposed an example of such a pitiable condition. When Franklin's turn came, he offered: "A lonesome man on a rainy day who does not know how to read."

  • 30 WAYS TO IMPROVE students reading.

  • READING REAL BOOKS, real material.

  • LA LECTURE GLOBALE - un échec ? After embracing 'whole language' in its entirety, the state of California is re-evaluating its goals and methods of teaching reading.

  • PROFICIENCY GUIDELINES for Listening - Reading - Writing - Speaking.

  • ãIt is important to include a Reading Program for all levels of English. Reading broadens horizons culturally, emotionally and linguistically, stimulates the pupils' imaginations, and fosters confidence in their ability to meaningfully react to what they have read. Teaching the Reading Program integrates the four skills and improves overally proficiency"...

  • "Share great stories with interesting and beautiful language, see your partner as an individual, a human being with dignity and integrity." -Lester L. Laminack, Volunteers Working with Young Readers, p. 116

E-FREE BOOKS

Out-of-copyright books sites :

PROJEECT GUTENBERG - "all about making texts available free to everyone! Just download them and read" :

LITERATURE ONLINE LIBRARY : "Trying to bring real books to people through the Internet."

WIRETAP Electronic Text. - "considerably expanding their offerings in the near future. More books, more authors."

FRESH IDEAS

ALTERNATIVES to book projects - lots of new ideas that can be used in writing as well as orally.

30 WAYS TO IMPROVE READING -
an article from AWL's ELT magazine by Nick DAWSON.

IMPROVING READING

Reading for
meaning

Reading for
specific
information

Reading for gist

Reading for detailed
understanding

Reading
between the lines

Reading
beyond the lines

Critical reading

Extensive graded reading for pleasure

Classroom reading Activities

Vocabulary
problems in reading

Suffixes tell about the grammatical
form of the word

Reading for meaning



1 Pre-reading activities: Before we read, we usually have some expectations about what the text will contain. We also know our reading purpose - what we want to take from the text. Our expectations and our reading purpose will decide the best reading style. Pre-reading activities help students to develop their expectations and decide the best reading style.

2 Previewing a text: Before we start to read a text we usually look briefly at the form of the text. When you first looked at this text, you didn't read every word - you looked at the section headings and the paragraph titles to form some idea of what the text would contain and to decide how you were going to read it (your reading style). Before students read at a text they should look at the form - is it a list, a conversation, a newspaper article, an essay, a story?

3
Mouth reading or eye reading?: Reading aloud is a difficult, slow and inefficient method of decoding the meaning of a written text. Eyes can read much faster than mouths. In mother tongue we try not to 'mouth read' because it is too slow. Learners of English often sub-vocalise. They like
to 'listen silently' to the words they are reading because it helps comprehension.

4 Selecting the appropriate reading style: The appropriate reading style is decided by

[a] the form of the text,

[b] the length of the text,

[c] the time you have available and

[d] your reason for reading.

These factors will decide your reading style - whether you will read quickly or slowly, whether you will read every sentence in sequence or whether you will jump around, whether you will start at the beginning or in the middle.

Reading for specific information 

5 Quick or slow?: Students usually learn to start reading at the first word on the top left of the text. They then read word by word, until the reach the end of the text. This reading style is very slow and students often lose interest before they reach the end.

6 Finding specific information: Students know that names of people and places begin with capital letters. Teach them to scan through a text very quickly to find this type of information. You have two minutes to find the names of six towns in this text about Australia. Students will find names of people, rivers, companies, towns and mountains. They will need to 'read around the word' to learn which are the names of towns.

7 Time limits: Giving students strict time limits for reading is the only way to increase their speed and efficiency. The best reading style is the one which will give you the understanding you need in the fastest time.

8 Looking for key words: If students are trying to answer simple comprehension questions, they should learn to search for key words to find the information quickly. What colour are the taxis in New York? Students don't need to read the whole text in detail. They need to find the word 'taxi' and then 'read around the word' to find the colour.

9 'Reading without reading': Finding a specific word in a text involves running your eyes over the words without reading them, just looking for the key word.

Reading for gist 

Reading for gist means reading to get a general idea of the topic and content of a text without searching for specific information or trying to get a detailed understanding of the ideas.

10 One slow reading or repeated reading in different styles?:
The slow detailed reading style described in [5] above is less efficient than fast, repeated readings in different styles.

11 Looking at pictures and headlines: Many texts are printed with headlines in larger type and photographs with captions. These are designed to attract the reader, give an idea of the topic and encourage further reading. Students should learn to exploit all these special features.

12 Finding the topic sentences: Before students start detailed reading, they should have some idea of the topic and content of the text. A quick way of getting this information is to read the first sentence in each paragraph. This is usually the topic sentence and introduces the main idea in that paragraph. Together, the topic sentences will give you a fair idea
of the main content of the text.
Reading for detailed understanding 

Students in schools, when reading texts books, need to read for detailed understanding. This style of reading should never be attempted before reading for gist or general understanding.

13 The P3RU procedure: The procedure involves five stages:
[1] PREVIEW the text,
[2] READ the text carefully,
[3] RECORD the main points of the text in note form,
[4] REVIEW or REVISE the text by reading it quickly to answer any
outstanding questions or parts you did not understand,
[5] USE the information from the text in discussions with your friends
and in writing essays.

Reading between the lines 

14 Training students to infer: Comprehension questions should not only refer to information which is stated plainly in the text. Students should not always be able to copy their answers directly from the text. They should encourage students to infer ideas. If Mrs Simpson put on her warm
coat before she went out, we can infer that the weather was cold. If parking is forbidden from Monday to Saturday, we can infer it is permitted on Sunday.

15 Can you really infer?: As students learn to infer, they should also learn what cannot be inferred from the text. If Sally says "I have a sister called Mandy," we cannot infer that she has only one sister, or that she has no brothers.

16 T/F/DK: These curious letters stand for True, False and Don't Know. It is as important for students to know what a text doesn't contain, as it is to know what it does contain.

Reading beyond the lines 

'Projective reading' involves the reader in a personal response to the text. Students should be encouraged to formulate and express their feelings about texts they read. This ability, not only helps students become more involved with the text, it is also necessary for critical reading of both literary and non-literary texts.

17 How do you feel about the text?: Would you behave in the same way as the central character? Could this happen in this country? Do you think the story is true? All these questions encourage students to formulate and express their personal opinions about a text. Remember that there are no 'wrong' answers to these questions!
Critical reading 
We read to increase our knowledge and develop our opinions. As the reader reads he/she 'converses' with the writer - asking questions and being given answers. The reader will not necessarily agree with all the opinions of the writer. The reader will not necessarily believe everything the writer says.

Critical reading involves understanding what the writer is trying to communicate and analysing the writer's techniques. This may be followed by a discussion of how the text could be improved.

18 Reading commercial letters: Before you start reading a commercial letter, you need to know who it is from, who it is to and when it was written. If you start reading before you know these things you cannot form expectations of the contents and your comprehension will be very inefficient.

It is important to understand the communicative purpose - why the letter was written. If this is not clear, then the letter has failed in its communicative purpose.

Extensive graded reading for pleasure 

19
Why use graded readers?: For many years, teachers have realised that providing students with graded extensive reading material and encouraging them to read at home is the easiest and cheapest way of helping them to improve their learn English. The material is graded to give them an
experience of reading (without the help of a dictionary) which is similar to reading in the mother tongue.

20 Does graded reading replace authentic reading?: Graded readin is a preparation for authentic reading. Many of the techniques for exploiting authentic texts can be introduced through using graded texts. Graded texts can be very useful, but they are not replacement for authentic reading.

Classroom reading Activities 

21
Why should the teacher read aloud?: Reading stories to students is an important listening activity. Research has shown that it also helps students to be come better readers.

22 Should the teacher read a text aloud?: In general, we say that reading texts should be read silently and not used for reading comprehension. However, many teachers find (particularly with classes of poor readers) that reading the text aloud helps the students to get to through the whole
text. The momentum of the teacher's voice carries the students and prevents them from getting stuck on difficult words. So, read aloud occasionally but not always!

23 Should students ever read aloud?: Students should not be asked to read aloud any text which they have not previously studied and understood. Provided that they understand a text they may enjoy reading aloud - particularly plays, poetry and other forms of 'dramatic writing.

24 Using very short reading texts: Robert O'Neill has used very short reading texts like "They didn't enjoy their holiday because the hotel was bad and the weather was terrible." He uses this type of short text to encourage students to imagine details of the situation - Who were 'they'? Where did they go on holiday? How long did they stay? What did they do? Describe the weather and the hotel in more detail.
Vocabulary problems in reading 

25 Ignoring unknown vocabulary: Depending on the reason for reading, it is usually possible to ignore unknown words or be satisfied with partial understanding. Take a reading passage at about the students' level and black out a few words. Then show them that they can understand a lot without knowing these words.

26 Don't zoom in, zoom out!: When students come across an unknown word, they usually 'zoom in' on that word and ignore the context. It is moreimportant to 'zoom out' and try to infer the meaning from the context.

27 Using Italian [or French] to understand English: Many words look or sound similar in English and Italian [or French] . Students should always examinthe spelling (or more frequently, the sound) of the unknown word to see if theris a similar word in your language.

28 Examine the grammatical context: This will often tell you if the unknown word is a noun, verb, adjective, preposition etc. This is a good start to guessing the meaning.

29 Examine the prefixes and suffixes: Prefixes like dis-, inter-, intra-, un-, give a clue to the meaning of the word. Since they are mostly Latin or Greek in origin, the meaning is often the same in Italian.

Suffixes usually tell you about the grammatical form of the word 

30 Use a dictionary, but use it well!: A good learner's dictionary is a valuable resource for students and should be on their desks throughout the foreign language lesson. However, they must also be taught how to use the dictionary properly! - from AWL's ELT magazine by Nick DAWSON, © Nick Dawson 1997.

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bibliographie

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méthode

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thème
écrit et oral

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traducteur

dictionnaires,
glossaires

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traductologie

traduction:
transpositions

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lexico-sémantiques

lexique
grammatical

section
linguistique

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