CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW
Having described and known the research area, statement of the research problem, the question
and hypotheses, the aim and objectives, period of study, the reason for choosing the topic,
limitations of the research study, and the assumptions in the previous subsections, this chapter is
going to present what the literature says about the topic under discussion.
1.1. Defining Terminology
In the section below we are going to discuss reading, looking at its definitions, the reason for
teaching reading, as well as the kind of reading that the students should do.
1.1.1. Reading
English language comprises a set of skills known as productive and receptive skills. When we
are talking about productive skills, we are referring to writing and speaking skills, on the other
hand, when we are talking about the receptive ones, we are referring to listening and reading.
For our work, we are simply going to focus on reading skills.
Reading can be one of the greatest pleasures we experience throughout our lives. Reading helps
us in many ways: It entertains, educates, communicates, and informs us about the past, the
present, and even the future (Farrell, 2009, p.1).
There is no single definition of reading, and if we were to go to the basic idea
behind this term, we will see that reading is the process of decoding written signs and signals.
Following Anthony, Pearson & Raphael (1993, p. 284), Reading is the process of constructing
meaning through the dynamic interaction among the reader’s existing knowledge, the
information suggested by the written language, and the context of the reading situation. Richard
and Schmidt (2010) emphasise that reading is the process by which the meaning of a written text
is understood, and it employs many different cognitive skills, including letter and word
recognition, knowledge of syntax, and recognition of text types and text structure (p. 483).
As a cognitive foundation, reading is defined as the ability to extract and
construct linguistically-based meaning from written text. It is not simply being able to
accurately identify written words; it is about gaining meaning from sequences of printed words
as they appear in well-formed text, allowing construction of a mental representation (or model)
of the situation the text portrays.
Reading is not passive, as it involves the reader in active interaction with what is presented in
the text in order to make sense of what is written.
From the definition above, we can see that reading happens when one’s
previous knowledge interacts with the written language as well as the context of what is being
read. The process of reading is, indeed, a very complex system involving a range of many other
processes that can happen very quickly and simultaneously (Watkins, 2017, p.14). In academic
learning, reading is generally viewed as a fundamental skill for success (Carrell and Grabe
2010).
For Grellet (1981, p. 4), there are two main reasons for reading: first, reading for pleasure,
which might include reading humorous posts on social media or reading a novel, as well as
many things in between, and second, reading for information which is, reading quickly to
identify appropriate information, evaluating information, and integrating information from
multiple sources.
Watkins (2017, p. 16) enhances that, in L2 learning contexts we may be able to add a further
category to those proposed by Grellet as learners may choose to read not primarily for pleasure
nor to gain new information, but as a language learning strategy. In these cases the primary
purpose for reading is to develop language knowledge (for example, building vocabulary range)
and skills (such as reading fluency). In terms of developing language knowledge, this could
involve consciously looking out for and exploiting the learning opportunities a text offers or
may rely simply on the benefits of exposure to the target language.
Having shed light on the definitions of reading, we are now in conditions to shift our
attention to the why we teach reading.
1.2. Why do we teach reading?
There are a lot of reasons why teachers tend to teach reading. For example, one may teach
reading because he or she feels students will do better through doing it, while others may feel
that by doing it, students develop their thinking skills and capacity. A teacher may teach reading
because he or she wants his or her students to look for a specific information in the text, or it
may be the case that they simply want their students to be good readers, no matter what they
read, and all this activity that the teachers orients students to do can only be done through the
use of a plethora of strategies, which is a case for concern in the study.
Harmer (1998, p. 68) states that, many are reasons why getting students to read English texts is
an important part of the teacher's job. He explains that in the first place, many of them want to
be able to read texts in English either for their careers, for study purposes or simply for pleasure.
Anything we can do to make reading easier for them must be a good idea. Reading is useful for
other purposes too: any exposure to English (provided students understand it more or less) is a
good thing for language students. At the very least, some of the language sticks in their minds as
part of the process of language acquisition, and, if the reading text is especially interesting and
engaging, acquisition is likely to be even more successful.
Reading texts provide good models for English writing. When we teach the skill of writing, we
will need to show students models of what we are encouraging them to do. Harmer (1998, p.68)
adds that, reading texts also provide opportunities to study language: vocabulary, grammar,
punctuation, and the way we construct sentences, paragraphs and texts. Lastly, good reading
texts can introduce interesting topics, stimulate discussion, excite imaginative responses and be
the springboard for well-rounded, fascinating lessons.
From the aspects above, we can assume that it is very advantageous for the teacher to teach
reading to his or her students because, in this way, not only is the teacher helping them to
become good readers in the near future, but also
After dealing with the reasons why teachers teach reading in the above section, and having
clarified it, let us now move to another section which is about the kind of the reading that the
students should do.
1.3. The types of reading students should do
Many have been the discussions about the reading types that the students should do, and the
main concerns have been on whether the texts should be authentic or not. For years, teachers
have worried about traditional language-teaching materials which did not look genuine and used
oversimplified language that for the native speakers, it would be considered comical and
untypical.
Harmer (1998) assures that, if, for instance, the teacher gives low-level students a copy of THE
TIMES or THE GUARDIAN (authentic for the native speakers), the students will probably not
be able to understand them completely well at all. He continues affirming that there should be a
balance between real English and the students’ capabilities and interests. All these aspects dealt
with in this section will take us to the subsection below which focuses on the types of reading,
and they will be explained into details throughout the subsection. Let us now shift our attention
to them.
1.3.1. Types of reading
This is a subsection of the above section, and it is going to point out the types of reading that are
usually suggested.
3.3. Intensive reading
The term intensive reading, refers to the detailed focus on the construction of reading texts
which takes place usually (but not always) in the classrooms. Intensive reading is usually
accompanied by study activities. Students may be asked to work out what kind of text they are
reading, tease out details of meaning, look at particular uses of grammar and vocabulary, and
then use the information in the text to move on to other learning activities. We will also
encourage them to reflect on different reading skills (Harmer, 2010, p. 100).
Many are the times that we get our students to read a text, i.e., the students look at a short
reading text, and do a series of exercises based on what they are reading. Intensive reading has
been very useful for students because it allows them to think in the target language, thus playing
an important role for language learning. Harmer (2012, p. 123) states that, intensive reading is
often used to train students in different reading skills, such as reading for gist (getting the
general meaning from a text) or reading for specific information (looking for particular things,
such as the times of a film at a cinema, rather than trying to get the general picture).
We have briefly discussed intensive reading, where we saw what it refers to, and now, we are in
conditions to shift our attention to the role of the teacher in intensive reading, which is the issue
in the subsection below.
3.3.1. The role of the teacher on intensive reading
For the teacher to get his or her students to read with enthusiasm in the
classroom, it is important for the teacher to create or come up with interesting topics and doable
reading tasks. The teacher must adopt some roles when asking a student to read intensively.
Harmer (2007, p. 286) provides us with four roles which are described below:
1. Organiser: We need to tell the students what their reading purpose is, give them clear
instructions about how to achieve it, and explain how long they have to do that. Once we
have said that you have only seven minutes to do this, we should be very careful not to
change that, unless observation.
2. Observer: When we ask a student to read on their own, we need to give them time to do
so, that is to say, we should restrain ourselves from interrupting that reading, regardless
of the temptations of adding more information or giving extra instructions. Observing
students’ progress while they are reading, allows us to know what is going well, as well
as what needs to be improved, either during individual reading or even collective reding.
3. Feedback organiser: After the students have completed the task, a feedback session.
Must be led to check that they have completed it successfully, by getting them to
compare their answers in pairs, and then asking for answers from the class in general or
from pairs in particular. If we wish to sustain students’ motivation, it is paramount to be
supportive when we are organizing feedback.
4. Prompter: Students can be prompted to notice language features when they have read a
text. They can also be directed to certain features of text construction, like clarifying
ambiguities, and making aware of issues of text construction which they had not come
across previously.
After diving into intensive reading as a type of reading on one hand, this subsection is going to
talk about extensive reading on the other hand. So, attention is now required to it:
3.4. Extensive Reading
After diving into intensive reading as a type of reading on one hand, this subsection is going to
talk about extensive reading on the other hand. So, attention is now required to it:
According to Harmer (2010, p. 99), the term extensive reading refers to the reading which the
students do often (but not exclusively) away from the classroom, like reading novels, web
pages, newspapers, magazines or any other reference material. He adds by saying that any
extensive reading should involve joyful reading, also called reading for pleasure, which is when
we read something without thinking too much on what is being read. This joyful reading is very
often enhanced when or if the students have this chance of choosing what they think they can
read. Not every student likes this kind of reading, but those who tend to read more, without
being asked to, for instance, tend to learn or progress more. Nation and Waring (2020) clarify:
Extensive reading does not usually mean the whole class or each learner is working
through a long difficult text. This is intensive reading and at best needs to be done
strategically so that effort is not wasted on vocabulary that is not useful for the learners
at their current level of proficiency…
(p. 3)
As Renandya and Jacobs (2002, p. 300) maintain, “by encouraging our students to read
extensively and showing them how to do so, we help them strengthen their grip on the
efficacious tool of reading.”
We have so far discussed extensive reading in general. The teacher plays a role during in this
type of reading, and to understand what the teacher does in it, let us now shift our attention to
the role of the teacher in extensive reading.
3.4.1. The role of the teacher in extensive reading
Following Harmer (2007), during extensive reading, the teacher plays the role of an encourager,
which means, the teacher stimulates the students to read, and this is a very important role
because by stimulating them to read, we are automatically allowing them to develop reading
habit. Another role that the teacher plays is that of a promoter, in this, the teacher should
promote students with interesting topics, those that the students can find attractive and can call
their attention, consequently.
The teacher as persuader is another important role he should play during extensive reading, he
has to convince the students to do the reading, showing how beneficial reading can be to
someone. Being an organiser is also the role of the teacher in this type of reading, that is to say,
the teacher organises reading programmes where they indicate to them how many books they
expect them to read over a given period of time. The teacher can be an explainer to clarify to the
students how they can make their choice of what to read, making it clear that the choice is theirs,
but they can consult other’s students reviews and comments to help them make the choice.
When the teacher suggests that the students look for books in a genre, be it romantic novel,
crime fiction, science fiction, etc., they are acting throughout as part organiser and part tutor.
The section above talked about the types of reading, and we saw two different types, extensive
and intensive, and we also learned about the role of the teacher in each type. The section below
is going to talk about reading strategies, where each one is detailed clearly.
4. Reading strategies
Research, according to Farrell (2009, p. 36), suggests that reading strategies can and should be
explicitly taught to ELLs and that when strategies are taught, students’ performance on
comprehension tests improves, and they are better able to recall the contents of a text. Paris,
Wasik, and Turner (1991, p. 609), for example, have suggested six good reasons why we should
teach reading strategies:
a. Strategies allow readers to elaborate upon, organize, and evaluate information derived
from a text.
b. The acquisition of reading strategies coincides and overlaps with the development of
multiple cognitive strategies to enhance attention, memory, communication, and
learning.
c. Strategies are personal cognitive tools that can be used selectively and flexibly.
d. Strategic reading reflects metacognition and motivation, because readers need to have
both the knowledge and disposition to use strategies.
e. Strategies that foster reading and thinking can be taught directly by teachers.
f. Strategic reading can enhance learning throughout the curriculum.
g. It is also important to remember that reading strategy instruction has as its chief goal
improving the reading performance of ELLs. Teachers can accomplish this by modeling
good reading behaviors for their students.
There many reading strategies, but we are going to simply focus on some of them:
4.1. Predicting
Grellet (1981) states that, this strategy is the faculty of predicting or guessing what is to come
next, making use of grammatical, logical and cultural clues; but it may be worthwhile devoting
some time to more systematic training by giving the students unfinished passages to complete or
by going through a text little by little, stopping after each sentence in order to predict what is
likely to come next (p. 17).
This is a type of strategy that activates students’ background knowledge and starts engagement
with key concepts. It activates background knowledge and shows students that they are smart
enough to figure things out even if they have trouble with reading. Students learn to make
connections between their own prior knowledge and the ideas in a text. It is helpful for students
to see that sometimes their predictions are off and they have to stop and think and possibly
revise their predictions. Predicting and revising also assist students in thinking while they listen
or read, as they pay attention to see if they were right in their predictions. Having students revise
their prediction supports “rereading”, an important component of comprehension, especially for
struggling readers (Decoda, 2015 p. 9).
Farroll (2009) additionally, clarifies that prediction is a strategy used throughout the reading
process (prereading, during reading, and postreading). Prereading activities include having the
students guess what will come up in the lesson based on their prior experiences with the topic.
During-reading prediction activities have the students using the text itself and any pictures or
illustrations that confirm (or adjust) predictions made during prereading. Postreading prediction
activities include having students make adjustments based on their reading of the text. At this
post stage, the students confirm (or adjust) predictions made before they read. In this way, pre-,
during- and postreading activities are linked together to give a coherent understanding of the
text.
Having clarified what prediction in reading means, we are now going to focus on the other kind
of strategy which is questioning.
4.2. Questioning
According to Farroll (2009), asking questions before reading and posing questions while reading
are strategies that have been identified as being effective by fluent readers of English. Questions
posed before reading encourage students to set a purpose for reading. These questions also guide
the students as they read, and when they encounter passages or words that confuse them, they
can ask themselves questions that help them understand. These questions duing reading can be
of these types: What is this paragraph about? Do I need to reread this? Are there words in the
passage that confuse me? Asking questions after reading is also an effective reading strategy.
El-Koumy (1996) cited in Gilaimbo (2023) writes about the effects of three questioning
strategies for developing reading capacity in students, namely the student-generated questions,
the teacher-provided questions and those reciprocally-provided questions by both the teacher
and learner. The formulation of questions is rather difficult and/or complex, but when you, for
example, tell your students that, apart from reading, they need to think of questions, this will
arise their awareness and will direct them to a more focused reading. These questions being
formulated can focus on the W-H question, such as “what, why, when, where and how”.
4.3. Clarifying
Clarifying is an umbrella term for a set of cognitive strategies that students can use to identify
where they have comprehension difficulties and how they can get at the meaning of a word,
phrase, sentence or passage. Students are encouraged to identify problem areas and consider
specific fix-up or repair strategies when understanding breaks down. Clarifying strategies need
to be adjusted for different kinds of texts and need to take into account a variety of reasons for
comprehension difficulties (insufficient background knowledge, weak decoding skills,
unfamiliar vocabulary, or general problems with gaining meaning from print). Engaging
students in identifying unclear concepts, structures, and passages helps students to learn self-
monitoring techniques (Decoda, 2015, p. 5).
4.4. Summarising
Summarising is part of a set of strategies called Reciprocal Teaching that involves peer
interactions. Summarising is a challenging task for most struggling readers, and is often
preceded by practice in retelling and note taking. It requires that students first get the gist of a
reading and then distill key points in the reading. Summarising requires that students develop a
shorter version of a longer piece that includes both the main points and essential details, for
example, students will need to practise summarising what they hear as well as summarising
what they read, and are asked to present the gist of what they have summarised, or they could
create a headline, for example (Decoda, 2015, p. 19).
Summarising is a reading strategy used to get the gist of a text (McEwan, 2002). It is crucial that
readers be able to get the main idea of a chunk of text, and summarising can help as the reader
restates the meaning in his or her own words. It is very important for the teacher to know how to
get students to summarise what they read, but how can you as teacher do it? Well, you first
introduce the importance of being able to summarise by using examples from students’ lives,
from work, newspapers, and from academic subjects. Show students models of summaries for
films or books. Show headlines from newspapers that are a one-line summary of the story.
Although this strategy is very challenging, students should be encouraged to this kind of
strategy.
4.5. Skimming
By reading all texts in the same way, students would waste time and fail to remember points of
importance to them because they would absorb too much non-essential information (Grellet,
1081, p. 17). Skimming is sometimes referred to as gist reading. Skimming may help in order to
know what the text is about at its most basic level. You might typically do this with a magazine
or newspaper and would help you mentally and quickly shortlist those articles which you might
consider for a deeper read. You might typically skim to search for a name on your Android or
apple directory. When skimming, we go through the reading material quickly in order to get the
gist of it, to know how it is organized, or to get an idea of the tone or the intention of the writer
(p. 19).
Similarly, Harmer (2012) affirms that reading for gist is sometimes called skimming.
We often ask students to read a text quickly (skimming over its surface) and get the main idea(s)
first, before we ask them to read for more detailed information (p. 123). You can reach a
speed count of even 700 words per minute if you train yourself well in this
particular method. Comprehension is of course very low and understanding
of overall content very superficial.
4.6. Scanning
Following Grellet (1981), when scanning, we only try to locate
specific information and often we do not even follow the linearity of the
passage to do so. We simply let our eyes wander over the text until we find
what we are looking for, whether it be a name, a date, or a less specific
piece of information (p. 19). That is to say, scanning involves getting your eyes
to quickly scuttle (move rapidly) across sentence, for a simple piece of
information. Interestingly, research has concluded that reading off a
computer screen actually inhibits the pathways to effective scanning and
thus, reading of paper is far more conducive to speedy comprehension of
texts. Something students do not give enough importance to illustrations.
These should be included in your scanning.
4.7. Reflect on what has been learned from the text
This is a kind of strategy that has been suggested by Grabe and Stoller (2011), and from our
own understanding, it is a good strategy because when students have finished reading, reflecting
on what has been done will help them to know how well they could understand the text, and
what needs more clarifications. In simple terms, reflection implies evaluating one’s performance
on something. That is why, Grabe and Stoller came up with this strategy as a way of
encouraging and developing critical thinking in the readers.
4.8. Use dictionary
Using dictionaries helps learners improve reading comprehension and might lead to lexical
improvement. Researchers have found that students score better on post reading comprehension
and vocabulary tests due to the use of dictionaries (Summers, 1988). When readers look up a
word in a dictionary, they pay more attention to the word, helping them retain it . Liu (2014)
reports that students show efficiency when teachers integrate the dictionary use strategy
training. Dictionary are really important for improving reading skills.
The disadvantage of using dictionaries while reading is that, this may lead to inefficient learning
for different reasons (Bensoussan, Sim and Weiss, 1984; Hunt, 2009). The first reason is time as
studies have shown that students take more time when they use a dictionary to complete a task
(Knight, 1994; Luppescu and Day, 1993). Besides, the time readers take to look up words in a
dictionary interferes with their short-term memory leading to prevent readers from focusing on
the text. A second reason is the lack of improvement. Knight (1994), and Bensoussan, Sim, and
Weiss (1984) have demonstrated that more proficient learners do not show significant
improvement because they use extra-time inefficiently to find the meaning of some words in a
dictionary. A third reason has to do with the right meaning of a word. Students sometimes do
not locate the proper dictionary entry, leading to misunderstanding (Tang, 1997; Hunt, 2009).
Now that we have dealt with the strategies for teaching reading, whereby different strategies
have been discussed, we are going to turn our attention to the reading activities.
5. Reading activities
5.1. Pictionary
5.2. True or false
5.3. Student to student conversation
5.4. Story map
5.5. Designing a poster
5.6. Interview the Character
6. The Principles of teaching reading to ELLs
The previous section outlined some reading strategies
6.1. Reflect on Reading
6.2. Teach fluency and comprehension
6.3. Teach reading strategies
6.4. Teach text structure
6.5. Teach vocabulary building
6.6. Promote extensive reading
6.7. Plan effective reading classes
6.8. Use authentic reading material
7. Models of Reading
7.1. Metaphorical model
7.2. Specific model
7.3. Interactive model
8. Teaching reading fluency and comprehension to ELLS
9. Implications for teaching reading to ELLs
10. Stages of a reading lesson
10.1. Pre-reading
10.2. While-reading
10.3. Post-reading
