Writing materials that develop reading skills
by David Byrne
& Mark Heffernan
March 12, 2024
In this post David Byrne and Mark Heffernan discuss how reading is often presented in EFL materials, and make the case that practice alone does not lead to perfection. They propose an alternative approach, exploring how to write materials that, instead of practising or testing, raise learners’ awareness and development of reading skills.
In training sessions on teaching reading that we’ve attended over the years, we’ve often heard it remarked that people don’t read as much as they used to. However, we believe that if anything, people read more, maybe not in the same way as they’ve always read, but these days, our students walk around with the world in their pocket. They are constantly reading messages, articles, subtitles on videos, social media posts, books, and so much more. People might not sit down and read a broadsheet from cover to cover, but that doesn’t mean they don’t read. We’re interested in creating materials that help them to develop the skills they need to read in a modern world.
Let’s begin with a few questions, questions that have been on our mind a lot over the past few years.
These are some pretty big questions. Let’s see if we can get to the bottom of them by the end of this article.
The role of coursebooks and printed materials in our industry
Recently, we were leading a teacher training course on materials writing. We began the course by asking the teachers what informed their teaching. They gave a range of answers, including their CELTA courses, conferences and training sessions they’d attended, and tips and feedback from their colleagues and managers. However, none of them mentioned the materials they used. When we asked them about materials, they said they tended to apply their own teaching styles to the materials they used and so, in a way, they influenced the materials they used in class as opposed to the materials influencing them. Our next activity was for the teachers to organise the key aspects of a lesson into a logical order. They then compared their ideas with a partner. In general, everyone agreed, with the exception of one activity. Half of the group were adamant that every lesson should begin by pre-teaching lexis, and then move into discussion questions; the other half were convinced that every lesson should begin with discussion questions and then move on to lexis. What was interesting, when we began to dig deeper, was that the first group of teachers had all been teaching with the same coursebook for the past five years, a major coursebook in which the majority of the lessons begin by pre-teaching lexis.
While this was just a single group of teachers and is in no way an in-depth study, it does highlight something that we’ve felt for many years, and that is that our teaching is greatly influenced by the materials we use. If we use materials that are very grammar-focused, we are likely to see grammar as forming the building blocks of language, whereas if we use materials with a more lexical approach, we begin to feel that lexis might form the basis of language. Over time, a teacher might be lucky enough to work with a wide range of materials and develop a questioning and informed approach to teaching.
What, therefore, is a publisher’s or materials writer’s role in the industry? What is their responsibility? We feel that materials writers should try to reflect the latest research into language learning – that they should be leading the industry instead of being led by it. For many teachers, the materials they use following their teaching qualification are an extension of that training. In both of our cases, we learnt many lessons from our first coursebooks, some of which shaped our teaching for the better, and some that took us years to unlearn. One was that after every reading activity, it is important to test comprehension through exam-style activities like true/false statements, or multiple-choice questions. Now, over a decade and a half later, we question that approach.
Why do we do reading in the language classroom?
This brings us to our second question: what is the point of reading in the language classroom? It is unlikely that we can do enough reading during class time to really make a meaningful difference to our students’ ability to read. After all, we know that reading extensively has one of the biggest impacts on a person’s reading speed and comprehension. So why do it in class at all? Often, reading texts introduce the lesson topic, or they might also be a vehicle for language input, showing the language in use within a particular context. Both of these are completely understandable reasons for including a reading text in materials. However, we believe that there is another reason: while a student isn’t necessarily going to become better at reading from the volume of reading they do in their language classroom, a reading text is an opportunity to discuss and raise awareness of the skills students need in order to become effective readers outside the classroom. It is an opportunity to bridge the gap between in-class reading and out-of-class reading, helping students to read more extensively in their own time.
But don’t these skills transfer from their own languages? For many, they might. However, over the years we’ve witnessed students who were not necessarily effective readers in their own language, and who benefited from some discussion of reading skills. We’ve also encountered learners who were effective readers in their L1, but wouldn’t immediately apply those skills to English without some support. We’ve noticed that many students read effectively in their own language, but were nervous of doing so in English; they needed to first see that they were able to. All of these learners benefited from specific discussion and reflection on their reading skills.
Does knowing how well you did in a reading activity make you a better reader?
If we’re trying to support our learners to become more effective readers outside the classroom, we believe we should more closely mirror their experience outside the classroom. Never in all our years of reading have we sat down with colleagues or friends and been asked a series of true/false questions about the text we’ve just read. We’ve never been asked to match a heading to a paragraph or come up with a title for a text. Yet in almost every lesson involving a reading text, we ask our learners to carry out these types of activities. Why do we do this? One could argue that it’s to check their comprehension of the text, but often, it merely assesses one’s ability to find specific information within a text. We’re testing their ability to carry out a task, not necessarily their comprehension. But more importantly than this, are learners better readers by the end of these tasks? We would argue that they are not.
These types of activities don’t mirror the world outside the classroom, and they don’t make learners better readers. Why do we do them? Maybe it’s just out of habit. Maybe it’s because we’ve always done it that way.
In a less-than-snappy cry for change, what do we want?! We want activities that encourage learners to practise and discuss reading skills, that raise their awareness of how and when they should apply them in their lives outside the classroom. We want activities that mirror the real world, and the reading contexts of our learners. And where do we want them? We want them on the page! As discussed above, coursebooks and printed materials have a responsibility to lead the way in our industry because their impact on teaching cannot be underestimated. With this in mind, it is important that materials should include a range of activities that help develop reading skills. We suggest that reading materials should:
- • include specific instruction / discussion on reading skills
- • Include further practice and discussion of the skill
- • link beyond the classroom to encourage practice.
- Below are some suggestions of activities that can be added to reading materials.
Don’t test comprehension, reveal it.
As commented above, it is rare that we are tested after reading a text in real life. Of course, if you’re preparing a student for a specific exam, it is important that they should be exposed to the types of activities they will encounter in the exam. However, outside of this context why not discover your students’ comprehension of the text in more meaningful ways?
- • Set real-world discussion questions:
- ◦ What did you enjoy about this text?
- ◦ What did you find surprising? Why?
- ◦ What did you learn from this text?
- ◦ What did you agree or disagree with? Why?
- ◦ What would you like to learn more about? How would you do so?
- • Set a reaction task:
- ◦ Find a gif, image, or meme online that you feel represents a character from this text. Share with your partner and discuss your reasons.
- ◦ What emoji would you use to reply if someone sent you this text? Why?
- ◦ What would you reply if someone sent a link to this text to you? Why?
- ◦ Who, among your friends or family, would you send a link to this text to?
- ‣ Why?
- ‣ What would you write in the message sending the link?
- ‣What do you think they would reply?
The advantages of these types of activities are that they more closely mirror our students’ real lives and experiences with written texts, and they reveal their comprehension in a more realistic way. Through open discussions as a class or group, students are working together to increase their understanding in a meaningful way. They are learning how to do the same outside the classroom.
Discuss the skill
So many skills are practised in a reading lesson. Before reading, students are often asked to predict what the text will be about. Then they might be asked to read the text quickly before reading it in more detail. They might be asked to identify the meaning of some key words within the text from the context, words they can then use in a speaking activity with their partners. We take it for granted that having practised these skills, learners will be able to freely apply them to texts outside the classroom. However, how aware are students of the reasons behind the activities we do? Can they see that a lesson like this one mirrors how they might scroll through articles, predicting from images and headlines what the article might be about and whether or not it’s of interest to them; deciding to click in and skim the first few paragraphs quickly to decide if it’s worth their time; choosing to read it in more detail; identifying the key messages and then later on telling their friends about the interesting article they read that day? From our discussions with students, it does not seem that this is the case.
A simple reflection discussion can change all of that. So many reading lessons are dominated by a large text, yet the final discussion of the lesson is topic-related. Now, we’re not suggesting the topic-related discussion should be removed, but perhaps a quick reflection on the skills that have been practised and how they could be used outside the classroom could be added.
Give them a second chance and make it real
There are lots of opportunities to practise reading in EFL materials. However, sometimes a skill is practised in isolation and then left until the next time the opportunity to practise the skill arises. The skill falls into the gap between the classroom and the real world. With just one final step, we can attempt to bridge that gap and keep skills from falling into the ether. Imagine the lesson mentioned above, in which students predict, read for gist, read for detail, identify the meaning of key words, and discuss the text with a partner: imagine if we didn’t end it there. By adding the activities below, we discuss the skill and take it into the real world.
Our final thoughts
The influence of printed materials cannot be underestimated. They play a huge role in the ongoing training of teachers around the world. They can have an incredible impact on the industry. They are leading the way in so many areas, but when it comes to reading, materials writers often follow the same format of practising or assessing reading skills. Perhaps it’s time to put the focus on developing skills and bringing them into the real-world contexts of our students.
Mark Heffernan has taught English for over 18 years. From the very beginning, he shared lesson ideas and started to run CPD sessions. He spent many years focusing on exam teaching before moving to Queen Mary University of London in 2016, where he teaches EAP and is a module convenor.
David Byrne has worked in EFL for over a decade, and in that time has taught all the ages, levels and exams he can find. He’s worked in Ireland, England, Spain and South Korea, but the majority of his career has been spent in the UK, where he currently works for EC English.
Together, they manage a popular blog called ‘Textploitation’, and have co-written teacher resource and methodology books called ‘Textploitation’ and ‘Overt Teaching’.