Editorial
This article was first published in Modern English Teacher, Vol 19/3, July 2010
Part 2 is the follow up to Rethinking Reading Aloud, already published in HLT:
old.hltmag.co.uk/jun11/less04.htm
Rethinking Reading Aloud 2: Adapting and Creating texts
Simon Mumford, Turkey
Simon Mumford teaches EAP at Izmir University of Economics, Turkey. He has written on themes including using stories, visuals, drilling, reading aloud, and vocabulary, and is especially interested in the creative teaching of grammar. E-mail: simon.mumford@ieu.edu.tr
Menu
Irrelevent words
Missing vowels
Taking eyes off the text
From spoken to written text
Every other word
Proofreading
Stage directions
Present tense poem
Conclusion
References
In L1 education, Reading Aloud (RA) is recognised as a valuable, even essential ability, with texts such as stories produced especially for children to practise. In contrast, in English Languge Teaching, RA tends to be associated with artificial, scripted dialogues, which often serve purely to illustrate a language point, or demotivating reading round the class. As an alternative, I would like to suggest a range of short texts and activities with a variety of learning objectives which focus directly on the activity of RA itself. Here are some ideas.
The economy has suffered a great deal recently, because cat of the economic crisis. This started last dog year, because banks lent too much horse money. As a result, when people lost their mouse jobs, they were tiger unable to pay their debts. Now, elephant houses are being repossessed because of high mortgage rates, and more people have to pay sheep rent.
Rationale: To ensure that students are reading for understanding not just pronunciation, adding irrevelent words will force students to look ahead and think about meaning, so they can omit the irrelevent words. This can be a demanding exercise, but choosing irrevelent words from the same lexical set will make them easier to spot.
Students read aloud a text containing words with missing vowels.
Joan Smith, my nghbr across the road, is a very ntrstng woman. She lives by hrslf, is rtrd and is about 70 years old. She has a very interesting hbby, she learns unusual lnggs. She speaks Portugese, a bit of Rssn, and even some Arabic and Chinese! But strangely, she has nvr been abroad. She is nglsh and has lived all her life in England. Once I went to visit her, she was having a cnvrstn in a language I did not understand. There was a very fair man lstnng to her and laughing. I guessed he was from clnd. They were spkng Icelandic!
Full words: neighbour, interesting, herself, retired, hobby, languages, Russian, never, English, conversation, listening, Iceland, speaking.
Rationale: Students have to look ahead while reading because the context is often a clue to the words with missing vowels. For example, rtrd can be understood by looking ahead to she is about 70. Similarly, lnggs can be understood by looking forward to the next sentence, where a number of languages are mentioned. This may help students to consider texts in sections or chunks, rather than as a series of single words.
Prepare a text which is divided into progressively longer blocks of words, as in the example below. Students read the text aloud, taking their eyes off the text and looking at a listener at the end of each block. They work their way through all the levels.
2 word blocks
Alaska’s name / is based / on the / Eskimo word / Alakshak meaning great lands / or peninsula. / Alaska is / as big / as England, France, Italy / and Spain / combined. Alaska is / about six / hundred thousand / square miles.
3 word blocks
Alaska’s name is / based on the / Eskimo word Alakshak / meaning great lands or peninsula. Alaska / is as big / as England, France, / Italy and Spain combined. Alaska is / about six hundred / thousand square miles.
4 word blocks
Alaska’s name is based / on the Eskimo word / Alakshak meaning great lands / or peninsula. Alaska is / as big as England / France, Italy and Spain combined. / Alaska is about six / hundred thousand square miles.
4+ word blocks
Alaska’s name is based on / the Eskimo word Alakshak / meaning ‘great lands’ or ‘peninsula’. / Alaska is as big as / England, France, Italy and Spain combined. / Alaska is about six hundred thousand square miles.
Adapted from www.strange-facts.info/interesting-facts-about-alaska
Rationale: Good readers read in chunks and look ahead, allowing them to look away from the text some of the time. This exercise allows students become familiar with a text and gives them the confidence to look at their listeners for progressively longer periods.
In this exercise, there are two versions of the text, the original, and a version based more on spoken register. Ask students to read aloud the spoken register version first, then the original version. You may want to discuss the differences, which include vocabulary (spoken version is vaguer: cf thing/ dynamic), clausal structures (use of non-finite clauses in written text eg far from showing cf. it doesn’t show), sentence structure (the spoken version has simpler sentences) and information density (spoken version has the same information but is 20% longer).
1 Spoken register version
The important thing about the market is that it has democracy and discipline: good businesses get bigger and better, while bad ones fail. Planned societies – and businesses that are so big that it is dangerous to let them fail – don’t have either democracy or discipline. They don’t want to try new things, and they don’t wan’t to give up unsuccessful projects. That is why there are a lot of good reasons to be happy about the end of the the Lehmann bank. It doesn’t show the weakness of the market economy. The failure of a bad business like the Lehman bank shows how strong it is. That was what the US Treasury thought when it decided it would not save the bank.
2 Original text
The essential dynamic of the market is disciplined pluralism: good businesses prosper and grow, while bad ones go to the wall. Planned societies – and businesses that are “too big to fail” – lack either pluralism or discipline. They are reluctant to experiment, and also reluctant to end unsuccessful ventures. That is why there is every reason to cheer the Lehman collapse: far from showing the weakness of the market economy, the failure of a bad business shows its strength. That, at least, was the view taken by the US Treasury, when it refused to bail the bank out.
Source of original www.telegraph.co.uk
Rationale: Many formal published texts are difficult to read aloud because of complex grammar structures and formal vocabulary, and the density of information. Moving from a text that resembles a more spoken register to the original text should help students to read aloud the original, because they will be familar with the content before they read.
Take a short text and divide it into two, with the first, third, fifth etc. words on one sheet and the second, fourth, sixth etc. words on another. Give the sheets to students in pairs, one to each. Ask them to read their texts silently, then, without looking at their partner’s text, talk about what they think the text is about. In the next stage, they read the whole text aloud, reading alternate words, so revealing the complete text, again without looking at the other text. Then they swap sheets and, without looking at the other sheet, individually try to reconstruct the text in writing, by suppying the words they read aloud in the previous stage.
According to Gibson (2008), RA is useful as a proofreading technique. The following text, which has mistakes marked with symbols, simulates this process.
Put students in groups. Give one (strong) student a copy of the text with correction symbols, the others have the same text without the symbols. The one with the symbols reads the text aloud, correcting as he goes, and the other students amend their text accordingly.
1. Text with symbols
Yesterday I went shoping (sp). When I was out, I saw two men robb an old lady (sp).
I shouted to the men but they ran away fast (ww). I went back to the lady and ask if everything was all right (t). She said she was OK, then I offered to call the police ‘oh no! Don’t do that’, she said (p). The two men was about 25, one was a tall and the other was short (ew). ↔
Meaning of symbols: sp=spelling, ww = wrong word, t= tense, p= punctuation, ew= extra word, ↔ =agreement. Note: symbols come at the end of the sentence in which the errors occur.
2. Text without symbols
Yesterday I went shoping. When I was out, I saw two men robb an old lady. I shouted to the men, but they ran away fast. I went back to the lady and ask if everything was all right. She said she was OK, then I offered to call the police ‘oh no! Don’t do that’, she said. The two men was about 25, one was a tall and the other was short.
3. Example reading with commentary
Yesterday I went shopping, (that should be double p). When I was out, I saw two men rob (one b) an old lady. I shouted to the men, (I think that should be at the men), but they ran away fast. I went back to the old lady and asked (past tense, with ed) if everything was OK. She said she was OK, then I offered to call the police. (full stop) ‘Oh (captial O) no! Don’t do that’, she said. The two men were (not was) about 25, one was (cross out a) tall and the other was short.
Rationale: Making corrections gives other students a reason for listening, and may encourage students to read their own writing aloud as a proofreading technique.
This read-aloud text contains stage directions, but these are not distinguished from the text. Students should identify the directions while reading and incorporate the actions into their performance.
1. Student version
Today is cold shivers. It snowed and the town looked lovely, but I had to go to work sighs. I got to work and saw a strange thing pauses. There was a note on my desk picks up piece of paper. ‘Meet me at three o’clock in the Elm Tree cafe, please be there’ it said looks around, surprised. Who wrote it I wonder? scratches head. So...
2. Key with the stage directions in parentheses
Today is cold. (shivers) It snowed and the town looked lovely, but I had to go to work. (sighs) I got to work and saw a strange thing. (pauses) There was a note on my desk. (picks up piece of paper) ‘Meet me at three o’clock in the Elm Tree cafe, please be there’ it said. (looks around, surprised) Who wrote it I wonder? (scratches head) So ...
Rationale: The instructions are not highlighted in any way, so students must read carefully and understand where to pause for an action. Thus there are two advantages: firstly, students must process for meaning before vocalising, and secondly, the actions reinforce the meaning of the words and act as natural pauses. It may need several attempts before the correct interpretation is found.
One read-aloud activity that is well-known in ELT is the use of poems and rhymes. The following poem contains grammatical information.
The present simple is simply I go,
It’s a very useful thing to know,
But the continuous is I am going,
Which is also worth knowing.
I go, sometimes, often, always,
But I am going now, today, these days.
Although they are both present in name,
These two tenses are really not the same.
If you say I am playing tennis
On Wednesday with Dennis.
This is not the same as I play
Tennis with Dennis on Wednesday.
In the first, about the future we speak,
Something that is happening this week.
The second happens quite frequently,
Well, I mean, just once weekly.
Rationale: The content of poems for language teaching should be useful and interesting to students. In this case, rhyme and rhythm can help them remember important grammatical information.
The problem with RA activities in general seems to be that most texts are not designed to be read aloud, and where dialogues are presented for RA, these usually focus on learning a particular structure, rather than learning to read aloud for its own sake. An alternative to this is a range of texts and activities designed especially for the purpose, which challenge students both to think about what they are reading, and to consider the listeners. As can be seen, it is not difficult to produce differrnt texts designed to be read aloud which serve a number of purposes.
Gibson, S. (2008) Reading aloud, a useful learning tool? ELT Journal 62(1):29-36
Mumford, S.(2009) Rethinking Reading Aloud, Modern English Teacher, July 2009 Vol. 17/3
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Methodology for Teaching Spoken Grammar and English course at Pilgrims website.
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