Comprehension and beyond - how to fully exploit texts beyond questions - Tuesday 16th July

After dealing with the paramount importance of questions, Johanna today puts forward the idea of going beyond questions to enhance comprehension and work on the higher-order thinking skills.

When it comes down to texts, I usually carry out a series of activities which are meant

• ... to prepare learners before they meet the text: personal response questions to introduce topic, brainstorm topic or vocabulary and fill a table; start from a visual prompt (a pic, a painting, etc), elicit description and prediction;
• ... to check learners have understood the global meaning of the text: elicit key words from students and make a word cloud to check understanding, but also to reconstruct the text or summarise a text. I sometimes ask them to write comprehension questions to share;
• ... to really teach reading strategies (process-oriented task): gap filling exercise (to be completed while reading) and list of words that could possibly fill (ask student to guess the gap fill before reading to encourage predictive skills); tasks which combine Listening and note taking (dictogloss), reconstruct the text and compare in pairs or groups;
• ... to encourage learners to give personal reactions to a text: personal response questions; turn texts into a different text type (interview, diary entry, whatsapp message, a video, ads, a haiku, a radio commercial); to enact talk shows on the topic;
• ... to stimulate work on other skills (speaking, writing, or the other receptive skill): turn texts into a different text type (interview, diary entry, whatsapp message, a video, an ad, a haiku, a radio commercial); plan and carry out a survey on the text topic (if possible) by asking students to devise questions and go round the class surveying.

We have seen a few approaches for exploiting texts, check comprehension and intervene in the text and shape up follow up activities, activities to stimulate personal response to a text and creative tasks. This set of activities is based on the procedures for working with Written Texts Alan Maley was speaking about in his book “Short and Sweet” (1993): expand and reduce, transfer the media and reformulate, reconstruct and create, analyses and interpret.

There are a few I particularly liked.

1 - KWL

This is a type of alternative approach to comprehension questions that allows students not only to write questions for others and before they read, but to cope with the text individually or in group by filling in this table

What I KNOW already	What I WANT to know	What I LEARNT

Before reading a text the student fills in the first column and most importantly the second one. The questions the student writes will make him connect the text to himself and make it more relevant as he wants to know these details. Making the student write the questions and share them with his partner before reading is a type of activity which engages him to read the article and raises his expectations.

2 - UPSUM

Johanna says the best way to check comprehension is to ask students to summarise a text. If we leave behind the traditional approach, some interesting and original activities to sum a text up involve a word count or a time limit, a diagram and an infographic. Infographics produced with Canva stimulate the students’ creativity and allow him to really focus on the essential and most important information as well as on organizing it logically. These infographic are ready-made revision papers too.

3 - READ WITH A PEN

An activity I find really useful to include critical thinking into reading consists simply in reading with a pen and marking the text with different symbols to identify parts you feel strongly/mildly about, you find surprising or just needs further discussion and consideration.

😊😊

😊

☹

☹ ☹

!

?

After reading the text individually and marking it, students are asked to work in pairs and discuss the texts starting with the ! and ? parts. After allowing them some time for this co-operative activity, feedback is carried out and a new activity/set of activities are carried out.

Texts RECONSTRUCTION and REWRITING tasks involve dictogloss, gapped texts, and reconstructing a text where some parts have been hidden (a nice activity with the poem Television was introduced to us) or rewriting it from a different perspective or in a different genre or messing it up with it!

I think, therefore I am.

I think, therefore I am smart.

I overthink, therefore I am anxious.

I think, therefore I am confused.

To be, or not to be 

Two beers, or not two beers

To bee, or not to bee

(Brexit) Plan B, or no plan B

 References:

 Alan Maley's Extract about the 12 procedures for exploiting written texts