INSTRUCTION: Read the following text carefully and
then mark the alternatives that complete the sentences
in the question.
3 Tips for Teaching Reading in a Foreign Language
June 15, 2015 Giwan Persaud
Reading is a great skill to have. It’s something we can do
anytime, anywhere. Today I want to share with you some
tips about teaching reading skills in foreign languages to
young learners. Ready? Let’s go.
1. Traffic Light Reading.
This is one of my all-time favourite exercises for teaching
reading. The idea is that you pick an appropriately
levelled text (this can be adapted to any level!), take the
text in question, or a segment of it, and reread it three
times. The first time you read with a green pen or pencil
in hand and underline every single thing you understand.
This is great because it includes numbers, places, and
names meaning that every student is guaranteed some
green on their page. What a confidence booster!
Then students re-read the text. This time with an orange
pen at the ready. The orange is for those words that
look familiar or could be guessed, but that students
aren’t 100% sure about. There should be less of these.
Encourage students to also have the green pen ready
as they may notice ‘green’ words they didn’t see the first
time around. And finally, as you may well have guessed,
the red pen comes in and underlines every completely
unknown word. Providing that the text is of the right level,
there should be a nice shade of green filling the page
with the odd orange and red spec.
I find this activity constantly boosts students confidence
as they see a black and white page in a foreign language
come to life in colour. So many students are amazing and
really pleased with themselves about how much they can
actually understand when they take the time to focus on
a text. One of my all-time favourites.
Available at: <http://www.duolir.com/blog/2015/6/13/3-tips-forteaching-reading-in-a-foreign-language> (Adapted).
The author of the article calls this reading strategy the traffic light strategy