Delphi module

4.5.3
Reading tasks

4.5.3.1 Reflection
4.5.3.2 Belief check
4.5.3.3 Jumble task
4.5.3.4 Why did you read the text?
4.5.3.5 Missing section
4.5.3.6 Restoration tasks
4.5.3.7 Types of text-based tasks
4.5.3.8 Reasons to read
4.5.3.9 Reading task outcomes
4.5.3.10 Reading for meaning
4.5.3.11 Collaborative outcomes, integrated skills
4.5.3.12 Reflection
4.5.3.13 Optional reading

4.5.3.1 Reflection
Think of a language lesson that you have recently taught where the students read a text of some kind.

What were they reading?
Was the text authentic, or specially written for teaching purposes?
What did the students have to do with the text?
How successful were the text-based activities?
Why were they (un)successful?
What do you think the students gained from doing the activities?

4.5.3.2 Belief check

What do you think are the most useful ways to help learners develop their reading skills in a second language?
Are there any approaches to reading in the language classroom that you believe are not helpful? For example, what do you think about reading comprehension questions? Translation? Reading aloud? Pre-reading work? Reading for gist / detail? Skimming and scanning? (Don't worry if you don't know all these terms - they are just here to jog your memory in case you do!)
Are there any specific techniques that you especially (dis)like? Why do you feel this?
What do you think reading in a second language can contribute to a learner's overall language development?

4.5.3.3 Jumble task
Here is a jumble task for you to try. But first, it may be helpful to refer back to section 4.4 to remind yourself of the stages of a task-based lesson suggested by Jane Willis, and decide at what point in the cycle you might give the students tasks based on a written text during a task-based lesson.

Now read these three paragraphs about text-based TBL and put them in the right order:

USING WRITTEN TEXTS IN A TASK-BASED APPROACH

Because a reading text is such a rich source of language input, and because we can read at different 'levels' (skimming for gist, selecting small sections for detailed reading, or intensive reading of the whole text), students can usually also be set a second, more challenging task that requires a second, or even third, more detailed reading (although this won't work for very short, simple texts).
When we use a reading text (one which was originally designed to be read for pleasure, information etc, not a simplified text or one specially written to illustrate vocabulary or grammar points), the reading becomes part of the task. As in the type of reading skills lessons with which you are probably familiar, students begin with pre-task activities (vocabulary input, schema activation, prediction, etc). In fact, this stage may be a mini-speaking-task cycle in itself. This preparation helps students to understand the text when they read it for the first time, and it also gives them a reason to read. Reasons could be to check their predictions, to find answers to questions they would like answered, to find information necessary to complete another task - just the same kind of reasons we have for reading outside the language classroom.
By the end of this stage, students will be quite familiar with the text - what it means, and where the different bits of information can be found in it. They are then ready to move on to the final stage of the TBL cycle: the language focus, when they will finally look at the structures found in the text.

For feedback, see Commentary 4.5.1. Were you right about the stage at which you could use a text?

4.5.3.4 Why did you read the text?
When you read this text you had two reasons to read it. What were they?

See Commentary 4.5.2.

4.5.3.5 Missing section
When I was preparing the following text, I cut out the section made up of paragraphs A, B and C for the task you have just done. Can you identify the place this section came from?

TEXT-BASED TBL

In the preceding activity cycles of this module, we considered lessons based on speaking tasks where, after the planning and report stages, students listen to tapes and study transcripts of fluent speakers doing the same task. It is the listening/transcript study which provides the main source of input or exposure to new language from which the students can learn.

This approach, based mainly on spoken language, is attractive because it fills many 'gaps' left by other lesson types and teaching materials: there is plenty of real communication as students struggle to complete the task; by having the input after the students have done the tasks, they are really motivated to attend to the input, and they learn by comparing how they said things with the way that more sophisticated speakers expressed the same ideas; thirdly, the quality of the input is vastly superior to the often stilted, unnatural language of specially written/recorded dialogues in textbooks, and it contains the natural features of spoken language. It is not too difficult for even low-level students to understand: they know perfectly well the gist of what is being said, as they have just done the task themselves; finally, it is a radical move away from traditional books where most of the input is through reading passages followed by comprehension questions, exercises, grammar practice, etc.

However, written texts can also offer a very useful - and different - source of input for students, and reading as a skill should not be abandoned altogether just because the importance of spoken language has been recognized. But if we are to incorporate authentic reading texts into our task-based framework, we will need to adapt the framework. This is because we cannot expect students during lesson time to produce a piece of writing on a topic and then compare it with a text written by an expert! Instead of motivating students, this would probably be very off-putting.

So in a text-based TBL lesson, students don't just depend on their imaginations and general knowledge, or pictures and clues given by the teacher to complete a speaking task; they have to get information from a text. The tasks they work on may involve discussion with other students, as in a speaking-based TBL lesson, but because the main focus of the lesson is on the written language, it doesn't have to. Students may be working individually to complete a table, draw a graph, answer questions, solve a problem, etc. But it would seem a shame to waste the opportunity for at least some genuine speaking between students, so they might at least compare their answers after doing the task, or when planning their reports. And then, of course, the result is a genuinely communicative integrated skills lesson into the bargain.

For feedback on this task, click on Commentary 4.5.3.

4.5.3.6 Restoration tasks
The activity you have just done illustrates another of the task designs you could use for your own student: a restoration task, where a part of the text is removed and has to be restored in the correct place by the students.

4.5.3.7 Types of text-based tasks
Now go back over the material presented so far in this activity cycle and make a list of all the text-based task designs mentioned so far; for example, the cycle started with a prediction task. You will need your list for the next sub-section of this cycle.

4.5.3.8 Reasons to read
You can find more detailed descriptions of text-based task designs in Willis, (1996: 75-81), or any good book on developing reading skills will give similar ideas for reading based activities, including Modules 7 and 8 of DELPHI. The key thing to remember is that students have a reason to read - and that reason is created by presenting them with a specific, non-linguistic outcome to achieve, just as for speaking tasks.

4.5.3.9 Reading task outcomes
Apart from restoring texts that have been doctored in some way, outcomes could be anything from:

'Look at the picture that accompanies the newspaper article you are about to read. Write down three questions you would like to find the answers to. Read the text and see if you can answer your questions'

'Here are five very short stories written by children for a competition. Read them and with your partner, decide which should be the winner and why'

'You have five minutes to read this text and memorize as much information as you can. After reading, you will be asked to write three quiz questions based on the text. We will then have a class quiz using all the groups' questions to see which team has the best memory.'

4.5.3.10 Reading for meaning
In these three examples, students will be reading for meaning in a way that means something to them (because they have the immediate motivation to do so), not so they can comb the text for examples of a linguistic feature, or answer a set of tricky and boring comprehension questions that may even be answerable without the student really understanding either the question or the answer! These traditional approaches to using texts just encourage learners to read a text a word at a time, often with a dictionary in one hand, which is both disruptive to the reading process and demotivating.

4.5.3.11 Collaborative outcomes, integrated skills
An important feature of a task-based approach to using written texts in the classroom is that, as for speaking tasks, students often work collaboratively to achieve the outcome. This immediately transforms the task into a reading and speaking task, and often requires writing too (for the report stage). This is a very natural way of integrating skills use in the classroom; indeed, it is difficult to have a task-based lesson that is not also an integrated skills lesson!

4.5.3.12 Reflection
When you are planning lessons do you ever have lesson aims that relate specifically to developing one or more of the four language skills? If you do, find or try to recall some recent lesson plans that do this and think about how the activities were used to practise skills or sub-skills.

Could they be considered as tasks according to our definition?
Were any of the lessons 'integrated skills' lessons? If so, did the integration of two (or more) skills arise automatically from the design of a single task, or was each skill introduced in a separate activity?
Which of these two possibilities do you feel is a) more natural, and b) better from a pedagogic perspective?

4.5.3.13 Optional reading
This is a good point to do the first recommended follow-up (see 4.5.8, Recommended reading 1).