Reading comprehension / How can I evaluate my students?
Time to read!
As all educators know, reading is very important in learning a language. During the time that I spend in my classes, I try to do my best to help my students get better at understanding what they read in a new language. First of all, your student may have tendency to translate everything read, but it is not a good way of improving their reading skills. When they start translating, it is hard to teach them in target language.
There are some techniques which I hope all language teachers use to see how much students can understand from what they reading. We call it as reading comprehension in English. Today, I would like to show you a text which will be written by me. I can show you some basic tips to carry out an effective reading lesson in your classes.
Warm up!
First of all, warm-up is a must to perform an effective lesson with your students. When you give a text to your students without having any discussion about the topic in reading text, they might have difficulties in understanding the text and doing what is asked from them. Therefore, always start with a good warm-up. Look at the following warm questions to get an idea about what I am trying to explain.
What do you think about unemployment in Turkey?
Why do think people are unemployed in our country?
What should we do to find jobs easily?
As it can be understood easily, our topic is about unemployment in Turkey. I prefer to start with these questions to let them say something about the topic. If they don't know the meaning of employment, this warm up also gives you an opportunity to explain what it means so that your student can understand what this text is about in general.
Let's read!
NEW LIFE!
Merve is a new graduate. After studying for 4 years in university, now it is time to face with real life which means she needs to find a work to be able to have her financial freedom. Even though she can speak foreign languages such as English and German, they are not enough to find a job. She applies for jobs every day, but never goes for interviews.
It is true that she is not experienced. However, it is not possible to get experience without working for a company. Everyone needs to start at some point. It is unfortunate for her that she didn't have any part time jobs during her university education. Her family support her a lot, telling that no matter what happens, they will always be with her. She is still hopeful and determined to find a job.
Let's check your understanding!
It is possible to check students' understanding in various ways. I will list them with some examples related to the passage that I have written above. It is always a good idea to start with gist. Gist lets our students to tell us what they understand from text in general.
Gist!
*Let's read the article and answer the following questions
Is Merve a student?
Is she an experienced person?
What is she trying to do at the moment?
The second way of testing their knowledge after gist is true and false. Students prefer to have this way of practice as it seems easier for them.
True or False!
*Read the article again and decide if the sentences are TRUE or FALSE.
- Merve can speak languages.
- She worked for some companies while she was studying at university.
- She is hopeless about her future.
- Her family are always with her.
Education
This is a simple example for your lessons. As I usually have texts in our course books, they are more detailed and well-planned. However, I also love preparing some handouts for them and this is one example of them. I hope, you find my post useful, feel free to use it as you wish!
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Hi @teachblogger, The tips are very useful! In this chance, I would like to share my problem in the class with you. Most of my students still have many difficulties to read English text. The problem is because of lacking vocabulary. They cannot understand the text well because they do not know the meaning of the words in the reading passage. Thus, every time they wanna have reading class, I always help them by listing some difficult words after the text. They can guess the meaning of the text by seeing the list, but soon they will forget it next meeting. would you like to share your idea, please! how can I do better for them? (for your information, We are Acehnese, N English is our foreign language)