To practise reading for gist, you can give 3 summaries of a text, only one of which is correct. Students read the text and say which summary is the most accurate. If you
choose this option, make sure the summary focuses on generalities and not on specifics.
You can quite simply set a time limit – two minutes will be enough – ask students to read the text and to tell you what it is about.
6.1.2 Reading to extract detailed information
Here students read to understand certain aspects of the text thoroughly. For example, when reading the manual that accompanies your new mobile phone you might focus
on the use of the answering machine and endeavour to understand it in detail and not read about Internet connection.
6.1.3 Reading to extract specific information
This involves passing over a text to gather specific information. We look over a text to get the information that interests us, for example the departure time of a train. In such
cases we usually ignore the remaining information.
Questions that practise reading for specific and detailed information include: A list of statements about the text that students note as being true or false or don’t
know from the text. Questions starting with how many…? When…? What did…? Who did what? What
time did…? Why did they…?
6.1.4 Predicting
As competent readers we are constantly predicting what will come next. If we read a short story where a man and woman meet, we might predict that they will fall in love.
We bring our knowledge of the world to the text; the skill of predicting helps us understand what will come next.
To practise prediction, you can: tell students the topic of the text and ask them to write questions they would like to
know about the text. They then read to see whether their questions are answered. When the answers are contained in the text it is very motivating. The danger
however, is that students will write questions that are not answered in the text;
give students some vocabulary items from the reading and ask them to predict what they think it will be about. They read to check their prediction;
ask students to read the first paragraph or first two paragraphs of a text and to predict what will come next.
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6.1.5 Extensive reading
