Today’s teaching, tomorrow’s text:

exploring the teaching of reading

John Macalister

Most learners experience the teaching of reading in the classroom in the form of
intensive reading activities, where learners are provided with support, typically by
the teacher, to make sense of texts that are too difficult for the learners to read
successfully by themselves. After reading, learners are usually expected to answer
a series of comprehension questions. The problem with this approach, critics say, is
that it does not in fact teach learners how to read. While comprehension questions
can be used effectively in the teaching of reading, their effectiveness depends on the
teacher having a clear understanding of the goal of the reading lesson and the
conditions that need to be met if learning is to take place. This article discusses and
exemplifies these concerns and proposes a framework that can assist teachers plan
lessons that help learners to read better.

Introduction When discussing the teaching of reading with the pre-service teachers on
my courses, a scenario that they always find familiar is this: the teacher
enters the room and announces a reading lesson. She begins by pre-
teaching a number of difficult words specific to the text, then tells the
students to read the text and answer the questions that follow. When they
have done this, the students exchange books and mark each other’s work.
The teacher calls on students to read out their answers, and says whether the
answers are right or wrong. Thus, teacher and students think, reading has
been taught.
Attention to reading in the language classroom may, of course, be given in
different ways. Extensive reading may occur in class, or be encouraged
outside; a speed reading course, where students work through a set number
of texts of a fixed length, written within a restricted lexicon, followed by
several multiple-choice questions, may be included; and there are very likely
to be intensive reading activities of the sort described above. Indeed, it is safe
to assume that for most language learners the common experience of
reading is intensive reading, an activity in which learners are provided with
support, typically by the teacher, to make sense of texts that are too difficult
for the learners to read successfully by themselves. It is on this type of
reading activity that this paper focuses.
A criticism of this type of intensive reading activity with its heavy reliance on
comprehension questions is that it does not in fact teach reading. Williams
(1986: 45), for example argued that ‘using a text does not necessarily equal

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 teaching reading’, a point also well made by Nation (1979: 85, original
emphasis), who has suggested that ‘although they may have a role to play in
practising reading, the various forms of reading comprehension questions
are unsuitable for teaching learners to read’ and discussed activities he
considered more suitable. The teaching versus practising reading
distinction is an important one, for intensive reading should teach learners
how to read, or, as Nation (2009: 26, original emphasis) puts it, ‘The teacher
should ask ‘‘How does today’s teaching make tomorrow’s text easier?’’’. In
order to teach learners how to read, there needs to be a focus on developing
skills and strategies that will assist future reading; recognizing conjunction
relationships such as cause–effect, guessing the meaning of unfamiliar
words from their context, and predicting likely content are examples of such
foci. If the learners are practising reading, on the other hand, such foci are
absent; the learners in the example at the start of this article are practising
reading and being confirmed as either successful or unsuccessful readers,
without any obvious attention to reading another text more effectively. The
purpose of this paper, then, is to propose ways in which pre- and in-service
teachers can be assisted to prepare lessons that teach learners how to read
better when a reading text is used as part of a balanced language teaching
programme.

The four strands
The idea of a balanced language teaching programme has its origins in the
proposal that a programme should be thought of in terms of four strands
rather than the four skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking
(Nation 2007). The four strands are meaning-focused input, language-
focused learning, meaning-focused output, and fluency development. The
input strand can, by definition, only include the skills of listening and
reading, whereas speaking and writing must similarly belong to the output
strand. All four skills can, however, fit into fluency development. Language-
focused learning includes such foci as pronunciation, vocabulary, and
spelling. Activities that teach learners how to read, as opposed to giving
them practice at reading, also fall in the language-focused learning strand
and are very likely to flow from meaning-focused input. The discussion here
concentrates on these two strands, language-focused learning and
meaning-focused input.
To qualify as an activity in any particular strand, certain conditions need to
be met. It is not the case that an activity the teacher may mentally classify as
reading, for instance, is automatically a meaning-focused input (or a fluency
development) activity. The conditions for meaning-focused input are neatly
captured in the mnemonic MINUS:
M – there is a focus on meaning
I – the texts and tasks interest the learners
N – there is new learning
U – for understanding; the input is understandable, activities help
understanding
S – tasks are stress-free or, at least, designed to reduce stress for the learners.
Each condition can become a question (for example ‘How am I reducing
stress for the learners?’) that allows pre-service teachers to carry out a simple
self-evaluation of their own intensive reading lesson plans to ensure that the

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 conditions are being met. These questions can also be applied to
commercially available materials, enabling decisions about how they may
need to be enhanced.
Three of these conditions (Meaning, New Learning, and Understanding)
would appear to have particular relevance to the use of comprehension
questions, but before considering those it is necessary to be clear about one
further point: the goal of the reading lesson.

Knowing the goal
Teachers should always be able to explain the reason for doing a particular
task or activity. They should, as a minimum, be clear about the goal of each
lesson. A second useful mnemonic, L I ST, provides a means of considering
goals (Nation and Macalister 2010):
L – Language
I – Ideas
S – Skills
T – Text.
In terms of MINUS, the goal or goals should be reflected in the New
Learning condition. For instance, if the goal of the reading activity is to
introduce learners to the structure of a newspaper article, then the new
learning is related to a Text goal. With this example, if the newspaper article
deals with an uninteresting or unknown topic and is written in difficult
language, the Text goal is unlikely to be achieved as other conditions
(Interest, Understanding, Stress-free) are not being met. As a second
illustration of the idea that the goal or goals should be reflected in the New
Learning condition, the reading activity may be designed to introduce
learners to new information in a topic-based unit, an Ideas goal. Once again,
however, to be successful the other conditions also need to be met, such as
the input being understandable. Table 1 provides further examples of goals
that may be the focus of an intensive reading activity.

Language goals may include . . .
Ideas goals may include . . .
Skills goals may include . . .
Text goals may include . . .
ta b le 1
Examples of L I S T goals
Examples
new vocabulary
letter–sound relationships
a grammatical structure
content that needs to be learnt
content required for other activities
reading for literal understanding
reading to infer meaning
genre structure
cohesion and coherence

Attention to meaning
No matter what the goal, the primary concern should initially be with the
meaning of the text that has been read. Although the scenario described in
the introductory paragraph of this paper is familiar to the teachers I work
with, a common experience with pre-service teachers, and sometimes with
participants on in-service training courses, when designing their own units
of work is the desire to turn every reading activity into a grammar lesson,
with at best only fleeting attention to the text’s meaning. This approach
compromises various principles that have been proposed for teaching

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 reading (for example Williams (1986)) and obscures the fact that when we
read, we read because we want to know what the text says. Understanding
and applying the four-strands framework encourages teachers to consider
meaning.
In giving attention to meaning, comprehension questions clearly have a role
to play, and may serve one of two functions. The first function is goal related.
If there is an Ideas goal, the use of comprehension questions is relatively
straightforward. It may be less straightforward for other types of goal,
however. For instance, if the goal of the intensive reading lesson is to draw
attention to (or teach) the cause–effect relationship signalled by
‘because’—which would be a Text goal—then pronominal questions
beginning with ‘why’ would be legitimate. Similarly, if the goal is to teach
the skill of inferring meaning from text, suitable questions can be framed.
It is important to emphasize that these questions provide the platform for
the language-focused learning strand, which teaches the learners how to
read, and is discussed further below.
The second important function for comprehension questions is to play
a monitoring role. The teacher may wish to monitor the extent to which
learners have made meaning from and understood the text (linking back to
the Meaning and the Understanding conditions of meaning-focused input)
either as a way of confirming the suitability and readability of the type of text
for the learners (Nuttall 1996: 170–6) or to confirm that learners have
understood the content—an Ideas goal—before moving on to the next stage
of the lesson, the success of which may rely on information gained from the
reading text. In this way, comprehension questions play an intermediary
role in moving from one stage of an activity cycle to the next.

Comprehension As already noted, with intensive reading the comprehension question is

questions a common feature of materials used, whether those materials are teacher-
made or commercially produced. Very often the presence and use of
comprehension questions are accepted uncritically, although occasionally
their function has been queried (for example Nation 1979, 2009). Recently,
comprehension questions have received attention from Day and Park
(2005), who presented six types of comprehension and five forms of
questions that they felt could help learners become interactive readers.
Their five question forms were yes/no, alternatives, true/false, multiple-
choice, and pronominal (wh-) questions. While making a case for the use of
comprehension questions, they are very aware that their use ‘in teaching
reading can be overdone’ and warn against ‘the death by comprehension
questions syndrome’ (op.cit.: 68, original emphasis). They also note that, if
comprehension questions are to be used, they need to be well designed. This
additional caution recognizes that ‘it is difficult to make good
comprehension questions. It takes considerable skill, time, and effort’
(Nation 2009: 31).

Alternatives to Comprehension questions are not, of course, the only way in which teachers
comprehension can evaluate whether learners have understood a text. A powerful tool that
questions offers an alternative to comprehension questions is the information transfer
(Palmer 1982), which requires learners to transform language input into
a different form such as a diagram, plan, or table. When using non-fiction

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Language-focused
learning
The activity cycle
Exploring the teaching of reading
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texts, information transfer is also a useful way of raising awareness about
topic types (Johns and Davies 1983).
Willis (1996: 114) makes the point that teachers draw learners’ ‘attention to
the surface forms realizing the meanings they have already become familiar
with during the task cycle and so help them to systematize their knowledge
and broaden their understanding’. In other words, language-focused
learning can flow from a reading activity but it should follow attention to
meaning. The learners have first read and understood the text; the attention
then shifts to how that meaning was conveyed. This may be achieved either
through teacher-led discussion or through student-centred activity.
As with all four strands, to qualify as language-focused learning certain
conditions need to be met. These can be summarized as providing
opportunities for:
n noticing and comparing the way in which the target language form is
used;
n meeting and giving attention to the way in which the language form is
used in input material (receptive retrieval);
n using the language form in output material to express meaning
(productive retrieval).
Two additional conditions are that the language-focused learning should be
learner centred in that, for example it is meeting a learner need, and that it
should be meaningful.
As explained above, the goal or goals of the intensive reading activity are
captured in the New Learning condition of the meaning-focused input
strand, and become the focus of the language-focused learning strand. An
example of how this may all come together in an activity cycle is shown in
the Appendix.1 Beginning with the use of the reading text in this intensive
reading activity as part of the meaning-focused input strand, we can see that
the conditions are met in the following ways:
M – a focus on meaning is achieved by relating the text to the learners’ own
lives, and the learners generating questions before reading;
I – the text should interest the target learners because of its content; looking
for answers to their own questions should also interest the learners;
N – the new learning goal is a Language goal; the new learning that will help
learners read another text more successfully is the awareness of how
pronouns operate in the text; another new learning goal that will help
with future reading could be the Skills goal of training learners to apply
top-down strategies prior to reading (Chia 2001);
U – the pre-reading activities will assist understanding, through activating
content schemata; in addition, only ten of the text’s 285 tokens are not
found among the 2,000 most frequent words of English, or are either
a place name or the type ‘ocean’, and of those ten some may well be
generated in the pre-reading activities (for example ‘seagull’, ‘beach’,
‘aeroplane’);
S – the pre-reading activities, the nature of the text, and the fact that the
learners are determining the questions they are going to be answering in
the first instance, all combine to reduce stress for the learners.
165
 The activities (2–4 in the Appendix) following the reading of the text mark
the shift from meaning-focused input to language-focused learning. There
is an initial attention to meaning (in the first post-reading activity), which
allows the teacher to monitor the learners’ understanding of the text, as well
as validating the learners’ own meaning making, before the use of simple
comprehension questions. The questions used here have been given the
true/false format, although other formats could also have been chosen. The
questions have, however, been chosen so that they draw attention to the use
of pronouns, the Language goal.
Once again, we can see that the conditions for language-focused learning
are being met in the following ways:
n learner centred, because learners need to understand how pronouns
operate in a text so that they can gain meaning;
n meaningful, because the attention to the target form is embedded in an
activity focused on how meaning is conveyed;
n noticing the target form in deliberately chosen examples, with the result
that learners are potentially comparing their new understanding of the
text’s meaning with their earlier understanding;
n receptive retrieval, because the learners are seeing the form and retrieving
its meaning.
The one condition that is not obviously met is that of productive retrieval,
which is likely to occur when the activity cycle moves to the meaning-
focused output and fluency development strands. The activity cycle
provided in the Appendix does not include these components, but a simple
example would be learners following a staged process to produce their own
texts modelled on ‘Seeing the ocean’. In order to reinforce the Language
goal, attention to the use of pronouns could be made explicit in either a peer
feedback exercise or an editing checklist.

Reflections on the In the activity cycle presented here, two of the four strands are integrated to
four-strands form a coherent unit of work based around a reading text, and it would not
framework be difficult to ensure that meaning-focused output and fluency
development opportunities were also present. Experience suggests that
encouraging pre- and in-service teachers to integrate the strands like this
can produce well-developed units of work with activities that flow logically
from and into each other, and that support each other.
There are occasions, however, when an activity can draw on only one of the
four strands. An example would be a stand-alone extensive reading
programme, where learners read self-selected books silently. This would be
the meaning-focused input strand, and in extensive reading learners are
quite properly practising reading. It is in the intensive reading activities that
teaching learners how to read should occur. Another example of a single
strand being present in an activity, again related to reading, would be speed
reading; here the fluency development strand is the focus. It is important to
remember, then, that an appropriate balance between the four strands
should be sought in the language teaching programme as a whole, not in
every activity.

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 There is one final point to make here. This application of the four strands as
a framework to assist teachers in preparing intensive reading activities
differs a little from Nation’s (2009: 25) description of them, for he is clear
that intensive reading belongs to the language-focused learning strand. The
teachers on my courses often find this difficult to grasp, and treating the text
around which the intensive reading activity is structured as a meaning-
focused input opportunity has clarified the application of the framework for
them.

Conclusion For experienced teachers, the activity cycle presented in the Appendix may
appear familiar, and offer nothing new. For less experienced and for novice
teachers, however, the planning of such an activity cycle can be challenging.
In part, this may be because they draw from their own experience of
language learning. The overuse and the misuse of comprehension
questions have been criticized from time to time, yet they continue to be
a common feature of many students’ experience of reading in the
classroom. While comprehension questions do have a role to play in the
teaching of reading, they are probably best used sparingly and in
conjunction with other means of monitoring understanding. They should
also be used with a clear learning goal in mind. To understand how best to
employ comprehension questions, teachers on both pre- and in-service
training courses need a principled framework for designing reading
activities. Such a framework is provided by the four strands. It encourages
attention to meaning and the way in which language is used to convey
meaning, and discourages both inappropriate use of comprehension
questions and the use of an intensive reading activity as a poorly
disguised grammar lesson. Application of the conditions for each strand
can guide teachers in the preparation of reading-based lessons, ensuring
that learners are not just practising reading but are indeed learning how to
read.
Final revised version received January 2010

Note Nation, I. S. P. 1979. ‘The curse of the

1 Adaptation of the story ‘Seeing the ocean’. The
original version was published in Settling In,
Choices, 1997 by Learning Media Limited for the
Ministry of Education. Copyright
Vuk Vukčević
1997.
References
Chia, H. L. 2001. ‘Reading activities for effective
top-down processing’. English Teaching Forum
39/1: 22–5.
Day, R. R. and J. Park. 2005. ‘Developing reading
comprehension questions’. Reading in a Foreign
Language 17/1: 60–73.
Johns, T. and F. Davies. 1983. ‘Text as a vehicle for
information: the classroom use of written texts in
teaching reading as a foreign language’. Reading in
a Foreign Language 1/1: 1–19.
comprehension question: some alternatives’.
Guidelines 2: 85–103.
Nation, I. S. P. 2009. Teaching ESL/EFL Reading and
Writing. New York: Routledge.
Nation, I. S. P. and J. Macalister. 2010. Language
Curriculum Design. New York: Routledge/Taylor &
Francis.
Nation, P. 2007. ‘The four strands’. Innovation in
Language Learning and Teaching 1/1: 1–12.
Nuttall, C. 1996. Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign
Language. Oxford: Macmillan Heinemann.
Palmer, D. M. 1982. ‘Information transfer for
listening and reading’. English Teaching Forum
20/1: 29–33.
Vukčević, V. 1997. ‘Seeing the Ocean’ in M. Smith
(ed.). Choices: Settling In. Wellington: Learning
Media.

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 Williams, R. 1986. ‘‘‘Top ten’’ principles for teaching
reading’. E LT Journal 40/1: 42–5.
Willis, J. 1996. A Framework for Task-Based Learning.
Harlow, UK: Longman.
The author
John Macalister is a senior lecturer, School of
Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Victoria
University of Wellington, New Zealand, who has also
worked as a teacher educator in Cambodia, Thailand,
Vanuatu, and Namibia. He has teaching and
research interests in language teaching
methodology and language curriculum design.
Email: john.macalister@vuw.ac.nz

Appendix This activity cycle is based around the text ‘Seeing the ocean’ by Vuk
Vukčević (adapted from Vukčević 1997). The intended learners for this cycle
are adult recent immigrants to New Zealand, and the language-focused
learning goal is to recognize the ways in which reference words (pronouns)
operate within the text.

Pre-reading: These
suggestions are
intended for the
teacher
1. Begin by drawing on the learners’ own experiences. Did they come to New Zealand
by plane? Did they stop anywhere on the way? Where? Where did they arrive in New
Zealand? What was the first thing they saw or thought or felt when they arrived?
2. Tell the students they are going to be reading one man’s account of his first
impressions when he arrived in New Zealand. Everyone has different experiences.
Ask them what sort of questions they might have before reading. Write the learners’
questions on one side of the board.
3. Tell them the title of the text. Write it on the top of the other side of the board. Ask
them what words and ideas they associate with the word ‘ocean’. Record their
answers.
4. Ask the students to work in small groups to put the words associated with ‘ocean’
into categories.
5. Hand out the reading text. Tell the students to read it with their questions from (2)
in mind. Tell them they will be talking about these questions after they have read the
text.

Reading: The
learners receive the Seeing the ocean
text by Vuk Vukčević
1 I want to write about my first impressions of New Zealand—maybe you
2 can’t even dream about my feelings at my very first step in your country.
3 I awoke in the aeroplane just a few seconds before I could see the top of
4 the North Island. I saw a lovely blue-green surface of ocean, shining in the
5 afternoon sun. It was stunning.
6 Auckland was the first city that I saw in New Zealand—just for a few
7 seconds. We had to go to Wellington. The airport seemed small to me
8 compared with airports in Belgrade, Singapore, Bangkok.
9 But air! Air was the first thing I saw and felt in your beautiful country. It is
10 so clear and fresh and I remember my first breath here—I felt like a new-
11 born child.

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 12 My arrival here is a new birth for me. Learning the language is a step
13 forward. I am like a nine-month-old baby. When I reach eighteen months,
14 I will be a good English speaker.
15 Seeing the ocean close up was a second step. I like the ocean a lot, and
16 one day I chose to meet it; saying hello, touching the little waves on the
17 beach, and trying to see if it is very salty. Happiness for me is being able to
18 see the ocean, hear seagulls calling in the early mornings, spend summer
19 nights with my family looking at the calm, dark ocean surface from the
20 lawn and feeling the stillness of the world.
21 Sometimes, the starry sky seems so close to the earth that I can touch the
22 shining of a star’s light. We are just sitting, without words, listening to the
23 silence of the night.

After reading: 1 Ask the learners about their reaction to the text. Did they enjoy it? Did they
find answers to any of their questions?
2 Tell the learners you are now going to give them five true/false questions
to answer. Ask them to read the text again to answer the questions.
He is writing this story for his family.
He thought the afternoon sun was stunning.
He thinks the air in New Zealand is fresh and clear.
He wanted to find out if the ocean is salty.
He likes to sit and look at the ocean by himself.
3 Before checking the answers with the learners, write the following line
numbers and pronouns on the board. Ask them to identify what each
pronoun refers to.
Line 1 you
Line 5 it
Line 9 it
Line 17 it
Line 22 we
4 Once the students have done this, ask them to check their answers to
the true/false questions. Then discuss the answers and how the learners
have arrived at them.

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