| Taking time to prepare students before they read can | | | | - Discuss the text type (If it is a newspaper article, |
| have a considerable effect on their understanding of | | | | spend considerable time discussing facts and opinions) |
| what they read and their enjoyment of the reading | | | | - Predict based on the title, later confirming their |
| activity. | | | | guesses during the while stages of reading. |
| Why Pre-Reading Activities? | | | | - Read the first line of each paragraph and try to |
| Isn't it enough to get kids to just start reading? | | | | predict a title or theme for each one. |
| Pre-reading has practical implications for lesson design | | | | - Brainstorm - When-Where-Who? What Happens? |
| and planning. A reading lesson typically has three parts: | | | | Why? eliciting thematic lexical items while brainstorming |
| pre, while and post activities. The logic behind activating | | | | - Ask students to relate the phenomenon to their |
| prior knowledge is to build upon what students already | | | | personal lives, to provide examples (frontally)activating |
| know about a topic as a lead-in to the main reading | | | | personal knowledge |
| task. The more teachers activate students' prior | | | | - A KWL graphic organiser.....the pupils fill in the column |
| knowledge, the easier it will be for the students to | | | | of what they "KNOW" and they then ask about "What |
| retain new information from the main reading task. | | | | they "WANT" to know. They fill in what they learned |
| The following are some of the many uses of | | | | after they have read the text. |
| Pre-Reading Activities: | | | | - Activating prior knowledge in the form of a class |
| - Motivating and setting purposes for reading | | | | discussion or group work. |
| - Activating and building background knowledge | | | | - Predicting what the text is about according to the |
| - Relating the reading to students' lives | | | | external text features: the picture, the title in bold, the |
| - Pre-teaching vocabulary and concepts | | | | subtitle, the type of the text. |
| - Pre-questioning, predicting, and direction setting | | | | ESL/EFL learners need a reason to read. Activating |
| Sample Pre-Reading Activities | | | | prior knowledge is extremely important therefore for |
| - Brainstorm about types of media. Ask the class - | | | | the ESL or EFL learner who does not feel completely |
| What kinds of media they are familiar with and do | | | | confident of his / her ability to read in the target |
| they use? | | | | language. This is where pre-reading activities come in. |