Strategies for Teaching Components of Reading

by Debbie Tuler

with input from Natalie Detert, Dana Doyon, Chi Herrin, & Jay Kuhlmann

At TJACE@PVCC (Region 10), all ESL teachers went through the LINCS Teaching Adults to Read: Teaching Beginning and Intermediate Readers course in the fall. We discussed the course content in our professional learning communities (PLCs) and instructors chose for themselves what they wanted to work on or try in their own classrooms for the remainder of the year.

The LINCS course defines reading as the process of understanding, analyzing, and evaluating written texts to accomplish goals and tasks in the workplace, family, community, and for lifelong learning and enjoyment. Reading requires the integration of skills in four components: alphabetics, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency. In this article, I share a few strategies that you may also be able to use in your classes.

ALPHABETICS

A key alphabetics resource is abcEnglish. This is not a free site, but it is well worth the cost. While our literacy and low-beginning level teachers have long focused on alphabetics, this site is helping us identify alphabetics skills to focus on not just at those levels, but also systematically as students progress into higher levels.

VOCABULARY

Jay realized he needed to be more intentional about teaching academic vocabulary. He picked up on the research-based recommendation that academic vocabulary had to be explicitly taught, and that each word required about 10 separate exposures to the word for a learner to reach mastery. Vocabulary, according to the LINCS course, was best learned through synonyms and, where possible, in some meaningful context. Jay indicates that in retrospect he would take the LINCS recommendation with a grain of salt; in future he intends to not teach vocabulary so explicitly (with a tier 2 vocabulary list and 10 words selected each week at random) but instead model WAYS that vocabulary can be studied and ways to approach words in context.

The strategies that he used include:

Vocabulary Storytelling:

• Groups of three.
• Select five words from the list.
• Create a short story or narrative incorporating all of the given words.
• Use your creativity and imagination in storytelling.
• Share the story with the class.

Word Association Game (with any word studied so far):

• Four teams.
• Word called out (by instructor or volunteer).
• Shout out any word that comes to mind associated with that word. (5 seconds each).
• Award points to teams for each relevant association.
• Repeat.

FLUENCY

Vocal Warm-Ups and Read-Alouds:

Using text derived from artificial intelligence (AI) or from in-class readings, students engage in whole group choral out-loud articulation with a focus on fluency of pronunciation and rhythm at the sentence and paragraph level.

COMPREHENSION

Comprehending a text requires more than vocabulary knowledge. A good reader also pays attention to text clues. For example, I tend to look at news headlines (titles), get a sense from those of what the article is about, and connect it to what I already know before reading the full article. A couple of TJACE instructors focused on text clues, text structure, and activating prior knowledge and experiences related to the topic to aid in comprehension. These aspects facilitate the actual process of reading by priming students to expect certain vocabulary and thus making comprehension of those items or structures faster and easier when they are encountered. Dana teaches low-intermediate ESL and decided to focus on these aspects of comprehension. She tried a couple of methods for activation that have worked well for her students:

• With texts that have accompanying pictures or graphics: before reading, ask students to share in partners or with the whole class what they think the text will be about based only on the pictures.
• For any text: before reading, have students predict, based only on the title, what the text will be about, explain why they think that, and predict words related to that topic that they might encounter in the text.
• Extend both of these activities by writing on the board words that students predict and eliciting the spelling of those words from students. By generating vocabulary before reading, students are better able to comprehend the words as they come up in the reading.

In addition to formal classroom instruction, we wanted to encourage reading for pleasure and cultivate reading habits. Therefore, this past year TJACE initiated two book clubs (one for high-intermediate/advanced ESL/GED® learners and one for high-beginner/low intermediate ESL). Book clubs meet every other week and are an extension of classroom instruction. Facilitated by instructors Chi and Natalie, these book clubs have read and discussed books, short stories, essays, and poems. In book clubs, students engage in many of the same strategies as in classes:

• Looking at text features (illustrations, captions, titles, chapters, etc.)
• Reading aloud, including sounding out syllables as needed
• Repeated reading aloud to develop fluency
• Writing new words on the board and breaking them into recognizable phonemes
• Discussion: sharing experiences, asking questions, summarizing and predicting

In the lower-level book club, students read one book. In the higher-level book club, Natalie selects a variety of texts that expose students to well-known authors and styles of writing. She notes that multiple reads are essential for building vocabulary, language facility, and personal meaning from text. She selects texts to enable students to dig into universal themes such as crossing cultures, being human, reading as conversation, reading as a means for understanding ourselves and our world, and reading to cultivate our imagination. At this level, students read a piece independently in advance of a book club meeting; during the group session, they read a related piece or two together on the same theme and then discuss the texts. Natalie has been thinking more about those essential skills (durable skills) that AI is making clear are more important than ever but are not often the focus of our teaching. The book clubs are an invaluable means for building hard and soft skills like empathy, critical thinking, growth mindset, etc.

With the new CASAS STEPS assessment, we will continue to hone our instruction of reading skills in 2024–25.

---

Debbie Tuler, ESL Specialist, has been in the field of adult English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) for more than 30 years, with experience in instruction (all levels), teacher-training, curriculum development, and program evaluation. She was part of the state Integrated English Literacy and Civics Education (IELCE) development team. Currently, she teaches high-beginner ESOL and facilitates in-house professional development for ESOL staff in her program, Thomas Jefferson Adult and Career Education at Piedmont Virginia Community College, Region 10 (TJACE@PVCC).