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Helping ESL students understand written texts
Introduction
Every day in school and at home ESL students have many different texts* to read. It is through reading that they acquire much of their knowledge and understanding of the different subject areas, and reading often forms the basis of follow-up work such as class discussions or homework questions. For these reasons it is essential that ESL students are helped as much as possible and necessary to understand what they read. Many ESL students, often with their parents’ help, waste a great deal of precious time trying to make sense of texts that are too difficult for them. It is not unusual for a student to pore over a text for a couple of hours with a dictionary and still not understand it very well. Yet with a little assistance their frustrating reading experience can be turned into a more profitable one.
[* The word texts is used here to refer to all
kinds of reading material that ESL students have to deal with; e.g.,
textbook passages, worksheet questions, short stories, Internet
articles, etc.]
The purpose of this article therefore is to suggest to mainstream
teachers how they can help the ESL students in their classes to become
more effective readers. Firstly, I list some of the factors that can
make texts difficult to understand. And secondly, I suggest ways that
the texts that students are expected to read, e.g. in textbooks, can be
made more accessible to them.Read more:
