Measures To Help English Language Learners Improve Their ESL Reading Comprehension

Measures To Help English Language Learners Improve Their ESL Reading Comprehension

The ability to comprehend written words is referred to as reading comprehension. It's not the same as being able to recognize words. Recognizing words on a page but not understanding what they mean is not the same as comprehension, which is the aim or goal of reading. Consider the situation where a teacher assigns a youngster a text to read. The child can read a full chapter, but when asked to explain what was read, he or she has no idea. Comprehension improves the meaning of what is read. Reading comprehension occurs when words on a page aren't just words, but thoughts and ideas. When you comprehend what you're reading, it becomes more fun, engaging, and educational. And reading comprehension isn’t a skill that’s “nice to have”. It is required to excel in school, a job, and in life.

Here Are A Few Pointers to Assist Your Students in Mastering Reading Comprehension

It's critical for English Language Learner (ELL) students to have some basic English languageskills before beginning their English as a Second Language (ESL) adventure to attain reading comprehension.

The most obvious first step is to learn your ABCs – the alphabet and basic phonics. Once that is mastered, they can move on to basic vocabulary. After you've laid a solid foundation with these skills, they can start adding more sophisticated elements like prepositions and articles.

Let's have a look at how this might be implemented in a standard reading comprehension session.

A fast ABC warm-up activity can be quite good for a class full of novices before you start practicing reading together. Refreshing their ABC knowledge will allow the flow of the class to continue uninterrupted throughout the lesson's practice segment. Look at it as being similar to an athlete stretching before they start their workout.

Once you've gotten over the alphabet soup with letters and basic sounds, you can assist your kids with pronouncing words and developing a rapid thinking approach to pronunciation. The majority of native English speakers learned to read in this manner as toddlers. And it’s no different for those students trying to master the language at a later age. By doing it, you’re laying a solid foundation from which you can make your lessons more effective in the longer term. Vocabulary warm-ups can include oversized flashcards, a flip chart set, an activity guide, a PowerPoint presentation, or a verbal game.

One crucial point to remember is to warm up with words that are familiar to your students, things they may know or be interested in. Select a word which is familiar, such as “cat”. Then prompt the students to use it in a sentence.

The word "cat" in our example can be magically inserted into the statement "John owns a dog." You can simply make sentences out of the words your students spent a few minutes pronouncing and discussing with their peers.

Bottom line, construct your instructional materials like a rock wall -one brick at a time. As a result, your students will be able to preserve a basic understanding of the topic. As you master the pronunciation and meaning of words, the students can form sentences, adding context as you go.

Enabling English as A Second Language Students to Read Longer English Texts

Pick appropriate fundamental materials, or seeds, before nudging your students into a “literary garden” of new words and sentences.

Understand your students' objectives, requirements, and interests. Self-improvement articles are unlikely to pique the attention of most children, just as bedtime stories are unlikely to pique the interest of adults. Finding the best, most relevant reading material for your pupils will keep them interested and encourage them to read more.

After you've distributed the day's reading materials, lead your children through some fun, pre-reading activities. Create a shortlist of important vocabulary terms that are essential to the reading material's topic. Your kids will invariably come across new terms as they read, but removing some of the guesswork can boost their confidence when they see and grasp a word they just learned in the book.

Class or group discussions about the author of the reading material are also excellent pre-reading exercises. You can utilize visuals to engage your students in a discussion about the author's genre, as well as where he or she comes from, what he or she enjoys doing, and so on and so forth.

You can also share key themes from the reading material and briefly discuss them with your students to provide them a foundation for what's to come. You might even encourage your students to skim the book. “Skimming” is the process of looking for specific words and information in a text without actually reading it. What jumps out as soon as you open the book? At first look, numbers, colors, common words, places, and names are frequently first selected from texts.

Here Are Some ESL Reading Comprehension Strategies for English Language Learners -

You'll need to give your students more direction now when it comes to actively interact with English reading content. Here are some excellent ideas for ensuring that your English as a Second Language (ESL) students get the most out of their reading practice in the classroom.

Predicting

This method focuses on encouraging kids to make accurate predictions based on what they've learned from the story or text. Predictions necessitate asking children to make educated assumptions about what will occur next. They make predictions based on what they see, hear or read about the book's cover, title, photos, illustrations, table of contents, and headings.

Children make predictions or guesses when given questions like "What do you think this story will be about?" or “What do you think is going to happen to/if...?" Predicting increases interest in and knowledge of the text, as well as providing a reason to read. By connecting, pondering, and modifying their predictions, this technique keeps youngsters actively engaged.

Making Connections to What You've Learned So Far

Making connections to existing information entails connecting a new concept to previously acquired knowledge and experiences. It requires children to connect their own life experiences to something in the story. The idea is for students to apply prior knowledge to assist them to understand the content they are reading. Prior knowledge can include their personal experiences as well as their understanding of words, places, animals, and events. The children, for example, are familiar with the word "bones" as a result of a previous talk about bones prompted by a classmate's broken limb. When kids read a new word, such as "jaw," they will use their existing understanding of teeth to help them understand it.

Children begin by making comparisons between the text and their own personal experiences. By spotting similarities, they make connections between different books, texts, or concepts as they mature. To put it another way, get kids to build text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections before, during, and after they read to improve comprehension. Before reading the material, for example, a discussion of the new or challenging vocabulary words can aid comprehension. They can then use their past knowledge of the new terms while reading.

Visualizing

Visualizing is another technique for improving reading comprehension. It necessitates getting students to visualize what they read from the text in their heads. The mental image formed aids children in comprehending, recalling details, remembering, and drawing conclusions from what they read. Ask youngsters to sketch a drawing based on what they've read, for example. Also, ask children to close their eyes and listen while you read a paragraph to them. Instruct them to visualize what the words are describing in their minds.

Summarizing

This method is having children identify the key idea in a text and put it into their own words while reading. The material must be sorted by the children to identify what is important and what is not. They summarise the most significant information in their own words and explain the text in as few words as possible. This method should not be used exclusively at the conclusion of a story. Rather, youngsters should be trained to summarise the story as it progresses. Children can't comprehend what they read if they don't understand it. Any journey starts with one step! Comprehension tactics are used to assist youngsters to have a better knowledge of the material and become active readers by interacting with it.