Second edition

Extensive and intensive reading are ways of reading. Extensive reading, sometimes called reading for pleasure, involves reading long pieces of text, for example a story or an article. As you read, your attention and interest vary - you may read some parts of the text in detail while you may skim through others, so you might use a variety of reading subskills.
Sometimes, especially in language classrooms, we ask learners to read texts so that we can examine the language they contain. For example, we might ask learners to look for all the words in a text related to a particular topic, or work out the grammar of a particular sentence. The aim of these activities is to make learners more aware of how language is used. These activities are sometimes called intensive reading.
This way of reading does not involve reading for meaning or comprehension {understanding) of the text. It involves reading for language study. Sometimes in hooks on English language teaching, but not in the TKT, this skill is called reading for detail. When we read about reading we need to be quite clear what skill is being referred to in order not to get confused!
Understanding different text types is something else good readers can do. Some examples of written text types are letters, articles, postcards, stories, information brochures, leaflets and poems. All these kinds of text types are different from one another. They have different lengths, layouts (the ways in which text is placed on the page), topics and kinds of language.
We can see that reading is a complex process. It involves understanding letters, words and sentences, understanding the connections between sentences, understanding different text types, making sense of the text through our knowledge of the world and using the appropriate reading subskill. Reading may be a receptive skill but it certainly isn't a passive one!
■ Key concepts and the language teaching classroom
Read these tips and tick the ones which are most important for you.
• If learners know how to read in their own language, they can transfer their reading skills to reading in. English. Sometimes though, they find this difficult, especially when their language level is not high, so they need help to transfer these skills. Teachers can check which reading subskills their learners are good at, then focus on practising the subskills they are not yet using well. They can also help them by pre-teaching vocabulary (teaching vocabulary from the text before the learners read the text), by asking learners to predict text content and with certain kinds of learner, encouraging them to predict text structure.


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Module l

m To help learners bring their knowledge of the world to understanding a text the
the class looks at the texl. Lead- in activities generally involve looking at the pictures around a text or at the title and trying to predict what the text will be about. They can also involve using brainstorming {thinking of and listing ideas or vocabulary about a topic) to predict what vocabulary the text might contain, discussing the general topic of the text or talking about cxperienees of it.
© Giving learners lots of opportunities for extensive reading, in or out of class, helps them to develop their fluency in reading. Graded readers (books with language made easier for language learners) are a very useful way of giving learners extensive reading practice, helping them build up their confidence in reading and consolidate the language they know and gradually extend it to include new language. Nowadays you can find graded readers on a very wide variety of subjects and at a large number of language learning, levels.
m Which reading skills we need to teach depends on the age and first language of the learners. Some learners of English, e.g. young children, may not yet know how to read in their own language. They need to learn how letters join to make words and how written words relate to spoken words both in their language and in English. Other learners may not understand the script used in English as their own script is different, e.g. Chinese, Arabic.
© We can choose the right texts for our learners. Texts should be interesting in order to motivate learners. Texts should also be at the right level of difficulty. A text may be difficult because it contains complex (complicated) language and/or because it is about a topic that learners don't know much about.
• To make sure learners get used to a range of text types we can give them different kinds of texts to read, e.g. articles, stories, postcards, emails, brochures, leaflets, etc.
@ The activities in a reading lesson often follow this pattern:

1.