Theme: Working with texts

Strategy 10: Responding to Texts

Students respond to texts in independently formed arguments by expressing their opinions in oral or written reports, logs and journals, and interpersonally shaped socioaffective discussions. They do this by debating their positions on important text aspects with peers, teachers, friends, and chat room members. They also evaluate texts based on their knowledge and critical thinking skills.
Task: Structuring responses to texts. Students may begin preparing for formal responses to texts by discussing their opinions in small groups. Do they like the story? Why or why not? Advanced readers may also attempt reading a text from different perspectives, after which they could begin organizing their positions by creating a three-column table for their notes: Column 1 is “Content/Facts,” what the story is about; Column 2 is “Author’s Position,” what the author wants readers to believe; Column 3 is “Author’s Ways of Expression,” the way an author communicates a message through his or her writing. As students fill in their comments, they respond to each of these three sets of notes separately.
With advanced-level readers, teachers could use the two versions of a story about Christopher Columbus, Follow the Dream (Sis, 1991) and Encounter (Yolen, 1996). They could answer questions such as these: “Why do the two books talk about Christopher Columbus differently? One treats him as a hero who discov- ered America, and the other one as an invader. What do you think about that?” “Who is the real Christopher Columbus, according to you? Why?” “Do you like the story? Why or why not?” “What is this book about?” “What did you learn from the story?” Students’ guided responses could start with “I believe ,” “I
learned . . . ,” “I think the story is about . . . because ,” “According to me he
is . . . ,” or The author seems to say that

REFLECTIONS

Teachers could adapt the reading strategies discussed in this chapter by bearing in mind that students perform better in critical thinking tasks when the following general principles are met:

1. 
   Provide a safe and friendly environment in which students, working as a multicultural community, share and explore their interests, ideas, and cultural knowledge.
   
2. 
   Design tasks that are based on an evaluation of ESOL learners’ English proficiency, cultural orientation, and interests.
   
3. 
   Develop an atmosphere of multicultural sharing through the creation of a multicultural library, projects, and events.
   
4. 
   Build a bridge between texts that are and are not culturally relevant by leading beginning-level learners from one to the other, that is, from what is familiar to what is unfamiliar.
   
5. 
   Offer scaffolding for students through teacher modeling that gradually involves students, first as participants and then as models themselves.
   
6. 
   Use ESOL learners’ strengths, such as L1 ability, L1 literacy skills, and background knowledge. Make connections between students’ existing strategies and new strategies.
   
7. 
   Offer rich opportunities for practice in different contexts, for different purposes, and with different tasks.
   

Reading literacy is vital to all other areas of ESOL education, which is why it is important to implement appropriate reading strategies at all levels of ESOL. In this chapter, I have recommended 10 basic strategies for the interpretation of texts and suggested ways to apply these in the reading classroom to enhance learners’ L2 literacy skills.

Deoksoon Kim is an assistant professor at the University of South Florida, in Tampa, in the United States. She teaches second language acquisition and literacy. She has also taught and worked in professional development and research in South Korea and Canada. Her foci include TESOL, second language reading and literacy, and instructional technology in teacher education.