We’re continuing our focus on reading skills by taking another exclusive preview at Teaching and Developing Reading Skills by Dr. Peter Watkins, part of our Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers series. In this selection, Peter focuses on critical reading skills and how to develop them.
In these times of social media and open access to the internet, it is possible for people to publish quickly, cheaply and without any form of fact-checking or screening. Also, we are frequently being presented with texts which aim to persuade us of something – not just in terms of advertisements, but also in media texts (such as news stories), literary texts and even academic texts.
Consequently, we need to not only understand the content of a text, but also recognise the writer’s beliefs, attitudes and motivations and how these can influence our own judgement. As Peter states in his introduction to his chapter Developing critical reading skills, ‘ … critical reading requires constant questioning, not just of comprehension (Do I understand the text?) but of the judgements and views that underpin the text.’ As these judgements and views are often implied or suggested through a number of methods including the choice of particular vocabulary or the omission of information, it can be very difficult to identify them, even for native speakers of a language.
In the activity below, Peter presents a procedure which can be used with any form of persuasive text to encourage learners to actively try to find the ways by which a writer tries to convince them of their point of view.
8.1 Investigate
| Outline | Learners analyze a text to find the persuasive devices used. | |
| Level | Intermediate and above (B1+) | |
| Time | 30 minutes | |
| Focus | Studying persuasive devices in texts | |
| Preparation | Have a comprehension task ready for stage 1. |
Procedure
- Lead in to a persuasive reading text in the usual way and set a standard comprehension task.
- After checking the comprehension task, set learners a series of questions (see Example) to encourage them to investigate the views, values and stance inherent in the text.
- Give learners time to compare their responses in small groups before reporting back.
Example
- Who wrote this text?
- Why did they write it? What do they want me to think / believe / buy / do?
- Are there hidden values/messages implicit in the text?
- Is any contradictory evidence available from an internet search? Is there anything that is not said in the text that could have been said?
- What techniques are used to attract my attention?
- Could other people understand this text differently to me? In what ways?
Notes
The activity will work with any news media or persuasive text. Question 4 in the example above focuses on the information that is missing from the text. For example, manufacturers of big cars will promote the luxury of the brand but rarely comment on the environmental impact of their products.
Rationale
The activity prompts learners to actively engage with the text and to find the means by which the writer positions them to accept certain arguments.
See Peter’s other #TDWednesday articles on reading skills: Preparing learners for reading, Approaches to reading in the classroom, and Digital reading versus print texts.