Chapter 10: Taken as Read: Teaching Reading Lessons 143
✓! Exclamation mark: You use this mark to show that there’s stronger
emotion than usual, or surprise, in the statement.I just don’t believe it!
✓ @ : I know this at sign isn’t punctuation, but I included it here because
it’s become so ubiquitous, meaning that it’s everywhere!Don’t be lazy about using question marks and capital letters when you write
on the board. Many teachers take these things for granted only to wonder why
their students read and write so poorly. Students quickly pick up your bad
habits.From the first lessons you’re likely to teach whole phrases such as, ‘How are
you?’ and ‘I’m from England’. Get your students to repeat whole sentences as
they read from the board and you point out the words one by one. That’s not
to say that students should only read the words one by one. Aim for fluent,
connected speech. They then learn to recognise the words and also how to
use the appropriate intonation for a statement or question.You certainly don’t want your students to read like robots. So don’t slow
down too much when you read aloud. You find that you start to sound unnat-
ural if you do and you won’t be using the typical rhythm of the language.Encourage students to chunk words together too. In this way they’re less
likely to translate word for word, which often leads to them losing the sense
of the sentence.Higher-level students can also work with individual sentences. For example,
they can analyse a list of newspaper headlines or short advertisements. The
puns (jokes based on words that look or sound the same but have differ-
ent meanings) and other forms of word play in these short texts are a real
challenge for learners. On the other hand, when they get the sense of them,
students feel a real sense of accomplishment. Collect any good examples you
come across for use in your lessons.Scores of words sound or look the same in English. If students aren’t paying
attention to the context, they may get completely the wrong end of the stick.
Pay attention when teaching:✓ Homophones: Words that sound the same but are spelled differently and
have different meanings. For example, both here/ hear are pronounced /
hiə/ and sight/site are both pronounced /sait/.
✓ Homographs: Words that look the same but sound different and have
different meanings. For example, bow /baυ/(to bend from the waist as a
sign of respect) and bow /bəυ/ (a decorative way of tying a ribbon).