Experience^1
Let us now see one model for such training. We enter a secondary school in Japan.
There are 32 students in the class at intermediate-level target language proficiency.
Prior to the lesson, the teacher has read the students’ learning journals and has
interviewed the students. One of the problems that students have been complaining
about is that their reading assignments are lengthy. There is a lot of new vocabulary in
the readings, and it takes a long time for them to look up all the new words in the
dictionary. Based on these comments, the teacher has decided to teach the strategy of
advance organization.
He begins the class with a presentation. He tells students that they are going to
work on a learning strategy called advance organization. They will be working on
improving their reading by learning to preview and to skim to get the gist of a reading
passage. Learning this strategy will improve their comprehension and the speed at
which they read, he explains. He begins by modeling. He uses the think-aloud
technique, telling students what he is doing as he is modeling. He has distributed a
reading passage. Let us listen in.
‘What I do first is read the title. I try to figure out what the passage is about. I look
at the subheadings and pictures, too, if there are any. I ask myself what I know about
the topic and what questions I have. Next, I read the first paragraph. I don’t read every
word, however. I let my eyes skim it very quickly—just picking out what I think are
the main ideas. I especially look at the content or meaning-bearing words—usually
the nouns and verbs.’
The teacher calls out the words that he considers key in the first paragraph. ‘From
doing these things, I know that this passage is about wild horses. I do not know very
much about the topic, but from skimming the first paragraph, I have gotten the
impression that the passage is about the challenges of catching and taming wild
horses.’