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Module 3: Reading

Reading is extremely important in learning a new language and requires a lot of effort from new English
language learners. To be able to read fluently, students need to be able to recognize sounds and patterns,
comprehend the words they read, and understand how the words work together in a sentence to convey
meaning. In this module, we will break down reading into smaller parts so that you can help your students
successfully find proficiency in the skill. In doing so, we will cover how to work on beginning reading skills,
how to transition into more difficult decoding, and how new readers can gain meaning from what they are
reading. The ultimate goal is to help your students understand the language so that they can not only read
and understand words in English but also understand how they work together to convey true meaning.

Module 3: Reading

3.1 Developing reading skills

3.2 Auditory and visual discrimination

3.3 Forming associations

3.4 Decoding

3.5 Reading for purpose

3.1 Developing reading skills

Imagine that teaching a student to read in a new language is like building a house. You cannot start off by
building the attic; you have to work your way up from the bottom. As we discuss how to help students
develop reading skills, we will start with the basics, move on to lower-level reading skills, such as
comprehension, and eventually discuss such higher-level reading skills as identifying purpose and intent.

3.1.1 Beginning to read

As you begin to approach reading with your students, it is important to remember that all of them may be
coming from different backgrounds and therefore may need different levels of instruction. For students
whose original language does not share the English alphabet, that is where you need to start. For students
from all native languages that share an alphabet with English, though, it is important that you go over the
way words are sounded out because even if the students are familiar with the English alphabet, the sounds
of this new language will likely be unique and somewhat foreign.

Phonemic awareness: We discussed phonemes in detail in the previous module when we reviewed
linguistics, but it is important to also mention phonemic awareness here because it is such an important
part of the reading process. To help your students improve their phonemic awareness, you will expect your

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students to be able identify, understand, and manipulate phonemes. Helping your students gain phonemic
awareness will give them the ability to break down and learn new words by themselves.

 Phonemes are unique to each language, so your students may have difficulty adjusting to learning
new ones. They will likely need help understanding the structure of new phonemes and
understanding how to sound them out.

 Your students may naturally think of the phonemes in their native language, which could be in
direct contrast with English phonemes. If you are aware of phonemes in your students’ native
languages, you can use this to your advantage. Otherwise, it may be a good idea to try to train
them to avoid this kind of thinking.

 Making the process of improving phonemic awareness more fun and active is an effective way to
increase engagement and understanding. Try activities that turn phonemic awareness into a game
or require your students to get up, move around, and be active.

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3.1.2 Beginning to read

Phonics: The concept behind phonics is that students can begin to see and understand patterns in how
phonemes relate to each other. Once they recognize these patterns, students can more easily sound out
words that are foreign to them. This can also help them understand meaning when they begin to see
patterns in root words, prefixes, and suffixes. English is notorious for straying away from patterns, however,
so while phonics can be a helpful tool, it certainly has its shortcomings.

Learning the alphabet: Some of your students may not need to learn the alphabet because the English
alphabet is the same as their native language’s alphabet. However, if your students do need to learn the
alphabet because it is very different from how their native language is structured, you cannot skip this step.
This makes learning the alphabet difficult if you have a heterogeneous group of students. You can combat
this obstacle by differentiating your instruction, which requires more preparation but provides more
individualized instruction for your students. We will discuss differentiation in more detail in a later module.

Letter/sound correlation: We will discuss this in more detail later in the module, but whether or not your
students are familiar with the alphabet, learning the correlation between letters (graphemes) and sounds
(phonemes) is extremely important because sounds are unique to a language. Many of these sounds and
combinations of sounds will be difficult for your students to get used to, so make sure you practice a lot.

Concepts of print: Some of the concepts of print we discuss here will be relevant to students who come
from different backgrounds, but some of these concepts will only be relevant to students who are learning
to read for the first time. It is possible to have a student who knows a native language but has never
learned to read. Your task is a little more difficult in these cases because this adds another layer to what
you need to accomplish.

 The English language is read from left to right.

 The English language is read from top to bottom.
 Letters and words convey messages.
 When you get to the end of a line (on the right), you need to return to the beginning of the next line
(on the left).
 The illustrations in a book correspond to the words written there.

3.1.3 Advanced reading skills

Once your students have built up confidence with the basics of reading, your next step is to help them
develop proficiency in more advanced reading skills.

Summarizing: Summarizing is an extremely important skill because it helps your students bridge the gap
between understanding the words they are reading and understanding the meaning that those words are
trying to convey. The skill of summarizing requires students to understand enough of what they have read
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to explain what the text is about in their own words. To help your students learn how to do this, you may
want to layer your summary instruction, having them read text in English but allowing them to summarize it
in their native language. Eventually, though, you should move on to having the students summarize in
English. Scaffolding your instruction like this will definitely help your students ease into true understanding
of English texts.

Finding the main idea, important facts, and supporting details: While summarizing usually requires a
student to understand the main idea of a text, it is still important to discuss this separately. Once students
have summarized the text, you can ask questions that get to the main idea, for example, “What is the point
that the writer is trying to make?” Such questions allow students to move from summarizing the entire text
to pinpointing what is important. The next step can be to ask follow-up questions, such as “How do you
know that is the point the writer is trying to make?” That requires a strong understanding of not only the
overall meaning of the words in a text but also how the different ideas in a text relate to one another.

Sequencing: Sequencing asks students to take a step beyond summarizing the text. Whereas summarizing
the text concerns itself with simply understanding what happened, sequencing requires students to label,
categorize, and compartmentalize what happens in the text. Students look at textual features to try to
identify the important aspects of the text, for example, the setting, the sequence of events, and the larger
context of the text, identifying how all of the parts of the text fit within the whole.

Relating background knowledge: It is always helpful when working with students who are trying to learn
a new language that you relate what they are learning to their background knowledge. There are a couple
of different ways that you can do this. As we mentioned earlier, you can use cognates and your students’
native phonemes to help them understand English root words and sounds. Another way is to help your
students connect thematically to the text, asking them to try to relate what is going on in the text to personal
experiences they have had. While this won’t necessarily directly help them learn the language, it will help
them make a stronger connection with it and therefore make it more accessible.

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3.1.4 Advanced reading skills

Making inferences: Once your

students begin improving in their ability
to understand English text, the next
step is to help them improve their
ability to make inferences. Making
inferences means reading between the
lines and accessing meaning that is
not explicitly stated. For example, if a
man were to walk into the room,
closing an umbrella, you would infer
that it was raining outside. No one
specifically told you that it was raining,
but you were able to use context clues
to draw that conclusion. Once students
are more comfortable understanding
what they read, working on their
inferential thinking will help them learn
how to see the meaning in a text that is
not explicitly stated.

Drawing conclusions: This idea goes hand-in-hand with inferential thinking. To be able to accurately draw
a conclusion, a student needs to be able to understand the literal meaning of a text and how that literal
meaning can lead to a conclusion.

Comparing and contrasting: Comparing and contrasting is the next step along the line of textual analysis.
To compare and contrast two texts, a reader needs to understand the purpose of the text as well as the
strategies that a writer uses to convey meaning. This skill can be extremely useful, as it easily lends itself to
having students identify which text is more effective.

Distinguishing between fact and opinion: As part of the evaluative process of reading, distinguishing
between what is fact and what is opinion can be an incredibly nuanced task. It requires your students to
really understand what the text is saying to evaluate whether the text is based on opinion or fact. This can
be difficult, especially when the text is opinionated, with a speaker who presents his or her opinions as
fact.

Self-questioning: As your students get more comfortable with reading texts on their own, it is time to get
them into the habit of reading actively. People tend to think of reading as a passive activity because it is

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done quietly, but to really understand a text, you need to constantly question what is going on. Having your
students use annotations to express their self-questioning will help them get into the habit of asking
questions as they read. This is also helpful because they can go back to the text they have previously read
and easily point out the important information.

Problem solving: While problem solving is a cognitive skill, asking our students to solve problems in
English can be complicated even for students who are natural problem solvers. Problem solving requires
true comprehension, understanding beyond the explicit, and the ability to think critically while working with a
foreign language.

3.2 Auditory and visual discrimination

Both auditory and visual discrimination refer to our ability to perceive and distinguish between different
elements. The best way to understand these two concepts is by looking at each one individually.

3.2.1 Auditory discrimination

Auditory discrimination refers to our brain’s ability to organize and categorize sounds, thereby allowing us
to make meaning of what we hear. While auditory refers to sounds and reading is typically done silently, the
ability to distinguish between different sounds (phonemes) can affect our ability to sound out and identify
vocabulary. The inability to effectively access one’s auditory discrimination can impair someone’s reading
tremendously, especially when students are asked to read out loud. If someone has trouble with auditory
discrimination, they will have trouble:

 Understanding phonemes and how they are

different. This is especially true with
phonemes that are similar, as we can see
in the words “forty” and “fourteen.” The
subtle changes in the structure of these
words may be difficult for someone who
has poor auditory discrimination to
perceive.

 Learning to read. As we have already

discussed, many of the early reading
strategies rely heavily on a student’s ability
to understand and distinguish between
different sounds. This can add an extra
hurdle for a new English language learner.

 Sometimes, struggles with auditory

discrimination can affect students’ ability to
focus on what they are reading because

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 they have difficulty blocking out background noise.

Just because someone suffers from an auditory discrimination disorder, however, does not mean they
cannot learn a new language. Such a disorder simply provides a surmountable obstacle on the path to
success.

3.2.2 Visual discrimination

Visual discrimination refers to an individual’s ability to distinguish between letters, shapes, numbers, and
objects. While both are important, visual discrimination is much more impactful on an individual’s ability to
read than auditory discrimination. Auditory discrimination affects an individual’s ability to sound out words,
but visual discrimination affects an individual’s ability to recognize which letters he or she is seeing. While it
can be difficult to identify when a student has a visual discrimination deficiency because it can mask itself
as just typical difficulties that students might have reading a new language, here are some signs that you
can look for:

 The student has trouble identifying letters and

learning the alphabet. The difficulty will be in
recognizing the letters rather than being unable to
remember what they are called.
 Difficulty telling the difference between similar
letters (e.g., b and d), similar numbers (e.g., 6 and
9), and/or similar shapes (e.g., circles and ovals).

 Difficulty differentiating between words that

have similar beginnings or endings.

Visual discrimination issues, just like auditory

discrimination issues, can be overcome, but reading is
much more difficult for people with visual discrimination disorders. Here are some potential classroom
exercises that you can use to help students who struggle with visual discrimination disorders or
deficiencies.

 Using visuals that are bright and colorful to help students work on distinguishing between clear
shapes and colors.
 Using digital tools such as a laptop or tablet that can help make working on visual discrimination
fun for the students.
 Make learning about visual discrimination fun by using games or puzzles that require the student to
differentiate shapes or letters.

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3.3 Forming associations

Very early on in the process of learning to read, students need to learn to form associations between
sounds (phonemes) and letters/words. This process is paramount to a student understanding how English
speakers turn sounds into words and how English words convey meaning. Regardless of the age of your
students or their native language, you will need to help them learn typical English letter/sound associations.
Here are the basic principles behind teaching a student how to form strong letter/sound associations:

 Assessment: Every student is different, and you don’t want to assume that all of your students are
in the same place. Some students are coming to the English language with a native language that
shares many of the same sounds, while others could be coming from a native language that uses
none of the same sounds as English. By properly and consistently assessing the letter/word
association abilities of your students, you can tailor your lesson planning to directly target
deficiencies and differentiate your instruction to address all skill levels.

 Sequential and systematic instruction: While pedagogy often dictates that you let students
guide their own learning, a skill like this needs to be taught systematically and sequentially. In
many ways, basic skills like these work best with old-school instruction, which means you teach a
concept, assess for that concept, teach another concept, assess for both concepts, and continue
with this process. Continually build on the skills and knowledge that your students are attaining,
and keep returning to the basics to make sure they don’t forget them.

 Teach
explicitly: Sometimes, it
can be cool to lead a
student to meaning without
the student really knowing
where the lessons are
going. When teaching
letter/sound associations,
though, it is important to be
explicit about your
teaching. That means you
are clear with your
students about what you
are teaching them, what
they are learning, and why
they are learning it. The
more you get the student
to accept the process, the
more success you will have.

 Do not focus just on reading: Learning letter/sound associations is not just a reading skill; it is
multisensory. Therefore, you should treat your instruction of the skill as a multisensory skill. Use
whatever resources you have available to help students make the necessary associations. Use

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 flashcards, pictures, digital games, and any other modes of learning you can think of to get the job
done. In this way, you will help your students in more than just their reading.

3.4 Decoding

Once you have helped your students form strong associations between letters and sounds, the next step is
to work on decoding, which refers to displaying those associations by rapidly turning the written word into
speech. This is an essential part of language and is most easily displayed when your students read aloud.

3.4.1 Common questions about decoding

Why is decoding important?

Decoding is important because it is the basis for most reading comprehension skills. An inability to decode
words leads to an inability to identify and understand vocabulary, difficulty building fluency, and difficulty
with overall reading comprehension.

How can you tell if a student is struggling with decoding?

Students who are having trouble decoding often believe they are stuck or that reading is something they
just don’t do well. Here are some of the symptoms to look out for to identify students who are struggling
with decoding:

 The student feels stuck when they need to read a lot of words because they cannot focus enough
on any one word. This is common and manifests in students who can decode single words when
they are presented but have difficulty decoding those same words if there are too many words at
once or the words are coming at them in quick succession.

 Students spend so
much energy trying to
decode the words they
are reading and say
them properly that they
are not comprehending
what they read. In
these cases, students
might not seem to be
struggling too much
when they are reading
(though they would not
show complete
fluency), but they
would not have much
of an idea what they

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 read when questioned.

 The student complains that he or she simply “does not know” how to sound out words. This is
usually a sign of frustration at the energy it is taking for them to decode the words that are being
presented to them.

 The student can identify letters and sounds and even the relationship between the two but
struggles putting them all together in a short amount of time.

Remember that these observations can reflect anything from a student struggling a little with a new skill to
a student having a learning disability that is inhibiting their ability to decode words.

3.4.2 Common questions about decoding

How do I teach decoding to my students?

Here are some simple ways that you can help your students improve their decoding skills:

 When you are teaching a sound, use visuals to prompt the students to reinforce their
knowledge of sounds, and ask the students to say the sound out loud as practice. This will
help the students improve the speed at which they can decode and also stimulate more of
their senses as they learn, making it more memorable and effective.

 Use phonics to drill the students and give them more and more practice with sounding out
phonemes and building to sounding out words.

 Use relevant reading

and writing assignments
that relate to what you
are teaching. If you are
teaching the students a
particular sound, find a
written piece that really
highlights that sound so
that the students can
practice it in a practical
manner.

 Don’t be afraid to use

methods that will ask
students to use their

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 hands. Using manipulatives is a great way to help students learn on a higher level and
ensure that the information you are teaching makes its way to the students’ long-term
memory.

 Try grouping your student homogeneously so that you can address specific problems or
struggles in pockets of students and make your job a little easier. This leads to more
individualized instruction and ensures that all of your students are growing and not that
the children who understand the material are constantly waiting around for the others to
catch up.

3.5 Reading for purpose

Now that your students have learned and mastered the basics of reading, it is time to move towards higher-
level thinking, which means reading for purpose. Up until this point, the purpose for reading was
comprehension, but there is so much more to being a strong reader. Strong readers do not just understand
the literal meaning of what they are reading; they also understand the implicit meaning of what they read.
Let’s take a look at some simple strategies that will help your students read with purpose more effectively.

 Teach your students to be reflective about their own reading. Reading is an active skill, not just a
passive occurrence. If a child loves playing basketball, he cannot expect to just sit on the court and
let basketball happen; he needs to try. The same principle applies to reading. Encourage your
students to be aware of their reading, what works for them, what helps them, and then to have the
follow-through to do what they need to do to read more effectively.

 Make sure that your students understand the purpose for which they are reading something. If you
take a passage completely out of context, it is not going to make much sense, so give your
students some context whenever you give them something to read. Ask them to look for something
specific, give them guiding questions, or even just let them know why the piece is relevant to the
curriculum.

 Invite the students in on the process of setting a purpose. Encourage them to question the text and
really delve into it to get meaning. Then encourage them to identify their own purpose (with proper
guidance, of course). When students have a role in the planning process, they tend to be more
invested in lessons.

 Model active reading for your students. So many teachers like to tell their students to annotate a
piece but don’t like to show them what that means. A good way to do this is to take the first section
of whatever you are going to have them read and go over it as a class. As you go, show them how
you would annotate the piece, what kinds of questions you would ask, and when you would
underline or highlight words, phrases, or sentences. This will help them visualize what they are
supposed to do.

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If you are able to take a student who does not know English from sounding out letters to reading actively
and fluently, you’ll know you have been successful.

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