ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute OBJECTIVES You will understand: 1. How reading for Academic Purposes differs from other reading lessons. 2. Various techniques for teaching reading for academic purposes. You will be able to: 1. Plan and teach reading lessons for academic purposes.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute INTENSIVE READING When students read for pleasure with extensive reading, their only assignment is to enjoy and understand the text and then report back on what they have read. In contrast, when students complete intensive reading, they read with a specific and focused learning task in mind. In intensive reading, the students usually read the same text multiple times with different learning tasks each time. *The language learning context in which most intensive reading occurs is in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) context.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute READING FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES In an EAP context, students are studying the language in order to be able to move on to studying different subject matter at an institution of higher education. Given the large amounts of text that higher education students must read, understand and apply, the reading in an EAP context or reading for academic purposes is almost exclusively intensive reading.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute INTENSIVE READING TASKS FOR EAP The following are the most commonly used intensive reading tasks assigned in an EAP context in which students are working with the content of the text:  Skimming the text for main ideas  Scanning the text for specific details  Identifying the author’s opinion or viewpoint  Identifying facts and supporting points  Understanding content-specific language or the specialized language associated with a field and topic

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute READING TO FOCUS ON LANGUAGE Intensive reading tasks used in an EAP context that focus on the language of the text might include:  Determining the meaning for a particular word from context  Deconstructing the verb tenses used in a text and why those particular tenses were used  Analyzing the use of the passive voice  Deducing what the referent to a pronoun is  Understanding the genre and associated formats used in an academic setting  Deconstructing the writing styles used in various academic disciplines

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute UNDERSTANDING ACADEMIC TEXTS When teaching reading for academic purposes, teachers must encourage students to use all of the resources available to them to help them understand a text:  Teachers can prompt students to consider the title and predict what information the reading might contain.  Teachers can prompt students to refer to any subheadings, captions, pictures, or charts which accompany the text in order to get more information about the reading.  Students should look at the footnotes and references to glean more information. The purpose of using all of the resources available in a text is to get students to activate their schema - any pre-existing knowledge a student has - about a topic. Reading for academic purposes then, is primarily designed to build a students’ schema on the particular subjects they will be studying at college or university.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute CRITERIA FOR SELECTING ACADEMIC TEXTS Selecting appropriate texts for reading for academic purposes is somewhat challenging. Most academic texts are lengthy and complicated. Most reading classes have students preparing for higher education on a wide variety of subject matter, so finding subjects of common interest is difficult. Teachers need to consider the following criteria when selecting texts for academic reading purposes:  The length of the readings  The source of the readings  The complexity of the language structures used  The amount of unfamiliar vocabulary  The relevance and usefulness of the text to student academic goals  How current the material and content is

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute PUBLISHERS OF ACADEMIC RESOURCES AND TEXTS As more and more students study English for Academic Purposes, publishers are producing more and more textbooks to support reading for academic purposes. All of the major publishers now offer books either exclusively for reading for academic purposes or with an integrated skills approach. To see some of the textbooks available, search the online catalogues of the following publishers:  Pearson Longman  Oxford University Press Canada  Oxford University Press  Cambridge University Press The challenge with publisher-produced material for reading for academic purposes is that it gets out of date very quickly. Publishers are working around this by providing websites that contain up-to-date material, while having the strategies and activities in the hard copy textbooks.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute ACTIVITIES FOR ACADEMIC READING It is important to keep in mind that the eventual goal of all reading for academic purposes activities is for students to be able to extract specific information from the texts and then synthesize that information in order to complete a research paper, presentation, or other project. All activities should be designed and selected with this overall goal in mind—reading is the launching pad for productive, performance assessments that students need to complete to demonstrate mastery of their subject-matter.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute The following are activities that can be used when reading for academic purposes:  PREDICTING THE ENTIRE TEXT  PREDICTING THE MIDDLE OF THE TEXT  HIGHLIGHTING AND NOTE-TAKING  UNDERSTANDING THE AUTHOR  FOLLOW-UP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Complete task journal question 2 and submit via to or (preferred), or print and hand in.