What countries are mentioned in the text (if any)?
4. Why does the writer mention these countries?
To answer these questions, students have to be ready to deal with the text as an
organic whole, preparing to sort out messages, select and reorganize those that they
judge to be the most relevant and important to the questions they are going to answer.
Here the passive reading process of input is inclined to become an active process of
output, combining guessing, reading, predicting, inferring and speaking. It is crucial
to note that teachers should not have preconceived, rigid notions about “correct”
answers to their questions. Alternatively, they should allow student input to be
genuine, and possibly, unpredictable.
While-Reading Stage
While-reading stage consists of reading a text twice, each for a specific purpose. The
first reading concerns two important speed-reading techniques, namely, skimming and
scanning. The training of these skills is of particular importance because these skills
are not only indispensable for EFL learners, but also because during the process of
skimming and scanning the schemata of students can be activated. Skimming
facilitates text processing by initiating students into the gist and organization of the
text. Scanning is helpful for seeking specific information for the pre-reading questions
mentioned above. The second reading is a problem-solving process. The problems to
be solved in this process of reading may include lexical, syntactic, discourse, and
socio-cultural dimensions (as shown above in Chart-2) (Xiang & Wang, 1999). These
dimensions are discussed in detail below.
Lexical and syntactic focus
While reading silently, students come across new grammatical and structural units
and students have the opportunity to pick out linguistic or syntactic problems that
cause them comprehension difficulties (e.g. long sentences, new structures or
expressions typical of a particular writer’s style). Teachers then ask students to raise
their difficulties and try to interpret them according to the context. This can be done
either individually or in pairs. Then, these problems are pooled and collected together.
Teachers can ask students to discuss these listed problems in pairs or in a small group