1. Give students a reason to read

Before students start reading, they should know what they are looking for.

Avoid:

“Read the text.”

Instead, give them a clear purpose:

“Read and find out why Sarah decided to leave her job.”

The task determines how students approach the text.

2. Prepare students before reading

Use the title, pictures, topic or a short question to activate previous knowledge and generate predictions.

For example, before a text about travelling alone:

“Would you travel to another country alone?”
“What problems could you have?”

This creates interest and activates vocabulary that may appear in the text.

However, avoid explaining the whole text beforehand. Pre-reading should prepare students to read, not remove the challenge of reading.

3. Teach different ways of reading

Students need to understand that they do not always read in the same way.

Skimming – reading quickly for the general idea.

“What is this text mainly about?”

Scanning – searching for specific information.

“How much does the course cost?”

Reading for detail – reading carefully to understand precise information, relationships or arguments.

Students should learn to choose the appropriate strategy rather than trying to understand every word immediately.

4. Do not stop at every unknown word

One of the most important reading skills is learning to continue reading despite unfamiliar vocabulary.

Encourage students to ask:

• Do I actually need this word to understand the text?
• Can I infer its meaning from context?
• Can I understand the sentence without it?

Teachers should explain essential vocabulary when necessary, but translating every unfamiliar word creates dependency and interrupts comprehension.

5. Move from general to specific

A useful reading sequence is:

Predict → Read for gist → Read for specific information → Read for detail → Analyse language

Students should normally understand the general message before focusing on individual sentences or vocabulary.

Starting immediately with detailed comprehension can make reading unnecessarily difficult, particularly at lower levels.

6. Make students justify their answers

Correction should not simply consist of:

“Number 3 is B.”

Ask:

“Why is it B?”
“Where did you find the evidence?”
“Which sentence helped you?”

Students should return to the text and identify the information supporting their answer.

This is particularly important in Cambridge exam preparation, where distractors frequently contain vocabulary from the text but do not express the same meaning.

7. Teach students to recognise paraphrasing

Reading comprehension often depends on recognising that the question and the text express the same idea using different language.

For example:

Question:

“Why did Tom decide not to go?”

Text:

“In the end, Tom changed his mind and stayed at home.”

Teachers should regularly draw attention to synonyms, reformulation and paraphrasing rather than encouraging students simply to look for identical words.

This becomes increasingly important from B1 onwards.

8. Use the text after comprehension

Once students understand the text, use it as a source of language.

Teachers can:

• elicit useful vocabulary
• identify collocations
• notice grammatical structures
• examine discourse markers
• discuss interesting expressions
• personalise the topic

For example:

“The text says make a difficult decision. What other things can we make?”

Reading then becomes a source of vocabulary and grammar development rather than an isolated comprehension exercise.

9. Finish with a response to the text

Whenever appropriate, move from comprehension to communication.

After reading, students might:

• give their opinion
• answer a personalised question
• compare experiences
• discuss an issue
• write a short response

For example:

“Would you have made the same decision? Why?”

This creates a natural progression:

Read → Understand → Analyse → Respond

10. Adapt the level, not necessarily the strategy

Even Young Learners can predict, skim or search for information when tasks are appropriately designed.

At lower levels, use shorter texts, pictures, headings and simple questions. At higher levels, students can work with inference, attitude, purpose, tone, argument and more subtle forms of paraphrasing.

The strategies remain similar; the linguistic and cognitive demands increase with the level.

11. Put Reading into Practice: Managing a Reading Comprehension Task

When working with reading comprehension exercises from the coursebook, try to make the procedure dynamic, purposeful and slightly challenging. Surprise, personalisation and the classroom techniques introduced previously can all help maintain students’ attention.

Let’s take a True / False activity with ten statements as an example, although the same procedure can be adapted to most reading c

omprehension tasks.

11.1. Set up the task

Ask students to read the instructions and check that they understand exactly what they have to do. Use Instruction Checking Questions (ICQs) rather than simply asking:

“Do you understand?”

For example:

“Are you looking for general information or specific information?”
“Do you write a sentence or just True / False?”

 

11.2. Model what you expect

Complete the first one or two questions together.

Think aloud and demonstrate the process:

“Let’s read statement 1. What information are we looking for? Where can we find it in the text? Does the text say the same thing or something different?”

Students should understand the process, not just discover the correct answer.

11.3. Set a clear time limit

Students now work individually and silently. This is quality individual reading time and can progressively prepare them for exam conditions.

Always establish a clear time limit and, whenever possible, display a countdown timer on the board.

The time should be challenging but realistic. As students become more experienced, it can gradually move towards actual exam timing.

If a student does not finish, that is not necessarily a problem. The important thing is that everyone has worked intensively during the agreed period.

The time limit also provides useful information for the teacher: Who finishes very quickly? Who needs considerably more time?

You could prepare a short extension task for early finishers so that everyone remains engaged.

11.4. Correct independently

Once the time is over, display the answers on the board and allow students to self-correct and calculate their score, following the correction procedures explained in 3.7.

Students who did not finish can complete the unanswered questions during this stage without being publicly exposed.

11.5. Go beyond the correct answer

Correction should not finish with:

“Number 4 is False.”

Select some of the most interesting or difficult questions and ask:

“Where is the evidence?”
“Which words helped you?”
“Why is it False?”
“How is the idea paraphrased in the text?”

Use CCQs, Eliciting and Personalisation when appropriate.

The objective is not only to know which answer is correct, but to understand how to find and justify it.

A useful classroom sequence is therefore:

CHECK THE TASK → MODEL → TIME → READ → SELF-CORRECT → JUSTIFY