Thursday, March 08, 2012

Coping with Reading Comprehension & Taking Tests

A slide presentation by Nellie Deutsch at WizIQ, "ESL/EFL Students Lack the Skills to Cope with Reading Comprehension"


Uploaded by Dr. Nellie on WizIQ Tutorials

Description of ESL/EFL Students Lack the Skills to Cope with Reading Comprehension Tests
English is a very important school subject. Knowledge of English paves the way to academic studies and higher earning jobs. Getting high marks in English as a second and foreign language reading comprehension tests means success in the core subject. Students are anxious to get high scores.

Testing is not dangerous. Yet, many students cannot perform well under testing conditions. ESL/EFL students feel anxious when taking reading comprehension tests. The problem is that students in grade nine lack the skills to cope with reading comprehension tests. They do not have the tools to perform well in taking reading tests.

This action research project studied the reasons for the anxiety students feel and ways of helping them deal with it so that they can succeed in raising their academic performance in ESL/EFL reading comprehension tests. 
Students learned to apply test taking and reading techniques to prepare them for reading comprehension tests. Reading and test taking skills provided ESL/EFL students with the tools to cope with reading comprehension tests. 

After applying reading strategies and relaxation exercises, students scored higher on their reading comprehension tests. 

3 comments:

  1. Progress in Reading Comprehension hits a wall across the nation at about the 4th grade level due entirely to lack of Differential Diagnosis. There is a 21st Century method of differential assessment that will greatly assist teachers in understanding, diagnosing and correcting several fundamental aspects of reading comprehension. It is an upgrade of the legacy Informal Reading Inventory (IRI) called the Informal Reading- Thinking Inventory or IR-TI (Manzo, Manzo & McKenna 1995, 2004, Cengage publishers). The IR-TI with years of research in the making is organized around the three most fundamental diagnostic abilities, namely the assessment and comparison of abilities to read the lines, read between the lines and read beyond the lines. It also provides measures of metacognition and listening comprehension.This instrument puts a sharper point on comprehension needs. As such it is useful in working with second language learners and uniquely in identifying weaknesses in seemingly proficient readers and often surprising strengths in weaker readers. The IR-TI can be cross-verified with a classical diagnostic-teaching method called the ReQuest (Reciprocal Questioning) Procedure. See: http://anthony-manzo.blogspot.com/2010/05/request-procedure-roots-in-reciprocity.html
    See the following for a new foundation attempting to identify every teaching method known in order to cull the Best Instructional Practices in a totally transparent way.
    • http://www.globaladvancementofprofessionaleducation.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Progress in Reading Comprehension hits a wall across the nation at about the 4th grade level due entirely to lack of Differential Diagnosis. There is a 21st Century method of differential assessment that will greatly assist teachers in understanding, diagnosing and correcting several fundamental aspects of reading comprehension. It is an upgrade of the legacy Informal Reading Inventory (IRI) called the Informal Reading- Thinking Inventory or IR-TI (Manzo, Manzo & McKenna 1995, 2004, Cengage publishers). The IR-TI with years of research in the making is organized around the three most fundamental diagnostic abilities, namely the assessment and comparison of abilities to read the lines, read between the lines and read beyond the lines. It also provides measures of metacognition and listening comprehension.This instrument puts a sharper point on comprehension needs. As such it is useful in working with second language learners and uniquely in identifying weaknesses in seemingly proficient readers and often surprising strengths in weaker readers. The IR-TI can be cross-verified with a classical diagnostic-teaching method called the ReQuest (Reciprocal Questioning) Procedure. See: http://anthony-manzo.blogspot.com/2010/05/request-procedure-roots-in-reciprocity.html
    See the following for a new foundation attempting to identify every teaching method known in order to cull the Best Instructional Practices in a totally transparent way.
    • http://www.globaladvancementofprofessionaleducation.com/

    ReplyDelete
  3. Interesting and informative Tony, even self-promotion and thereby borderline spam, which is why I approved the post. I hope it is not bot posted and that you will respond and rewrite your post to present information in a manner and style suitable for ESL learners, who are the target audience of this blog.

    Please write something clear and jargon free that will help them.

    ReplyDelete

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