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. 

Annotating Text

At our school, we really push students to get comfortable and familiar with the idea of annotating academic text that they’re reading. That’s just one of several reasons why we don’t use standard textbooks much in our English classes, and instead use copied units from Pebble Creek Labs, the Write Institute, or ones developed by local universities. And we always have a lot of post-it notes on hand for when we aren’t using consumables. We encourage students to read text with a pen or highlighter in their hands.

This is why I’m really big on web apps that let you annotate webpages (see Best Applications For Annotating Websites).

This kind of annotation habit is a reminder and strategy for students to interact more meaningfully with the text, and makes follow-up work so much easier (unit projects, studying for tests, etc.). It’s a habit that they’ll find useful for years to come.

Annotation “prompts” include using the typical reading strategies (ask a question, make a connection, visualize by drawing a picture and writing what it is, summarizing, predicting, and agreeing/disagreeing) and highlighting a specifically limited number of words (to help students develop the discipline of not highlighting tons of them)

via larryferlazzo.edublogs.org

Not just for research, note-taking and studying but also helps reading in general by focusing attention on the text.

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