It comes as no surprise that reading widely is proven to increase reading fluency. However, many students are still in need of a little encouragement and guidance to build the skills required to read confidently outside of the course book. Here are a few ways you can incorporate authentic readings into your IELTS preparation course to engage students and help them better prepare.
How do you choose authentic material?
Not all authentic material is made equal. While there is a plethora of potential readings just a mouse-click away, many students cite article selection as one of the main reasons why they didn’t read online regularly.
When selecting articles for your students, there are several things to consider:
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Is the level appropriate?
Be careful of discouraging students. Look for material that will challenge and motivate students at their level without being too advanced. -
Is the material relevant?
Select articles with topics that are likely to be covered in the IELTS exam. Also consider the structure and style of the articles. Does the material have a similar structure to potential IELTS readings? Are there good examples of language and topic sentences that students can model? -
Will students enjoy reading this?
The most important aspect. Students should be interested in and excited about learning a language. Try to find articles that will not only educate, but will impress your students and encourage them think and discuss. Ways to do this are catchy headlines, polarising topics or very current issues.
How do you make the most of the authentic material?
It’s unlikely that articles will come with a set of teacher’s notes and lead-in questions. But fear not: potential authentic reading tasks are endless! What’s more, you can do these activities together – or flip the classroom, doing any related speaking in class and prime/prep for the reading at home!
- Focus on comprehension and structure
- Underline topic sentences.
- Prediction tasks, guessing the structure and content of the article from the title, subtitle and pictures.
- Cut the article up into paragraphs, and give students a time limit to order it.
- Focus on vocabulary
- Utilise the Academic Word List and academic word highlighter. Try: blanking out academic words, creating word games or matching synonyms.
- Practice guessing unknown vocabulary from context. Focus on the word function, other forms of the word and the connotations.
- Ask students to select 5-10 unknown words from the text and categorise this into academic vocabulary, technical vocabulary, or different parts of speech.
- Focus on IELTS style tasks
- Create a set of T/F/NG questions. Or better yet, ask students to write their own to gain better understanding into the formulation of these.
- Ask students to give each paragraph a heading, pass those headings to the next group and ask them to match.
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Focus on responding
Articles should not only be used for reading. Studies show that oral discussion of texts has a positive effect on language learning. Here are some ways you can use the text as a springboard to responding. - Practise speaking for elongated periods of time – summarise the main points of the article, aiming to speak for two minutes.
- If there are multiple viewpoints in the article, assign students different personas and have them practise giving their opinions as part of a group discussion.
- Identifying the main arguments, and use these to write an essay discussing both views.
To sum up, although there are some challenges in using authentic material in the classroom, it is a useful tool for both the teacher and the student. Through classroom and classroom support, students will benefit in gaining global reading skills which will assist them in the IELTS exam, and beyond.
Katy has worked in ELT in Asia, South America, NZ and the UK. She is currently based in London working as an ELT Editor and Materials Writer.