The document discusses how professionally oriented reading (POR) can foster the development of other key language skills including writing, speaking, and listening. It argues that POR should be an integral part of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) classes. POR involves three stages - pre-reading, during reading, and post-reading - each with specific activities to develop cognitive, communicative, and other skills. An integrated approach combining reading activities with opportunities to write, speak, and listen can help engineering students develop proficiency in both language and their professional field.

1. PROFESSIONALLY ORIENTED READING AS A
MEANS OF FOSTERING THE THREE OTHER
KEY LANGUAGE COMPETENCES: WRITING,
SPEAKING, LISTENING
Olga ZINGAN, PhD student, senior lecturer,
Foreign Languages Department, TUM

2. Outline
 Features of professionally oriented reading (POR)
 Language and skills engineers-to-be need
 Integrated-skill approach in teaching ESP

3. Current Situation: Reading is viewed as an
attribute of traditional language teaching
Specialized text reading is not always treated
appropriately to the context of learning and does not
favor the development of students' academic
competences and specialized discourse.
 ESP classes focus mainly on vocabulary enhancing,
on speaking activities;
 Reading is taken for granted, time pressure hinders
reading strategies teaching in the classroom;
 Reading is usually assigned as home task/ an
autonomous activity with ultimate narration or reciting
of the text;
 Other receptive activities, such as listening or
watching, are preferred to reading etc.

4. Reading - the fundamental intellectual work
technique
 Reading has been the main means of spreading,
systematizing, interpreting and assimilating creative
knowledge in all fields of science, technology, art,
culture.
 In academic and professional settings acquisition of
domain related knowledge is mainly done through
the written text.
 In engineering education language is not the focus of
instruction, it’s only a means of instruction.

5. Professionally Oriented Reading Functions
To professionally oriented reading should be attributed:
 cognitive( mental processes of perception, memory,
judgment);
 communicative(expressing thoughts, feelings, or
information effectively);
 referential (factual information using denotative
language)
 informational (representing facts in an objective,
logical way and a conventional form of expression),
 creative (dissemination of creative ideas, knowledge)
 pragmatic function (a means of satisfying
professional information needs).

6. Characteristic Features of POR
 POR is an equal component in communicative activity
and in the hierarchy of all activities of a student, teacher
and any specialist;
 It assumes that the reader starts reading any source
having established a purpose, some expectations, a
hypothesis, reading strategy;
 POR focuses on the exchange of information: thoughts,
ideas, results concluded in the sources;
 POR involves, as a rule, a huge number of sources and
an extensive textual material;
 Reading-dialogue, i.e immersing of the reader in the
process of reflection, development of thought,
hypotheses, ideas, problems by authors;

7. Characteristic Features of POR
 Reading-dialogue, accompanied and completed by
creation of reader's own thoughts, ideas, texts,
knowledge;
 Inclusion of the reader in the non-temporal and non-
spatial invisible teams of researchers, scientists,
specialists;
 POR aims at creating an intellectual or tangible
product;
 POR promotes the transformation of knowledge into
an adequate, accurate and complete informational
basis for effective innovation in education, science,
and production (Serova T., 2013).

8. According to the American Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development
 Reading is … the process of interrelating many varied
experiences, drawing meaning with symbols that are
almost infinitively varied in their combinations and
permutations. It is, therefore, not a simple process
that is mastered once and for all.
 As the student moves into the organized bodies of
knowledge with their own technical terminologies and
special vocabularies, in short their languages, he
must to a degree learn to read again. Each special
field has its own language and one who would
succeed in the field must learn its language.
 Professionally oriented reading (POR) is “a means of
satisfying professional information needs ".

9. Why is POR important?
In academic context
Reading can stimulate
 thinking
 communication
 writing
 further reading
 broaden students’
knowledge
Within professional
community
Reading can facilitate
 access to information
 communication among
specialists
 stimulate research
 etc

10. Language and skills engineers-to-be need
• ENGINEERING• MATHEMATICS
• TECHNOLOGY• SCIENCE
READING SPEAKING
LISTENINGWRITING

11. Integrated-Skill Approach
 Rebecca Oxford introduced the metaphor of
tapestry in relation to ESL/EFL instruction.
A tapestry is woven from many strands:
 teacher, learner, setting, relevant language
 the four primary skills of listening, reading, speaking
and writing
 associated skills: knowledge of vocabulary, spelling,
pronunciation, grammar

12. Advantages of Integrated-Skill Approach
 Exposes English language learners to authentic
language and challenges them to interact naturally in
the language;
 Learners rapidly gain a true picture of the richness
and complexity of the English language as employed
for communication;
 English becomes a real means of interaction and
sharing among people;
 It can be highly motivating to students of all ages
and backgrounds. (Oxford, R., 2003)

13. Integrating the language skills
 Speaking (students are trained in analysis, synthesis,
development of critical thinking during the three phases of
reading - PDP);
 Listening (familiarity with the specialized text style, the
knowledge of the specialized vocab ensures better
comprehension / reception of the audio/video document);
 Writing (written text serves as a reproduction model:
students benefit from an awareness of PO text style, writing
conventions, specific linguistic and grammatical structures,
that are subsequently applied in production of their own
written texts);
 Reading (there is a mutual link between the act of reading
and writing, the two processes are mutually beneficial and
complementary: good readers make good writers, while

14. How can POR optimize ESP learning and
develop all the four language skills?
So, an exhaustive ESP lesson
planning is essential, also we need
to make sure that our aims are
clear and that the materials and
tasks are appropriate.

15. Priming stage of the reading lesson consists in
providing:
 a context for reading: we need to recreate the
circumstances in which readers operate in the real
world outside the classroom
 a reason for reading: put the students in the
situation where they want to confirm or reconsider
certain beliefs, stimulate curiosity by asking a
question
 language input : the vocabulary which the learners
will come across in the reading is covered in pre-
reading activities (Willis D., 2007)
It is essential to activate students’ schemata before
exposing them to new information, written or spoken.
Planning the 3-Phases of the POR Lesson

16. Pre-reading stage
Specific activities
 Tasks to activate schemata
 Prediction of the text content
(providing a number of verbal
cues)
 Previewing text architecture,
text organization
 Focusing on visual cues:
figures, illustrations,
diagrams
 Pre-teaching the new
vocabulary
 Skim and scan reading to
check text relevance or to
find specific information
Skills focus
 Making predictions,
hypothesis;
 Working with illustrations;
 Using topic sentences to
get an overview of the text;
 Vocabulary extension;
 Highlighting grammar
points (Grammar is taught
at the point of need!)

17. During-reading stage
 Specific activities
 Read to get the gist/ to
check the hypothesis
 Re-read for details/ from a
different perspective
 Making annotations
 Find and circle the key
words/ a part of speech/
logical connectors
 Highlight appropriate
information to include in
writing
 Skills focus
 Guessing words in context
 Ignoring unknown
information (accept gaps
and keep going)
 Using questions to focus on
relevant text information
 Making notes
 Locating key information in
complex sentences
 Making inferences
 Understanding how certain
words link ideas/ show the
author’s point of view

18. Post-Reading Stage:
Extending Comprehension
 Expending notes into complex sentences
 Drawing a concept map
 Paraphrasing, referring to author/s ideas
 Summarizing
 Speaking from notes/ debating on a statement from the
text
 Writing essays using appropriate language
 Using the Internet to search and compare info on the
studied topic (video recordings, texts from various
sourses)
 Making a presentation/poster
 Feedback: error correction

19. Conclusions
 Professionally oriented reading contributes to
fostering the key language competences, thus,
building student’s specialized discourse.
 Careful planning of the ESP lesson with a judicious
selection of instructional materials can guarantee
developing of the four basic and associated
language skills.
 Effectiveness of any professional activity of an
engineer, researcher is determined by "adequacy,
accuracy and the completeness of the domain
related information he/she possesses ", which is
largely provided by the reader's activity.

20. THANK YOU
FOR YOUR ATTENTION!

21. Resources
 Alderson Ch., (2005), Assessing Reading, Cambridge University Press,
p.45
 Anderson Paul V., Technical Communication: reader-centered approach,
Boston, 2014
 Cabré T. ,Constituer un corpus de textes de spécialité, Cahier du CIEL
2007-2008, pp. 38-39
 Copeck T. et al (1997), What Is Technical Text? Language Sciences, Vol.
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 Gotti M. , Investigating Specialized Discourse, 3rd edition, Peter Lang
Publishing, Bern 2011
 Oxford, R. , Language Learning Styles and Strategies: an overview, Oxford,
GALA, 2003
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speaking , 3rd.edition. – New York : Harper & Row, 1980, p.456)
 Serova T.S. Features and Functions of Professionally Oriented Reading,
Permi, 2013
 Thoiron Ph.,Texte spécialisé et non-spécialiste : un problème de stratégie
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1991. Langues et littératures modernes — Moderne taal- en letterkunde. pp.
629-643.
 Willis Dave, (2008) Reading for Information: Motivating Learners to read
efficiently http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/reading-information-