Reading for Arabic learners: You cannot run before you walk

Emina Tuzovic
The London School of English
Our expertise. Your experience. Clear outcomes.
Bringing language to life for 100 years
www.londonschool.com
READING FOR
ARABIC
LEARNERS:
YOU CANNOT
RUN BEFORE
YOU WALK

CONTENTS
• Reading – what is reading?
• Problems with reading in Arabic ESL learners and the
reasons for these
• Solutions – practical tips for teachers

READING - INTRODUCTION
WHAT IS READING?
Reading is a complex cognitive process of extracting
meaning from the text which entails visual information
processing (decoding) as well as metacognitive processing
(inferring textual information through previous knowledge)
(Koda 1996).

WHO IS AN EFFICIENT READER?
They…
• use knowledge of the world (schema) to understand the text.
• skim and scan the text to prioritise information
• can read fast
• infer meaning of unknown words from the context and
ignore unimportant vocabulary
• interact with the text – can critically evaluate it
• have sufficient vocabulary and knowledge of syntax
• are motivated to read

READING IN ARABIC
LEARNERS
Reasons for reading problems in Arabic
ESL learners are:
1. linguistic as well as
2. cultural

READING IN ARABIC
LEARNERS
L1 interference
• Arabic script
• right-to-left reading direction
• in written form consonants are more important than vowels

READING IN ARABIC
LEARNERS
• in Arabic short vowels are usually not written down (adult
readers)
• vowel redundancy
• ‘consonant skeleton’
• major impact on processing words in English
• vowel blindness (words are not successfully decoded)

READING IN ARABIC
LEARNERS
Target word Becomes
grill girl
subtle subtitle
century country
circuit cricket

READING IN ARABIC
LEARNERS
Target word… becomes skeleton
grill girl g-r-l
subtle subtitle s-b-t-l
century country c-n-t-r
circuit cricket c-r-c(k)-t

READING IN ARABIC
LEARNERS
L1 Reading
• Reading in Arabic is cognitively more demanding than reading
in English (vowels have to be inferred from the context)
• Arabic children get fluent in reading Arabic quite late

READING IN ARABIC
LEARNERS
2. Cultural context
Oral culture
• educational system (text translation)
• reading is associated with classroom
leads to…
• poor reading habits in L1 transferred to L2
leads to …
• poor orthographic awareness which slows down reading and
• poor vocabulary

READING IN ARABIC
LEARNERS
Reading habits
Educational system
Vocabulary
Orthographic
awareness

READING IN ARABIC
LEARNERS
Reading
problems
Lack of
reading
Poor
vocabulary
Poor reading
comprehension
/
lower speed
Frustration

So...how do we tackle this
problem?

SOLUTIONS- TIPS FOR THE
TEACHERS
Walk before you run…
Bottom-up approach is important!
We need to break things down…

TEACHERS
WORDS
SENTENCES
PARAGRAPHS
TEXT

TEACHERS
VOCABULARY
• Focus on expanding the students’ vocabulary (give them a list
of 3-5 words every day)
• Pre-teach key vocabulary before getting students to read a text
• Teach students to differentiate between passive vocabulary and
obscure/very low-frequency vocab
• Get students to scrap unknown vocabulary (cross out the
words they have never seen before)
• Allow them to look up up to 8 words per text (they need to
prioritise)

TEACHERS

TEACHERS
In order to get students to decode words
successfully…
• pre-teach parts of speech and sentence elements (n/v/adj/adv;
S/V/O)
• pre-teach what a syllable is
• get students to break down words into syllables (tap/clap
syllables get them to do it without looking at the word)
• get students to notice the root, prefix and suffix of the word
• read aloud multi-syllable words
• start by focusing on accuracy, not speed

TEACHERS
Exercises
• do ‘word attack’ exercises
• give students an initial letter string and get them to
complete/predict a word (e.g. st…; ex…; sl….)
• gap vowels with new vocabulary or recycle lexical item in this
way (e.g. c_rt__n)

TEACHERS
Moving to paragraph and text level..
• discourage students to use a finger while reading
• discourage students to read aloud or subvocalize
• use a regular typeface (avoid this, this or this typeface) and use font
size 12+
• get students to use a mask above, not below the line to
monitor their speed
N.B. picture sequence (diagrams; stories)

TEACHERS
Topics
• Try to choose texts which tackle familiar topics to Arabic
learners (e.g. family and relationships; food; technology;
weather; customs; habits)
• Get other learners to explain cultural references to Arabic
students (e.g. The Beatles)
• Give them the stories with pictures accompanying a text and
get them to predict what comes next (prediction)

TEACHERS
(Taken from: New
English File Pre-
Intermediate. TB by
Oxenden et al.,
2011 )

TEACHERS
Skimming
• Choose texts which are well below students’ speaking level
• Get students to skim a text every day in class
• Set skimming for homework (get them to time themselves)
• Encourage students to read a text for the second and third
time
• In a multi-lingual class, instead of skimming you can get Arabic
students to read the introduction and conclusion and first/last
sentence in a paragraph (option)
• Get them to focus on the key nouns/verbs they know
• Get students to determine the topic of each paragraph

TEACHERS
• Raise awareness of syntactic patterns (colour-coded)
The sploony urdle kneafed (nuttall 67).
• Get students to notice punctuation (full stops, commas and capital
letters)
Double slash for the beginning/end of the sentence
• Get students to break down sentences into sensible units (single
slash)
• Pre-teach linkers (discourse markers and conjunctions)
• Get students to notice linkers of subordination (in spite of; however;
in contrast, etc.)
Co-ordination (addition- and, as well as, furthermore; sequencing-
then, after that, etc.)
• Get them to notice complex noun groups (head nouns) and what
comes after (prepositional phrases; (reduced) rel.Clauses)
• Help them recognise active and passive (who/what did what?)

TEACHERS
n+n (kitchen sink)
adj+n (young girl)
n+v (elephants sleep)
det+n (a/the/one/this/my elephant)
v+adv (live comfortably)
v+n (give a present)
v+prep (go to a place; depend on)
prep+n (in the house)
adv+adj (absolutely amazing)
adv (intensifier) + adv (quite carefully)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
n+adj (*girl happy)
v (copula!) +adj
adv+n (*happily girl)

TEACHERS
Example of a complex sentence: (Taken from: Nuttall 1989)
One surprising factor is the willingness with which the public in
most countries accept the by now well-known risk of developing
lung cancer in spite of the evidence of its connection with
cigarette smoking.

TEACHERS
//One surprising factor is the willingness with which the public in
most countries accept the by now well-known risk of developing
lung cancer in spite of the evidence of its connection with
cigarette smoking.//

TEACHERS
//One surprising factor is the
1. willingness with which the public in most countries
2. accept the by now well-known risk of developing lung cancer
3. in spite of the evidence of its connection with cigarette
smoking.//

TEACHERS
//One surprising factor is the willingness/ with which /the public
in most countries accept/ the by now well-known risk /of
developing lung cancer
in spite of
the evidence/ of its connection with cigarette smoking.//

TEACHERS
//One surprising factor is the willingness/ with which /the public
in most countries accept/ the by now well-known risk /of
developing lung cancer
in spite of
the evidence/ of its connection with cigarette smoking published
by WHO.//

TEACHERS
factor….willingness…public…accept …risk…lung cancer……
in spite of
connection….smoking

TEACHERS.
Example:
Do not try to guess the missing words!
Grace Simmons is only fourteen, and she speaks French, but she’s
famous in Paris. She’s become a _______ model for a well-known
_______ designer. Grace is from _____, Michigan. Her father is ______
car salesperson and her ______ is a teacher. Grace_____very unhappy
as a _____ girl because she was _____ tall-almost six feet. _____
other children laughed at_____all the time and ______ had very few
friends. ______ she was eleven years _____, Grace’s mother took her
______ a modelling school.
(Taken from: More Reading Power by Mikulecky &Jeffries (2004), Heinemann)

TEACHERS
Extensive reading
• Try to get students to disassociate reading from classroom
practice- give them other types of reading for hw (e.G.
Manuals; recipes; tv guide; blurbs; signs on the tube)
• Encourage reading on a tablet/mobile phone- texts, short
emails, facebook posts (get ss to take a photo of what they’ve
read on their phones)
• Use ‘reading sheets’ in class where ss need to write down
what they have read

CONCLUSION
• Reading is a very complex process
• To help our Arabic ESL learners, we need to break down the
text
• Give them extra H/W and monitor their progress
• Build up their confidence
• Reading is a prerequisite for good english!

REFERENCES
• Koda, K. (1996). L2 Word Recognition Research. A Critical
Review. The Modern Language Journal 80 (4).
• Mikulecky, B.S. & Jeffries, L. (2004). More Reading Power
(second edition). Longman.
• Nuttall, C. (1989). Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign
Language. Heinemann.
• Oxenden, C.; Latham-Koenig, C.; Seligson, P.& Clanfield, L.
(2011). New English File Pre-intermediate. Teacher’s Book. OUP

Emina Tuzovic
The London School of English
Our expertise. Your experience. Clear outcomes.
THANK YOU.

Reading for Arabic learners: You cannot run before you walk

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