This document outlines the stages of a receptive skills lesson to improve students' reading abilities. It involves 4 main stages: [1] Lead-in to engage students and make predictions; [2] First reading for the gist or specific information; [3] Feedback on tasks; [4] Second reading for deeper understanding. Each stage aims to make students more confident and independent readers through tasks focused on global comprehension before details. Follow-up often involves productive speaking or writing skills related to the reading topic. The overall goal is to fully exploit the text and have students learn in a personally meaningful way.

1. Stages of
a Receptive Skills Lesson
Rachid El alaoui
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2. Who How long? What Why
Stages Interaction Time Procedures aims
pattern
level (Intermediate – Advanced)
Interaction pattern Individual and pair-work
Main aim To improve Sts’ reading skills ( reading
for a gist and for details)
• (sub-skills: Prediction , guessing and
questioning )
Subsidiary Introducing some work- related vocabs
(an employee manual)
Time (30-40)
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3. Lead in
 Raise Student’s interest. Establish context.
Get students personally involved in the topic.
 How
 Prediction: of
content, vocabulary, text type….Get SS to
predict from headlines, pictures, key words
etc. Brainstorm topic for ideas and vocabs.
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4. Why
We learn more when we
are personally involved in
the topic, and when we are
able to use our personal
knowledge of the world in
lesson. We learn best that
which is personally
relevant to us.
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5. 2. Reading for gist or scan for specific
information
 How
 Give task BEFORE the text. Tasks should be relevant to text type. Don't over
tax other skills especially writing-so tick, circle. put things in order, match
headings to paragraphs ,complete notes in chart etc.
 Why
 Students have a reason to read/listen for global/general understanding or limited
key information. They focus NOT on what they don’t understand but on what
they DO. This gives them a more positive first experience of the text
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6. 3. feedback/ Task checking
 How
 Students compare answers and then feedback (as open class).
 Why
 To increase SS’ confidence. They will probably be more willing to give
answers to the class as a whole.
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7. 4. Reading for more information
 Again, SS MUST have task before they start reading again. it will focus
on deeper understanding of content.
 Why
 The more time we “go into” the text the more we go out of it. We want
to give SS a chance to read the text again but with a different reason in
order to develop further understanding. It also reflects strategies
employed in L1.We hope SS feel confident enough to become more
independent in these skills in English.
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8.  Students compare answers and then feedback (as open class).
Why
 To increase SS’ confidence. They will probably be more willing to give
answers to the class as a whole
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9. 6. Read more intensively for further
details
 How
 This time you may focus on aspects of layout and organization ,e.g. in
a letter. Other comprehension questions (true or false qts).Or you may
want to provide a practice on guessing words from context. Or to
extract structures from this natural context for Language work.
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10.  Follow up Tasks to Receptive skills
work
 It would almost certainly involve productive skills: Speaking or Writing-
a natural follow up to the topic, e.g. a discussion, a role- play , or
writing a parallel text ,a letter to the editor etc…
‘Good Teachers
exploit the text to
the full’
Jeremy Harmer
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