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On this page, you can find information about effective tools for helping students read, write, and speak language. The focus: English language and academic language. 

The page also has ideas for helping students:

• make hard sentences easier
• tap into knowledge of text structures and features
• find information in complex texts
• scaffold writing
• extend their vocabulary 
• explore generic texts
• and more.

Purposes and patterns in written language

Similar to oral language, written language fulfils different purposes. Those purposes arise again and again. For example, wanting to tell people what happened.

It is common for language features and text structures to be repeated in order to express specific purposes. These repetitions are referred to as generic patterning.

The distinctive patterns recognised in written texts are referred to as genres or text types.

What makes sentences hard for learners?

You can compare the reading difficulty of texts on the basis of word and sentence length.

Longer sentences are usually more complex than shorter sentences.

How to better understand sentences

Teachers and students can pinpoint challenges within sentences and understand them better.

How?

• By breaking up sentences – If a sentence is too long, there is a greater chance it will be misunderstood.
• By joining sentences – Teach students to combine sentences. Through practice, they may be better able to understand what complex and compound sentences are. They can also learn about punctuation and capitalisation.
• By studying groups of words in sentences and how together ("as one") form meaning.

Language becomes more complex

As academic studies become more advanced, the language usually becomes more complex. The increased complexity includes the following changes.

The (series of words that make sense and that have a subject and a verb) are longer.

• The words are longer and more abstract (unclear, without an easy-to-understand meaning). 
• The sentences are longer.
• The sentences are more complex in structure. (The sentence is put together in more complicated parts.)
• The sentences contain a larger number of basic ideas or propositions (suggestions or possible plans of action).

Other factors that can also make texts hard to read:

• Students are unfamiliar with the content or topic
• The text, as a whole, has a complex structure.
• There is a lot of supporting material.
• The layout of text and images and the size of the print.

Helping students understand text structures and features

Whatever the genre (type) or combination of genres used in a particular text, making its features and structure clear to students will help them understand and remember the text.

However, be aware that bilingual students may have a knowledge of generic patterning from their first language (L1) that differs from the patterns common in English.

This applies to bilingual Pasifika students whose main contact with English genres is through school. Keep that is mind when you interact with those students. Find out what they already know about generic patterning. See if there is a way to build off that knowledge.

Helping bilingual students to grasp unfamiliar texts

Assist bilingual Pasifika students in their learning about new and unfamiliar text types.

First, build on their existing literacy learning in both English and their L1. Encourage them to read a lot in both languages.

Next, give them English reading that is at the right level – not too hard and not too easy. Encourage them to ask for clarification when they do not understand something.

Continue to find opportunities to develop their knowledge of English and how it works (structurally and grammatically).

Then, have them read authentic texts – accurate for their age level and for their cognitive abilities and development.

Finding information in complex texts

Teachers often present a succession of texts over a series of lessons. The texts may be closely aligned in topic or theme. Furthermore, they may include a range of text types. For example, one text may be a description, another may be a narrative, while another may offer an explanation.

A teacher may also introduce two or more texts at the same time, for example when their students are learning to recognise and use similarities and differences in text content or structure.

Embedded texts

Many of the materials students work with embed texts (have a text within a text). The embedded text may contain additional information. Or, it may have curriculum content in other text types.

Sometimes embedded texts are used to engage an audience, to keep them reading. You might, for example, find a description embedded in a narrative (story).

Mini texts

Students might also find two or more texts at the same time if a page or section of a text they are reading contains mini texts with different purposes, features, or structures.

Frames or boxes often mark the boundaries between these mini texts. At times, one or more of the mini texts may be a visual text such as a diagram, a flow chart, or a graph.

When items of information are chunked separately in this way, the reader needs to know how to find the connections between them. Help your students to recognise and make sense of mini texts.

Texts in different media

The material on a printed page may be complex, yet print is not the only kind of written language that students need to work with.

They also meet a wide variety of other sources of information in curriculum learning – for example, videos, DVDs, computer software, and hypertext on the Internet.

Navigation through such multiply linked texts can be quite challenging, with or without graphics. This is particularly so for English as a second language ( EAL) students, who are unlikely to have a full command of the Academic Word List and the technical words essential in particular content areas.

Another challenge is the reader might not know how these text types are typically organised.

Scaffolding students’ writing

All students, and especially EAL students, benefit from learning activities that scaffold (help them organise) their production of written text.

Scaffolding activities – such as oral rehearsal, where students can say out loud and "hear" their writing – give students a change to try out ideas, grammatical structures, and vocabulary.

Other helpful scaffolding tools are writing frames based on genre or text structure help students produce well organised texts.

Preparing students for writing: Oral rehearsal

Speaking activities play an important role in preparing students for writing.

Most teachers will be familiar with brainstorming, concept mapping, and so on. These are good ways to generate vocabulary and key ideas for writing.

The associated materials, The "Say It" activity – example and How "Say It" supports students, outline the "Say It" technique, which scaffolds students’ oral rehearsal of ideas and language.

PMI (Plus Minus Interesting)

In the PMI brainstorming technique, students’ ideas are categorised as being:

• Plus – in support of an idea
• Minus – against an idea
• Interesting – other interesting points that come up.

This is good preparation for writing an argument.

Cubing

Are your students preparing to write a report? They can use cubing to think about the topic from six different perspectives: describe, compare, associate, analyse, apply, argue

Describe it
Physically describe the topic. What does it look like? What is its colour, shape, texture, and size? Identify its parts.

Compare it
How is the topic similar to other topics or things? How is it different?

Associate it
What other topic or thing does the topic make you think of?

Analyse it
Look at the parts. How are they related? How are they put together?

Apply it
What can you do with the topic? What uses does it have?

Argue it
Argue for or against it.

Students can do this orally. In a group context, one student throws some dice. Then, each person say or perform (shows in drawing or actions) one of the six perspectives.

Using self-questioning scales

A self-questioning scale is a checklist for content. This tool is similar to a technique familiar to primary school teachers – having the students ask themselves questions beginning with "4 Ws and an H" (Who, What, when, Where, How).

Students can apply self-questioning when they explore text structure.

Self-questioning scales: links between reading and writing

When they are reading a text, students can use a self-questioning scale to check that they have located the information they need. They can also use the scale when they do their own writing, to check that they included all the necessary information. This means that self-questioning scales help students make the links between reading and writing.

Self-questioning scale example

The following example of a self-questioning scale was designed for an explanation text. Notice that the teacher could have included an intermediate step of filling in an information transfer grid to make the link between reading and writing.

The curriculum-related topics for the text:

• “What did Sir Āpirana Ngata see as the major problems facing rural Māori in the 1920s and 1930s?"
• "How did he attempt to solve these problems?”

Using writing frames

"Say It", PMI, and Cubing are all useful activities to prepare students for writing.

Once students are prepared to write, a writing frame helps them structure their language and content, based on the purpose for their writing. Different genres of (types of ) writing use different formats (ways of organising the information and ideas in the writing).

Writing frames are one way of helping students use knowledge of text structure to support their writing.

Which words do my students need next?

Reading materials at curriculum levels 2 and 4

Use Text Inspector (a web-based language analysis tool to find out and think about the difference between reading materials at curriculum levels 2 and 4.

Comparing reading materials at curriculum levels 2 and 4

To begin, copy and paste into Text Inspector the first passage from Measuring readability. Then, do the analysis.

After that, copy and paste the second passage and do the analysis.

Next, fill in the table below with the percentages shown in the analysis. 

Finally, look at the results and compare the two passages.

• What differences do you notice?
• What does this mean for students as they progress from level 2 to level 4?

Off-list words
The off-list words are those that are infrequent in general use (in the first 2000 words) or across many academic areas. They are mostly technical words, such as "forestry", "logging", "bats", "ferns", "leaflets", "fronds", and "sporangia".

In stories, they may be unusual descriptive words, such as "gleaming" or "quiver".

How do vocabulary levels relate to reading levels?

More complex texts will have:

• more specific vocabulary
• more complex sentences.

Although vocabulary is only one of the factors considered in deciding the reading level of a text, it is a significant one.

Comparing the vocabulary in texts you know your students can understand with the vocabulary in a text that you might use will indicate whether the new text is at the right level.

Because readers need to understand at least 95 percent of the words in a text to read it easily, consider the following.

• What teaching practices can help your bilingual Pasifika students work well with texts where more than five percent of the words are unknown?
• How can you help your bilingual Pasifika students learn the words they need to know?

Students’ writing and speaking at curriculum levels

Extending students’ vocabulary 

Most teachers, aware of the importance of vocabulary, teach content words. It takes a lot to learn a new word. Students need to extend their understanding and use of the words they know already, and they need to learn new words.

You may find it helpful to use and adapt this checklist.

The video Secondary curriculum and vocabulary shows teachers carefully scaffolding aspects of vocabulary learning.

Planning vocabulary learning with your students

Students are likely to be unaware of how many new words they need to learn to understand and use, or what these words are.

Tell them to set vocabulary goals. Work with them as they construct their language-learning goals.

Using the Text Inspector, show them how vocabulary can be analysed. This should raise their awareness of the nature of vocabulary and suggest to them where their next word learning needs to occur.

Support from classmates

The class can be a learning community, one that gives input to each member, shares word knowledge, and supports individuals to practise and try new skills with words.

Refer to the section on expanding students’ vocabulary as a classroom community, on pages 126–127 of Effective Literacy Practice in Years 5 to 8 (Ministry of Education, 2006). A reference copy of this book is available to all secondary schools.

Extending Pasifika languages

Use the same vocabulary goals as those described above to develop Pasifika language use. Your bilingual students can work together to construct shared goals and check their progress in their Pasifika languages.

You may be surprised to know that translation is one of the best ways of learning words. 

Bilingual students can make bilingual vocabulary lists and records and learn from those. This is one of the benefits of the "interdependence" of languages.

How can I help students deal with complex sentences?

When students are having difficulty with the material they need to read for their curriculum studies, teachers need to teach them how to read that material.

Students who lack challenges may not move on to more advanced learning. 

Three ways of analysing complex sentences are:

• breaking sentences into parts
• restating parts of sentences in more familiar ways
• putting parts together into more complex sentences.

You can use the same methods to help students learn to understand such sentences and develop their ability to use complex sentence structures themselves.

Finding information in complex texts

Examples from Kiwi Conservation Club

The Kiwi Conservation Club connects kids to the environment. The site has activities and provides resources for these. 

Go to the Kiwi Conservation Club webpage.

Notice the many different mini texts on the page. Some have two sets of bulleted points; others have two coloured texts. A resource might have one text in a box or frame or two diagrams (or drawings).

Comparing texts

Choose two texts from the Kiwi Conservation Club activities page.

Help your students to identify the following aspects of each text. (You can  also add your own questions.)

• The purpose of the writing.
• The target audience (who is likely to read this).
  • The target audience could be an age group or reading levels or interests or some other factor.
• The kind of information that is given.
• Study diagrams or pictures.
  • How do they relate to the text?
  • What is their purpose?
  • To what extent do these fit with (add to the understanding of) the target audience?
• Is the text simple, complex, or somewhere in between? 
  • Why do you say that? (That is, ask students to give a reason for their choices.)

Afterwards, talk about what they learned or relearned about language, text patterns, and so on.

NOTE: You could divide the task and assign "text one" to half of the class and "text two" to the other half of the class. Also, you could choose either texts that have the same topic (such as trees: 9 activities for discovering your tree community and Interview with the author: Tree Beings) or texts that have different topics (for example, GAME: How do plants become poisonous? and Rethinking our choices).

What does a good reader do?

A good reader taps into prior knowledge ...

A student is reading a curriculum-related text. At some point, the student cannot comprehend the text.

When this happens, the student must draw on their prior knowledge, their background knowledge, and their prior experiences with other texts. This helps them hold on to the ideas and key points from that text.

The more connections a student makes, the more memorable the text becomes.

Teachers can help their students make connections with their own prior knowledge. How? By using a technique such as brainstorming before and/or after reading or by setting aside time for students to read a text more than once (where appropriate). This approach is vital when teachers work with English language learners.

Teachers can help their students make connections across texts by having their students monitor their ongoing learning. To achieve this, students could keep a log where they write their understandings after reading new texts.

Information transfer tasks

Students could also use information transfer charts and inquiry charts; these will help them select, organise, and evaluate the information in different topic-related texts. 

Bilingual students who become familiar with using information transfer activities may like to work in groups to develop their own information transfer grids for texts in their Pasifika languages.

This approach will be able to compare them with similar English texts and identify differences and similarities. In addition, it will enable them to make connections when reading other texts in the future.

Explicit teaching

Students need explicit teaching to enable them to recognise the main points in complex texts such as multiply-linked texts. For example, teachers can teach students to identify:

• subheadings (in written text) or section headings (in hypertext) and to retrieve the information in them 
• the writers’ purposes and the key points made to meet those purposes.

Teachers can also plan and implement learning activities that require students to comprehend the information they have, to take responsibility for it, and to share it with others (for example, split information tasks).

Using inquiry charts

There are three steps in using an inquiry chart.

Step 1: Before

Before students read a text, they record what they already know about a topic.

They can either do this with other students or with the teacher.

What they already know should relate the kind of information they will focus on.

An example of step one reading focus

In the following example, students are learning to retrieve information from a factual report.

Step 2: Use the same categories

In step two, students use the same categories of information to guide them in reading a number of different texts or other sources of information.

An example of step two "same categories" focus

This might look like the example below.

Step 3: Combine information

Finally, the students integrate (combine to form one whole) information and language under each of the headings to produce a summary statement for each.

Example of step three "Combine information"

Teachers keep a record of texts

If you are a secondary teacher, take your own curriculum area. If you are a primary teacher, take one of the curriculum areas and keep a daily log of all the texts students are given to read.

Using the following categories, note both the frequency of particular text structures and features and any challenges the students face.

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