your solutions to the problems part 1

Students often try to understand every single word, or try to translate the text into their own language

- the teacher should give more reading exercises on scanning and skimming.

- try to deal with unknown vocabulary before the reading or listening.

- work on their self-confidence.

- advise them to understand the text in general. Advise them not to get stuck on the first word they don’t know.

- ask them to write headlines for each paragraph.

- play a listening twice. Tell the students not to worry if they don’t understand every word of it.

- have a poster or picture which represents the situation that the text speaks of.

- ask the students to underline the keywords in the text. Then ask them to retell the text using the keywords.

- remind the students to focus on the general meaning not on the meaning of specific words.

-encourage students to guess meaning from the context.

Student don't always read the instructions carefully and so don't understand what they are listening for

- check the instructions by asking questions.

- get them to check with a partner what they have to do.

- give an example of what you want the students to do.

- give all the necessary background information and pre-teach key words if necessary.

- clarify and check instructions repeat if necessary.

- do an example the help of a volunteer.

They get lost so easily, try to understand every word or complain the speakers are going too quickly.

- give them some keywords or something to prepare them. Play it more than once if necessary.

- play the text part by part, remind them that they might not need to understand every word.

- advise the students to try to get a general idea of the text.

- split the text up and do some comprehension activity in between them.

- do some pre-listening and keywords activities before hand – repetition could give a good result too.

Students equate reading with misery, school and tests, they don’t even read in their own language.

- arouse students attention by finding texts with catchy titles or shorter texts

- choose topics they are interested in.

- allow students to choose the texts.

- direct students to the internet or books to find more information about the reading.