Reading Has to Be Taught, Too.

A thirty-hour skills-based reading program was designed for beginning-level ESL (English as a second language) students in the intensive English language program at Boston University. Reading was included as an essential component in the low-level college-preparatory ESL class for several reasons: (1) reading instruction and practice begin to prepare students for academic course work; (2) they give students a chance to work with comparatively sophisticated materials based on content related to their academic interests; and (3) they serve to integrate a variety of language activities. The reading program is organized to include intensive and extensive reading, exercises to improve speed and comprehension, and materials designed to develop general reading skills, as well as skills for reading different types of materials. Five exercises are presented to demonstrate the kind of skills-based reading exercises that can be written for the low-level student. The sample exercises which focus on comprehension of general ideas snd specific facts include: identifying general topics, matching facts to general topics, adding facts to paragraphs, matching topic sentences to paragraphs, and outlining. Finally, five variables in reading comprehension tests are described. These variables are manipulated to create a variety of conditions under which reading comprehension is tested. (Author/CFM)