ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the teaching of reading and writing skills, each of which is treated separately. The discussion is prefaced with an outline of the similarities and differences between the written and spoken modes and then moves on to a consideration of reading in the classroom. Various reading purposes and a number of associated reading styles or techniques are listed. It is noted that a given text can be read in different ways for different purposes. Against this background, the style limitations of bad readers compared to good readers are pointed out and it is emphasised that a goal of reading training is to encourage use of an appropriate reading technique for a given reading purpose. Four sorts of problems which learners may experience in reading comprehension are presented, namely: pragmatic, intercultural, lexical and grammatical problems. Ways in which teachers and their learners may approach each of these problem areas are then outlined. A three-phase classroom approach to reading comprehension lessons is presented, analogous to that produced for listening and a number of alternative approaches to the traditional three-phase reading comprehension lesson are also sketched out.
The writing section begins with an appraisal of various written genres and their associated styles. It is shown how, in some respects, writing is an easier task and, in some respects, a more difficult task than spoken communication. The importance of tailoring classroom practice in writing to those genres likely to be required by the learner is emphasised, and the relevance of needs analysis, already dealt with in Chapter 4, is noted. Considerable attention is then devoted to four well-established approaches to teaching writing. These comprise the product approach, the process approach, the genre approach and the process-genre approach. Practical guidance on writing tasks for beginners, on descriptive and narrative writing for intermediate-level learners and on the transition to discursive and expository writing for more advanced learners is then given. The section closes with a brief discussion of the role of visual material as a stimulus for writing.
