Reading and Listening Sub-Skills

When you are teaching reading or listening, there are sub-skills that you will be focusing on teaching your students. These are:

Gist/skimming

• Short time, read quickly
• Don't need to read every word
• Get a general understanding of the text
• Give task before they read or listen so they can look for it

Specific information/scanning

• Answers are easy to find
• Don't need to think about the meaning
• The words in the questions are similar/related to the words in the text

Detail (comprehension)

• Requires students to think a bit 
• Need to understand the text and context to answer the questions
• Need to read more slowly and carefully

Guessing meaning from context

• Includes some new words
• Read text then use what they've learnt to answer questions
• Afterwards use CCQs and drill to check that they have understood the meaning and pronunciation

Reading for inference (reading between the lines)

• Need a deep understanding of the text
• The answers can't be specifically found in a particular sentence or part of the text
• Requires the students to make assumptions based on what they have read