Hello Amir

Teaching students to scan because they have to use that skill in exams is about the best reason that I can think of for teaching it.

But I am wondering if it is a skill that needs to be taught at all.

Here is an example of scanning:

Recently, I wrote a blog post about whether or not teachers should download video clips from YouTube. Doing this is against YouTube's Terms of Use. I wanted to check this and so I went to YouTube's Terms of Use page.

I knew that I was looking for a paragraph that said something like: "YouTube content may not be downloaded without permission ... etc". Now, remember that I didn't know exactly what I was looking for - I just had a basic idea. So what did I do? Well, in order to find the specific information, I looked for a specific word - the word 'download' or a variation of it. Eventually I found it.

The point is that scanning for specific information will often require looking for a specific word in a text. My thought is this: This may be a real skill, but is it really a skill that we need to teach? I am sure that if you asked me to find a word in a text in a language that I don't know, I would be able to do that very easily. Is it really a skill that needs to be 'taught'?

By the way, in the case I just described above, I could easily have made use of the seach facility on my keyboard (see screen capture below). Perhaps this makes the skill even less relevant as we read more and more on computer screens.

Hello Michelle

Really nice to see you here

I am sure that there is a very strong case that if learners struggle with reading in their own language then they will require additional training for L2 reading. So yes, I agree with you on this.

Coincidentally, I am going to see Catherine Walter speak tomorrow night in London. She has done research on this topic. I recommend the link below which is a comment that Scott Thornbury wrote on his discussion group. In the comment he talks about Catherine's research and its implications.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dogme/message/9316

One of the interesting things discussed is that there is the existence of a "threshold effect". That is, when a learner has enough knowledge of the new language (vocabulary, etc) reading will become possible. Scott mentioned that this happens at a post intermediate level.

To put this idea into a personal context, I can really relate to it. When I started learning Spanish, I used to buy Spanish newspapers. I would get very very frustrated because I would understand very little. I had to look up every third word and this meant that reading in Spanish impractical - virtually impossible.

Later something changed. I had learned enough vocabulary and had enough knowledge of grammar to make sense of texts in Spanish. I could read!!! This is the L2 reading threshold that is mentioned in the above comment.

Michelle, you have brought quite a few new topics to the discussion (reading for pleasure, skimming, unfamiliar language). Each one of these could be a separate discussion in its own right. I hope you don't mind if we stay with scanning for the moment.

Let's assume that we are dealing with upper intermediate students who have no problem reading in their own language. Assuming that they have passed the L2 reading threshold, do you think that it is worth 'teaching' them to scan?

Jamie

Hello Michelle

Hope you have had a good week

Glad you liked the link I posted, I found Catherine's work quite eye-opening. You mentioned one of the comments in which some students with a high level of language still have problems understanding a text globally. And I would agree with you that in such cases, this would require further training in reading skills.

But would scanning be one of those skills? That is a question for both of us to ponder! I took my time to get back to you on this because I wanted to experiment a bit more with my own real-life scanning situations.

My conclusion from this week of self-observation is that any scanning of texts that I have been doing has generally involved looking for a single word in a text which acts as a key to an larger idea, fact or piece of information. Here are my conclusions for what they are worth:

• When dealing with scanning, perhaps a central skill is being able to identify the key word (or words) to scan for when looking through a text for an idea, fact or piece of information. Perhaps this is a skill that may need to be taught to students with bad reading skills in their L1. In fact, this may be similar to the skill which is required to use search engines effectively. For example, if I want to recall the name of the person who set up Wikipedia, the key words to type into the search engine would be: Wikipedia and Founder. This sounds obvious, but I know that I would have to explain this at length to my grandfather if he were to start using the Internet.
• I remain doubtful that scanning activities would contribute to a student's imporoved global comprehension of a text. I think that that would requre working with aspects such as reading speed, cohesion, the ability to inference, etc.
  

You referred to a few activity ideas which involve looking for synonyms, antonyms, etc. I think that activities like this (i.e. in which a student has to "Scan a text to find a word which means ...") can be very effective. But I would say that they are fundamentally vocabulary activities that involve scanning. In other words, scanning itself is not the ultimate goal. Learning new language is.

There is a book that I have been meaning to read for a while. As far as I can gather, it holds the answer to questions like these:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Proust-Squid-Story-Science-Reading/dp/1848310307/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274465163&sr=8-1

Have you ever come across it?

Hello Nick

A very interesting comment

I still need to be convinced that scanning is worth teaching. It is very possible that I am missing something here. But I still see scanning as an activity that requires no more skill than the ability to find a known face in a crowd.

When I say that, I am referring to the actual scanning process itself. In other words, that activity in which the eyes move across the text looking for a key word or perhaps a key phrase.

You bring some interesting cases to the thread in which we look at scanning strategies - strategies which involve identifying the key word (i.e. the face).

But I am wondering if in the first example you gave (Find the capital of Argentina), wouldn't it be much more efficient to look through the text for the word 'capital' rather than the name of a city labelled with a capital letter? And then again I am wondering how much skill is required for this.

Also, I am wondering about the nature of the task. If I want to know the capital of a city, I will go straight to Wikipedia. Information like this (capital, population, currency, language, etc) is located in a box on the right hand side of the page. Information like this (i.e. the structure of a Wikipedia page) is the sort of thing that may struggle for limelight in the classroom because other more established players that seem to get get all the attention (scanning, for example).

The other example you give (What colour are taxis in New York) is a similar case. I am trying to think of a situation in which such a reading task would be useful. To find the colour of New York, what about typing 'New York Taxi' into Google Image search. Then studenmts can see and describe the results. Perhaps this is another skill whicgh which struggles to get the limelight.

Anyway, these are things that I had never thought about before this thread

What do you think?

Jamie