How to Read Nonfictional English Texts
Faster and More Effectively
A 'Standard Reading Exercise' for ESL-Students
Helmut Stiefenh&oumlfer
Introductory remarks:With the 'flood' of written information available,either in the
traditional way, i.e. on paper, or via the 'World Wide Web' fast and effective reading (in
English) has become a (foreign) language competence equal in importance to speaking
competence.
The following set of tasks/exercises was designed to improve the reading competence of
ESL-students. It is based on the assumption that reflecting his/her cognitive efforts in
problem-solving helps the learner with the aquisition and successful application of
problem-solving strategies and skills, not only in reading.
Objectives: By repeatedly working their way through the various tasks of this 'standard
exercise' (either in class or in guided self-study) students are expected to improve their
reading speed with nonfictional English texts and to learn how to process the information
in those texts more effectively.
Student Levels: The exercises are appropriate for intermediate as well as for advanced
students. Once the student is familiar with the 'idea' behind each task it is more or less the
linguistic and content complexity of the exercise-texts that determine the level of difficulty.
For this reason the first runs through the different tasks ought to be done in class to make
sure that all the students not only understand clearly what they are supposed to do but also
gain an insight into how and why the performing of these tasks helps them to deal with
(English) texts more effectively.
Some of the aspects and questions likely to come up during those first runs will be dealt
with after the following presentation of the
Standard reading exercise
(Please work through all tasks in the sequence given!)
1. Read only the title of the chosen text. What do you already know about the topic? In note
form write down pieces of information you expect to find in the text. (Mother tongue or
English).
2. Write down at least 5 (key) words you expect to find in the text.

decisions in the text-processing to follow.
Task 2: Where task 1 aims at the content level of the text to be dealt with task 2 makes the
reader activate his/her linguistic knowledge and focus on topic-related lexical and to some
extent syntactic registers.
Task 3: Identifying the type of text helps the reader to get an idea about the addressees the
author had in mind and about the likely 'depth', accuracy, and 'seriousness' of the text.
Task 4: To know the publication date of a text influences the expectations towards its
topicality. A text on software-engineering written in the 1980's obviously cannot contain
today's knowledge in this field.
The key-concept underlying tasks 1 - 4 is the assumption that the processing of the content-
and linguistic items of a text is facilitated considerably if the reader has activated the
knowledge he/she already has about those and/or related items to a state of alert. The less
you are surprised by what you learn the faster you can 'place it in the right drawer in your
knowledge-store'. Such anticipatory activities are probably the most important ones in
effective learning through reading. When a student has dealt with tasks 1 - 4 a few times ,
has grasped the underlying concepts , and has overcome the common urge to start reading a
text closely right away it doesn't take him/her longer than a couple of minutes to work
through these tasks.
Task 5: Dealing with this task requires competence in the reading strategy called
"skimming" which can and ought to be developed in other units of EFL-courses and can be
applied and practised here.
At this stage of the 'Standard Reading Exercise' the student has his/her first chance to to
check if his/her educated guesses and expectations about the text at hand have been in the
right direction.
Task 6: The results of task 5 can be used as the basis for answers to questions like: Is this
the subject matter I expected the text to be about? Is it likely that in close reading this text
will meet my reading purpose and suit my information needs? etc. Questions like these are
relevant for an economical approach to the above mentioned 'flood' of information not only
in study situations.
Task 7: Once a student has internalized the cognitive operations needed to perform tasks 1

for the student to see again and this time more clearly, that he/she not only has anticipated
correctly but also that he/she had already known a lot about the topic at hand.
In 'real life reading' this step can be skipped when processing a text, especially since task 6
serves a very similar purpose.
Task 12: With this task the reader is asked to deal with the 'products' of his/her text-
processing in a way that a) allows him/her to check his/her comprehension while
summarizing the text's content in writing, preferably in his/her own words, b) owing to the
100 words limit, forces him/her to concentrate on the essentials of the text, c) leads to a
product which can be used for exam-preparation (cf. task 10), and d) last but not least, is a
realistic/authentic writing exercise/task.
As far as a) - c) are concerned task 9 requires very similar cognitive activities and may
suffice for mere 'reading in study situations'. The additional writing practise, however, has
its own merits that don't need to be outlined here.
Task 13: Here the student is asked to reflect on the information gained with reference to
his/her reading purpose and to view it critically to see whether and if so how far it fits into
his/her previous knowledge structure about this topic. The latter might lead to a) adding
this information to his/her topic-knowledge, b) questioning it and looking for further
confirmation or refutation, or c) to directly rejecting what the author said.
The self-confidence necessary for decisions as in b) and especially c) has to be developed
in the classroom through repeated encouragement towards taking nothing for granted only
because it exists in print and trusting one's judgement if there is sound proof of its validity.
Such self-confidence together with competence in critical evaluation will become more and
more important. Especially since the WWW, as a result of its principles, is fed with a huge
quantity of texts the usefulness of which is highly debatable.
Concluding remarks: What has been said about the individual tasks and the concepts
behind them certainly doesn't cover all the explanations and all the elements of assistance a
student needs when confronted with this 'Standard Reading Exercise' especially the first
few times.
Hopefully, however, it has made clear that there are ways of 'breaking down' something as
complex as 'effective reading competence' into manageable teaching- and practise units.