Reading and Vocabulary Strategies for English as a Second Language Students (ESL)

Running Head : READING AND VOCABULARY STRATEGIES FOR ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE STUDENT (ESL

Reading and Vocabulary Strategies for English as a Second Language Student (ESL (Your Name (Your School

Introduction

Vocabulary knowledge is considered to be critical to successful reading comprehension to learners . When learners increase their reserve of meaning of words , they tend to broaden their thinking and they become aware of new semantic and conceptual relationship between words . This also broadens their awareness and in turn it increase their reading comprehension and their writing abilities . However there

are many barriers which prevent ESL learners from grasping new vocabularies Many teachers do not dedicate a lot of their teaching time to the teaching of vocabularies in their teaching . Teachers also struggle to in determine the best strategy that can be used to help students get the needed vocabularies in the learning process

Facilitating a lot of student reading is the most important way that a teacher can do in to improve the development of vocabularies in ESL . Teachers play important role in the overall development of vocabulary but student efforts are also important . Most ESL teachers understand that vocabulary learning important in the development of language on the part of students . Therefore they struggle to develop the best method that can assist students to understand the vocabularies more . The use of effective teaching strategies is important in helping students to learn vocabularies and improve their reading skills (Holt 2006

Reading and vocabularies strategies in ESL

Teaching reading and vocabulary development in ESL is one of the most challenging tasks especially for beginners . Most of the ESL learners usually carry their first language reading practices including reading behaviors , skills and other strategies into their second language learning environment which makes it difficult for teachers . These learners tend to struggle with vocabulary development which is another component of the language . Therefore development of effective reading and vocabulary strategies in ESL become essential to enable teachers and the learner to go over the course (Wrigley , 2002

There are a number reading strategies that can be used to help ESL develop competency in the language . Some of the most effective reading skills include

Using context clues

Sentence structure focused reading

Scanning

Timed reading exercise

Collaborative reading

Language focused reading

Reading for specific information

Reading for enjoyment

Effective vocabulary strategies include

Visualization

Word histories

Semantic feature analysis and semantic mapping

Content walls

Vicarious experiences

Collaborative reading

Vocaborgams

Frayer methods

Word maps

Reading is an important step in understanding of any language . It is also important in comprehending any material that pertains to ESL in the intermediate schools . Using context clues is an important reading strategy that assists learners in ESL . Context clues help the learners to read while at the same time they are contextualizing on what they are reading . However context clues may not help the student to improve on their reading speed . Reading which is sentence structure focused is important in helping the student to focus on what they are...