‘Top ten’ principles for teaching reading

The following list is from an article I have taken a picture of  before throwing it away, which I read around 20 years ago. The principles still works for today's English learners.

‘Top ten’ principles for teaching reading

Ray Williams

ELT Journal Volume 40/1 January 1986 © Oxford University Press 1986

"…

The following are my ‘top ten’ principles:

1. In the absence of interesting texts, very little is possible.


2. The primary activity of a reading lesson should be learners reading texts—not listening to the teacher, not reading comprehension questions, not writing answers to comprehension questions, not discussing the content of the text.


3. Growth in language ability is an essential part of the development of reading ability.


4. Classroom procedure should reflect the purposeful, task-based, interactive nature of real reading.


5. Teachers must learn to be quiet: all too often, teachers interfere with and so impede their learners’ reading development by being too dominant and by talking too much.


6. Exercise-types should, as far as possible, approximate to cognitive reality.


7. A learner will not become a proficient reader simply by attending a reading course or working through a reading textbook.


8. A reader contributes meaning to a text.


9. Progress in reading requires learners to use their ears, as well as their eyes.


10. Using a text does not necessarily equal teaching reading."