(b) Skills, Strategies, Attitudes and Behaviour (SSAB) from the English Language Syllabus 2020 (ELS 2020), Pg 19-26.

Moreover, due to the extended periods of time spent on the modelling (explicit instruction) and collaborative learning, I typically do not have time left (for the students they do not have enough cognitive stamina) for me to go into ask questions to promote metacognition in reading.

I also struggle with coming up with ways to do these in a way that engages students effectively and in a sustainable manner. I also hope to learn more about the tools I can use to effectively enact these teaching and learning strategies.

While students have been exposed to argumentative writing in some way in secondary school (ELS 2020), students can be better equipped with strategies to comprehend and critically evaluate argumentative texts.

Beyond just the triple passages, it will be helpful if PACC can be extended to help students comprehend and evaluate argumentative texts in a variety of contexts (e.g. news, editorials, internet articles and comments, video documentaries or even Tik Tok as a textual medium).

In relation to attitudes and behaviours, I hope to see students grow in intentionality and interest in critical reading.

B. What is your current practice in relation to the teaching and learning of critical reading?

In terms of text selection - leveraging on set texts (triple passages) for T&L. I do also use a variety of argumentative texts, such as those from the Economist, to model comprehension and strategies on analyzing arguments & how different parts of a text connect to one another (e.g. discourse markers)

In JC1, I will typically employ more explicit teaching. I will usually model annotations first to equip students with the skills for close reading of argumentative texts (argument, evidence, acknowledgement, etc). I will also encourage students to make contextual transfer to the Singapore context, with image prompts of Singapore examples or characteristics. I borrow from Paul-Elder’s Intellectual Standards to foster critical reading and writing, with various forays into using checklists to foster metacognition.

In JC2, I tend to employ more collaborative and dialogic teaching. A typical pedagogical practice I employ is assigning a “set” of 6 texts (2-3 pages each), based on a unit (e.g. Environment, Globalization) and getting students to group themselves in groups of 3. They will first do silent reading (10 mins), before taking turns to individually share what they have learnt (2 mins each), then finally appointing a presenter to share with the class their learning (2-3 mins). I find that the collaboration draws out student involvement and peer learning, knowing that everyone has to contribute and respond in some way, under teacher guidance.

One challenge: I find that students have a lot of inertia to annotate/highlight passages, so it becomes a catch-22 as I then am unsure what goes on in their mind when they read. The lack of annotations often impacts their level of accuracy and precision in comprehension. Perhaps other metacognitive tools like checklists may partially address this conundrum.

(2) Teaching of organisational features, learning to identify key arguments and author's purpose, and explicit drawing of students' attention to various parts of the text where certain techniques may have been used to express an idea in an interesting way.

Most of the JC2 students whom I teach have been equipped with basic skills of close reading e.g. unpacking ideas found within a passage or noting the evidence used by the author to support his / her arguments which they have been taught during JC1. While they know what an argumentative text looks like and can detect the relations between different parts / paragraphs within a text, they are less able to go a step further and critically evaluate the text e.g. ask meaningful probing questions that will deepen their understanding. Often, they do not see relationships of the ideas expressed with other texts that they encounter or make connections with their prerequisite knowledge. 

Q2) What is your current practice in relation to the teaching and learning of critical reading?

In JC1, we focus specifically on developing our students’ appreciation of different perspectives e.g. learning AQ first which enables students to see that the author’s ideas may not be applicable in a different context or use perspectives to build arguments for essays. In JC2, leveraging on what they have learnt, I’ve relied on explicit instruction and / or MTV strategies to let students see how different perspectives can influence one’s argument / word choice / evidence selection, which I find useful as a form of preparation before they can proceed to critically interrogate the text. To gauge whether they have learnt I’ve often prescribed simple research tasks e.g. look for counter examples that undermine an argument from a text so that they will also be trained in recognising patterns or making cross-references. 

- The students are generally able to identify the overall stand of the author and are able to identify the main arguments provided by the author in support of this stand

- However, there are a fair few who find the P2 passages complex. They struggle to make sense of the text and may come away with only a partial understanding of the ideas in the text. For them, it is quite a step up compared to O-Level texts in terms of vocabulary, sentence structure, complexity of ideas.

- there is sometimes a tendency to read carelessly and snatch at certain words while ignoring others, resulting in inaccurate or partial comprehension.

(2)

- I try to model critical reading skills as well as get students to apply them when engaging in collaborative reading and unpacking of the text.

- I try to model the use of evaluative frameworks to assess the applicability of the author's views to another context and get students to use these frameworks and questions to evaluate the ideas in the text in relation to their own society, based on what they have observed and know about their own society.

- how to sustain interest and encourage continued application of these strategies?

b) 1) Attuning to the above, use of language itself, rhetorical devices, sign-posting devices, determiners, pronouns etc. 2) exposure to vocabulary in passages or in the way I use some words vocabulary words in day-to-day teaching. 3) model essays/mentor texts/ comprehension passages - Using 3 words - 1 Phrase - 1 Sentence routine with them. 4) Text Structure as a whole from intro-main paras. to conclusion, common techniques used in the opening and conclusion. Shapes of main paras (hour-glass, diamond, pyramid, inverted pyramid)

• Most of my students are competent readers, though there is a range of different capabilities and sensitivity, particularly to language features of texts. While most are quite able in forming a broad idea of the texts that they are reading, the finer details, or how the finer details are constructed by the author within the text, are sometimes lost on them.

• In terms of the teaching, I find that there is a sort of motivational barrier, because many of them do read well enough to get the gist of it, and some are resistant to being taught 'how to read', as they may not appreciate the importance and value of reading critically.

2) Current practice

• In the past few years, we have been teaching critical reading skills through our lectures, through the explicit teaching of relevant critical reading skills, and then some modelling. I have conducted two of these lectures, and I find that while I do try to illuminate the value of the texts by reading through them critically with the students, I do lose a number of them along the way, and I'm looking for ways to engage them better, and increase their buy-in.

• We have then followed up with these skills in our tutorials, such as by doing reading-based content tutorials, though I find it hard to enforce and practice these skills when there are so many other objectives competing for time and attention.

I'm currently teaching JC1 and we haven't really formally started on Paper 2 skills yet. Currently, based on my observation, I feel that among my students, there is a variety of learning styles and even interest/motivation in reading.

Clearly they have acquired some critical reading skills from secondary school. Most of them can understand authorial intention most of the time and pick up general ideas/ arguments in the articles they read.

Whether they are sensitive enough to the language used and can pick up nuances in writing is another issue. Sadly, quite a few also lack the vocabulary and this impedes them from comprehending and/or engaging deeper with texts or evaluating ideas further.

2. What is your current practice in relation to the teaching and learning of critical reading?

I try to model critical reading of passages/ articles with the students to show them how I would critically evaluate the ideas within but to varying success.

I also show them samples of how ideas can be broken down and connected in a well-written article/essay.

2) I believe my teaching heavily focuses on comprehending the text, where I explain and model techniques for text comprehension, and invite students to share their answers and demonstrate how they used such techniques to arrive at their answer.

I think I rarely critique the text, because I would argue that many Paper 2 short-answer questions require comprehension rather than critique - perhaps I am too exam-focused in my teaching. I would like to spend more time on critiquing the text in future classes, as I believe it would help them form connections across the three passages, and beyond that, help them improve their logical argumentation and nuance in writing, which they often struggle with in their essays.

I teach students to connect their understanding of a text by demonstrating how I imagine Singaporeans to respond to the text's argument if it were brought up in a casual conversation and inviting them to do so as well. It generally seems effective as it invites them to consider what they know of Singaporeans in a way that may be more accessible to them (imagining that they are having a conversation rather than writing an answer for an examination).

• asking evaluative questions (relating to language choice and organisation/sequencing of ideas) as they read and process the text

(2) What is your current practice in relation to the teaching and learning of critical reading?

• Students are typically given some time to read the text on their own. They are encouraged to identify the author's overall stand, and the claims provided to support the stand as well as attempts at balance.

• Students are also encouraged to identify language features used to organise and sequence the ideas.

• In small groups, they are encouraged to probe the text further by asking the following questions: - what have you learned from the text regarding the issue? how has this shaped your perspective/understanding of the issue? Is the author's view/idea applicable to the Singapore context? Why?

(2) Current practice is to constantly attempt to model this across assignments and more content-based lessons rather than explicit reading lessons (occasionally attempted but very rarely). In particular, what is most constantly emphasised is the idea of questioning what they read, and linking that to the idea of active reading and responding rather than just comprehending the text. This does tend to need to be dragged back often though when basic comprehension errors are common enough.

[From the students]

i. not clear what the author's point is as there are many ideas in an article, and the writing is not [explicitly] argumentative

ii. difficult to understand a piece of writing when it is an extract and not a complete piece

iii. too many things to digest in a short time

iv. thrown off by difficult words, complex sentences and rhetorical devices; not able to catch the nuance

v. not sure how to paraphrase the author's point and therefore clarify own thoughts; what they express (speak or write) does not represent what they understand of the passage

vi. difficult to compare texts; the texts are not dwelling on exactly the same ideas

vii. mind blanks out when presented with a text; short attention span; cannot read and think at the same time; reads and forgets what went on earlier

b) What is your current practice in relation to the teaching and learning of critical reading?

i. Schema building from Junior High to Y5 (JC1)- starting with articles students would encounter in the real world, e.g. news articles, op ed. Students make observation and discuss notable text features, and relate these observations to the purpose and effect they discern.

ii. Scaffolding critical reading - students read one or more article, individually and collaboratively and discuss the author's views with a discussion question in mind. Students discuss textual evidence to support their reading (understanding) of the article(s).

iii. Scaffolding critical evaluation and reflection - students discuss the author's views, and ground the discussion in the context in which the issues are set. Students examine what is said and not said, tapping their prior knowledge and using research information. They reflect on what has been said about the issue(s) at hand, and examine their own responses (beliefs, etc.) in relation to the author's.

• My students are generally able to understand the basic meaning and message of texts they encounter (although some students are higher progress than others) However, many struggle to pick out small details in the text, as well as put on critical lens whilst reading. They often read texts passively — without questioning the context and considering the different perspectives of different stakeholders.

• A handful of students also face a psychological barrier while reading texts, citing that they struggle with GP as their English proficiency is “not good” or they compare their reading abilities with that of their peers.

2. What is your current practice in relation to the teaching and learning of critical reading?

• When presenting students with articles to read, I provide them a list of guiding questions (e.g. a question about each stakeholder’s perspective and reasons for its involvement in an issue), followed by either a class discussion or group presentation. I encourage them to first parse the text on their own before discussing issues with their peers.

• I may also have students reflect on how a particular situation may be handled in Singapore to help them better draw connections between different issues, countries and stakeholders.

My students have grown to be more proficient in skimming the text to sieve out key arguments/ideas that the author presents in each paragraph but they still need guidance when it comes to deciphering the meaning of words based on contextual clues, being sensitive to signposting or at times even connectors and punctuation and how these linguistic features work together to add greater depth to the author's reasoning.

They also struggle to link different paragraphs together and tend to look at them more in isolation for the compre practice - so questions relating to how the conclusion and introduction are related do not come as intuitively to them as they should considering that the same concepts are applied to P1 writing.

2. What is your current practice in relation to the teaching and learning of critical reading?

I make it a point to get them to skim before they read actively and to guess and confirm their guesses as they read to critically assess the direction of the text. I also try to tap on their prior knowledge before we read the text through trigger activities just so that they don't go in cold and are able to apply some real-world knowledge to unpacking the ideas in the text.

(2) (i) Practicing text-deconstruction with standard propositional argument forms; (ii) Modelling reading for tonality and sensitizing students to standard tone-setting and tone-shifting strategies.