English for Health Sciences, Reading Skills, Lower Intermediate Level. Second Edition

English For Health Sciences -Reading Skills, Lower Intermediate Level! This new edition is the product of constant revision and evaluation, not only by me, but also by the many instructors who, along with their students, have used the previous edition and have sent in valuable suggestions and comments. The success of the previous edition has been due, in large measure, to the honest and careful appraisal given by instructors and their students.

English For Health Sciences – Reading Skills, Lower Intermediate

Level, is the second in a series of English language texts constructed for use in health colleges, institutes and adult English language-training programmes. The aim of the series is to prepare students to participate in medical science courses.

This text is structured at the lower intermediate level of students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). As with the first (elementary) text, it focuses on reading skills with the aims of facilitating the leap from basic English to academic English and preparing students to handle health science materials with confidence.

The topics have been selected from a wide range of authentic writings

including health-science curricula, medical journals, and textbooks to serve

as vehicles for developing reading with its associated skills in an interesting

and informative way. The rationale for selecting authentic materials is to ease

the students’ passage from the ‘safety’ of EFL English to confronting the

English of the ‘real world’ in a manner that makes students aware of the

control they can exercise, even with texts which are, at first sight, beyond

their level of language competence. Thus, despite the sometimes daunting

appearance of the readings, the tasks based on them are designed to be

within the students’ abilities to carry out. This encourages students to move

through the book with a growing sense of confidence and accomplishment

as they discover that they can find the main ideas and important details,

understand much of the new vocabulary without a dictionary, and successfully

apply critical thinking to their reading.

 

Unit Organization

Because the book’s primary purpose is to develop the reading

process, it offers a wide variety of exercises and activities directed at reading.

Each of the ten units consists of two parts, and each part is composed of

a brief pre-reading exercise and an exercise on skimming or scanning.

Following the reading itself, there are post-reading exercises that focus on

important reading skills that include:

   Getting the main idea of a passage

    Guessing meaning from context

􀁺 Understanding reading structure

􀁺 Understanding details

􀁺 Finding topic sentences

􀁺 Understanding cause and effect

􀁺 Recognizing contextual reference

􀁺 Understanding expressions and idioms

􀁺 Understanding adjectival and noun phrases

􀁺 Making an outline

􀁺 Understanding stems and affixes

􀁺 Using a dictionary

􀁺 Discussing questions that relate the reading selection to the students’ own

lives, allowing for some conversation

􀁺 Understanding comparison and contrast

􀁺 Understanding general and specific information

􀁺 Understanding classification

To the Teacher

Having some idea of the subject matter is clearly an important aspect

of successful reading. To this end, students need to be encouraged to look

at and discuss the pictures in the Before You Read and Getting Started

sections, and to attempt to answer the accompanying questions.

When tackling the reading selections themselves, students should read

silently. This increases reading speed and also closely parallels the established

approach to the reading of academic texts. Encouraging the students to

‘unhinge’ their minds from their lips, i.e. not to pronounce or silently mouth

words as they read, is an additional means of increasing one’s reading speed.

Not allowing dictionary use for the initial reading forces readers to try to

extract the meanings of words from their context in the passage. Stress the

importance of homing in on the main ideas of a reading passage.

As an alternate to this approach, you may occasionally wish to read

a passage aloud (or play a recording of it) while the students follow silently

in their books. Whichever approach is used, the passage should be read

through in full, without explanation.

The readings are followed by a variety of exercises in the After

Reading sections. These are intended to help students to consolidate, in

English, the very same skills they are assumed to possess in their native

language. Again, the emphasis is on grasping the main idea and guessing

meaning from context, a sometimes bewildering but ultimately rewarding

experience for many students who have developed a slavish reliance on their

dictionaries. They need to learn that trying to find out the exact meaning

of a word is not always necessary, and can even be counter-productive if

the word has subtly acquired a different shade of meaning in a new context.

Although students are instructed to re-read the selection after doing

the Guessing Meaning from Context exercises, after having completed

several units, you might have them mark up the passage as main ideas,

subordinate ideas, and supporting details after reading it just once. This is

an approach commonly followed in courses in tertiary education, where the

sheer volume of reading to be covered often limits the student to no more

than a single reading of a chapter. Should you decide on more than one

reading, try to restrict dictionary usage to a minimum, stressing it as a last

resort.

In the Getting the Main Idea section, students practise finding the

topic sentence of a paragraph or, for paragraphs with no topic sentence,

practise “adding up” details to work out the implied main idea.

In sections on rhetorical functions, i.e. general and specific

information, cause and effect, classification, comparison and contrast,

etc., students are given adequate practice to understand these functions, and

also they are recycled where appropriate.

The Building Vocabulary exercises can be assigned as homework.

Students should be given free rein in practising newly-acquired

vocabulary when they express their opinions in the Discussing the Reading

sections. This may be handled in a number of ways. For example:

1. the teacher asks questions of the entire class. The advantage

of this approach is teacher control of the discussion, to direct

and add to it. (However, a common problem can arise here with

an unresponsive group of students who may be too embarrassed

to speak out.

2. the students discuss answers in small groups. A representative

of each group then reports the group’s findings to the entire class.

For very shy students, pairs of student reporters may be

preferable.

3. one selected question is chosen for a debate. The class is then

divided into two sides, the sides choose two teams, and then

all prepare points for their team.