ELT365 · Day 168 — Unknown Words: Reader Strategies

Idea — Learners who stop at every unknown word never build reading fluency. Teaching strategies for handling unknown vocabulary is as important as teaching the vocabulary itself.

Example — Strategy one: skip and read on — does the sentence still make sense? Strategy two: use context clues — what does the surrounding text suggest? Strategy three: look for word parts.

Try — Teach one strategy explicitly next lesson. Give learners a text with three unknown words and ask them to use the strategy before checking a dictionary.

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