Here's how it works: You read a passage to the learners and think aloud about how you process the information (Davey, 1983; Kibby, n.d.). When you run into problems, you express your confusion and talk through your thinking as you solve the problems. Following are examples of strategies you might demonstrate:
- Stopping to reread or restate a difficult section
- Summarizing long sentences or other bits of text and putting them in your own words
- Looking back in the text to locate the person or thing that a pronoun refers to
- Identifying important or not-so-important information
- Using various strategies to identify or determine the meaning of an unknown word
Example
Teacher reads aloud (in italics) and thinks aloud (in brackets).
There were three main causes for the uprising.
[OK, I'll be looking for three causes.]
First and most important was the economic situation in the country.
[That's number one, the economic situation.]
(Reading on--further details)
There was also a popular movement gaining strength that centered on a young leader, etc.
[Is that number two? Hmm, I'm not sure. I'd better read on to check.]
(Reading on)
It's clear the uprising was rooted in recent, if not ancient history, as explained by journalist Browne, etc.
[Wait a minute. This is almost the end. Did I miss the third cause? I guess I had better read it again.]
(Rereading)
The chaos surrounding the earthquake and concern about the nation's ability to repair and rebuild contributed to the unrest.
[I wonder if this is it. It seems pretty different from the other two. I think that's it. I'll read on and see if I get any other clues. Maybe the writer has more to say about the three causes later on.]
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