READING skill is important for students in this modern society, and it plays an important role in the English study, especially in the entrance examination in recent years.

As students all know, reading is a method of absorbing written information. It mainly contains two aspects: the degree of comprehension and the reading speed. Students’ reading ability is closely related to their vocabulary, cultural background knowledge and reading techniques. So, reading skill is vital for students. This essay focuses on how to teach reading to intermediate and advanced EFL/ESL learners.

After having learned English for a long time, intermediate and advanced learners have formed a reading habit and the majority of them can enjoy reading themselves. Based on this, here are four steps which may help teachers to conduct a reading lesson.

Step 1: Choose texts from an EFL or ESL textbook or something authentic that you can find on the Internet.

Make sure the books are specific to the students’age and reading level. Go through the text carefully and ask yourself if there are any new words or difficult expressions. Don’t choose several articles at a time. Underline or highlight all words and expressions that you plan in your pre-teaching on your students’copies.

Step 2: Before reading, give students some background information which relates to the text or ask students questions about the text. Let students know the title of the text and ask them what questions might be asked in this text. Write the words and expressions on the board and ask students if they can define any of them, give them some time to discuss this with a partner.

Step 3: It is recommended to carry out three readings in this order:

(1) General-reading: Students read a text to get a general idea and also get a clear outline of the text. Flow charts are worth mentioning here, because they are widely used to get the clear structure.

(2) Detailed reading: Each student reads the same text silently on their own and finish many questions designed for detailed facts.

(3) Post-reading: After discussion and final clarification, each student should be requested to extend the content beyond the text. At this point, teachers should take the reading text away from the upper level students so they will no longer be able to refer to it.

Teachers can ask students questions or pass out a worksheet related to the text. Students should work in pairs or groups when they are answering questions.

Step 4: Leave plenty of time for class discussion, let yourself be free to walk around for questions during pair and group work activities, and compile additional class assignments or homework that relate directly to the text and its content. Consider incorporating a debate at the end of the reading, discussion, or exercises if the topic is controversial and can easily elicit both pro and con opinions.

Since reading is designed to give students practice in getting specific information, the way students read a text depends on the reading purpose.

For example, students often scan a newspaper looking only at the headlines and possibly the first paragraph. However, if students come to a particular article that interests them, they will then read it in detail. When students read a novel, they often want to understand every word and sentence, so they read it carefully.

However, sometimes students get bored with a novel or are anxious to find out what happened. So they ofen skim the novel very fast, pausing occasionally to read a paragraph in more detail. Therefore, in order to make reading more efficient, it is necessary for teachers to help students to know some reading strategic skills.

Both skimming and scanning are specific reading techniques for quick and efficient reading.The purpose of skimming is to find the main idea of the passage. People often do skimming when they have lots of material to read in a limited amount of time. When scanning, students only try to locate specific information and they often do not even follow the development of the story.

Scanning is another technique people often use when looking up a word in a telephone book or dictionary to search for key words or ideas. Scanning involves moving your eyes quickly down the page to seek specific words and phrases.

In addition, developing the good reading habits is quite important. Students should have a clear purpose in reading. Students should read phrase by phrase, rather than word by word. Students should concentrate on the important parts, skim the rest, and skip the insignificant parts.Students should read silently rather than read aloud, use different speeds and strategies for different reading tasks. Students should also have and use background information to help understand the text.