13 Powerful Reading Strategies To Teach In ESL Classrooms

Why Teaching Reading Strategies Matters

Teaching reading is more than assigning texts and questions. It’s about training students to approach any text strategically, so they can understand and learn independently. By explicitly teaching strategies, students develop skills that make reading faster, more accurate, and more meaningful.

Before listing the major reading comprehension strategies, it’s important to distinguish between skills and strategies!

Reading skills VS reading strategies

There are fundamental differences between reading strategies and reading skills.

“Reading strategies are deliberate, goal-directed attempts to control and modify the reader’s efforts to decode text, understand words, and construct meanings of text. Reading skills are automatic actions that result in decoding and comprehension with speed, efficiency, and fluency and usually occur without awareness of the components or control involved.”
Afflerbach et al. (2008)

A skill is an unconscious ability or proficiency. It works without the reader’s intentional control and operates automatically.

Strategies, on the other hand, are conscious plans or deliberately chosen tactics that help readers solve a reading problem. Being aware of the processes involved in the reading task means that readers select an intended objective, the means to attain that objective, and the processes used to achieve it.

To use a metaphor, it is helpful to view the skills as the target and the strategies as the journey or process towards achieving that target.

Reading skills happen naturally over time, while strategies are deliberate steps learners take to understand a text. Teaching strategies helps students control their reading process and become more effective readers.

Reading strategies

As mentioned above, instead of focusing on testing SS comprehension, as teachers, we should first and foremost teach learners the skills and strategies they need to tackle different types of texts. Here are some examples of reading strategies:

13 ESL Reading Strategies With Examples

When teaching reading comprehension, instead of focusing on testing students’ comprehension, we should first and foremost teach learners the skills and strategies they need to tackle different types of texts.

Here are some examples of reading comprehension strategies:

1. Predicting

• Definition: Using clues like the title, headings, pictures, or bold words to guess what the text is about.
• Classroom Tip: Show students the title and images of a story. Ask: “What do you think will happen?” Read the text and check predictions.

2. Skimming

• Definition: Reading quickly to get the main idea.
• Classroom Tip: Give students 30–60 seconds to read a paragraph and then summarize it in one sentence.

3. Scanning

• Definition: Reading to find specific information, such as dates, names, or numbers.
• Classroom Tip: Ask students to find all the dates in a text about historical events.

4. Previewing

• Definition: Looking over a text before reading to understand its purpose and content.
• Classroom Tip: Students look at headings, subheadings, or the first sentence of each paragraph to guess the structure and topic.

5. Questioning

• Definition: Asking questions about the text and author’s purpose to stay engaged.
• Classroom Tip: Encourage students to ask “Who, What, When, Where, Why” questions before and during reading.

6. Making Connections

• Definition: Linking the text to personal experience, other texts, or the world.
  • Text-to-self: relate the content to personal experiences
  • Text-to-text: compare with other texts
  • Text-to-world: connect with world knowledge
• Classroom Tip: After reading a story, ask: “Have you experienced something similar?”

7. Inferring

• Definition: Reading between the lines to understand implied meaning.
• Classroom Tip: Ask students: “What can we understand about the character even though it’s not directly stated?”

8. Summarizing

• Definition: Restating the main points of a text in your own words.
• Classroom Tip: After reading a paragraph, students write a 2–3 sentence summary.

9. Using Background Knowledge

• Definition: Activating what students already know to make sense of new information.
• Classroom Tip: Before reading a text about sports, ask: “What sports do you know? What do you expect to read?”

10. Locating Referents

• Definition: Identifying what pronouns or words refer to in a text.
• Classroom Tip: Highlight pronouns like he, she, it and ask: “Who or what does this refer to?”

11. Visualizing

• Definition: Creating mental images to understand and remember text.
• Classroom Tip: Ask students to draw a simple sketch of a scene described in the text.

12. Recalling

• Definition: Using memory to retrieve information or retell content.
• Classroom Tip: After reading, students close the text and recount what they remember in pairs.

13. Evaluating

• Definition: Critically reflecting on the author’s purpose, opinion, or attitude.
• Classroom Tip: Ask: “Do you agree with the author? Why or why not?”

How to Use These Reading Comprehension Strategies in Class

1. Introduce a strategy explicitly before reading.
2. Model the strategy with a short text.
3. Guide practice: let students try it with support.
4. Encourage independent use: ask students to apply it in their own reading.
5. Reflect: discuss which strategies helped the most.

By teaching these strategies systematically, ESL learners develop confidence and independence in reading.

Summary Table: Reading Comprehension Strategies

References

• Afflerbach, P., Pearson, P., & Paris, S. G. (2008). Clarifying differences between reading skills and reading strategies. The Reading Teacher, 61(5), 364–373.