TOPIC 9: READING FOR COMPREHENSION | ENGLISH FORM 1

Comprehension

Read the following passage carefully and then answer the questions which follow:

The number of children seen loitering in cities and towns increases day after day. Between 1960 and 1970, very few of these were seen in Tanzania. However, from 1970 to date, their number has drastically increased.

There are many questions we should ask ourselves concerning street children. For example, why do we have them?Where do they come from?Do they have parents?How do they live in the street?

Some of the questions are not easy to answer. However, there are some reasons why we have street children. One of the reasons could be the death of parents or guardians. The course of death nowadays could be AIDS.

Due to ignorance some relative refuse to live with such orphans for fear that they may infect them with the disease. Other relatives are reluctant to add children to their families and see them as a burden. There are also relatives who do not want responsibilities. The unfortunate children, therefore, end up in the streets.

There are many other reasons that make children run away from into the streets. Some parents are too strict or cruel. They punish their children severely for even the slightest or mistakes. In order to escape this torture and brutality, the abused children run away.

Other parents are just irresponsible and do not fulfill their children’s needs and rights. Such parents may not be poor, so they do this through negligence. When children discover that their parents cannot meet their needs and deny them their rights they flee to the streets.

Separation or divorce due to drunkenness, harassment or other misunderstandings may be another reason for street children. The children do not get parental love and care and decide not to stay with either of their parents.

Inadequate knowledge on family planning could also contribute to having street children. As the family keeps on growing, parents fail to sustain and provide for their children

Such children miss their basics necessities and decide to go to the streets to fend for themselves.

Lastly, there are stubborn children who, whatever their parents do to them mentally, physically and materially, are never satisfied. They desire to live like children of rich families. As they are not satisfied, they go to the street just to search for “better lives”. These children are just rebels.

There are many other reasons why some children find themselves living in streets. What the community should do to limit the number of street children is: First, to educate the parents on family planning. Second, parents should know that children have the right to be loved and taken care of, the right to education and to be listened to. Children also should know that they have to obey their parents and elders.

Questions

Choose the best answer

(i) Street children are__________.

(a)Children born in the street

(b) Homeless children

(c) Orphans.

(d) Children without parents.

(ii) Where are street children mostly found? In________.

(a)Village

(b)Homes

(c) Big cities

(d)Schools

(iii) The word “loitering” simply means ____________.

(a) Walking fast in busy streets.

(b) Walking about doing nothing.

(c) Dancing in the street.

(d) Playing in the streets.

(iv)Which of the following statement is true according to the passage?

(a)Parents should not punish children

(b)Street children suffer from AIDS

(c)Street children are all orphan

(d)Irresponsible parents neglect their children

(v) A child whose parents died of AIDS __________.

(a) Can become street child.

(b) Must become a street child.

(c) Also suffer from AIDS.

(d) Does not need other people’s love.

(vi) Children whose parents died of AIDS_____________.

(a) Their parents are not strict.

(b) Their parents give them their rights.

(c) Their parents do not have money.

(d) They miss parental care and love.

(vii) All street children ____________.

(a) Have been mistreated by their parents.

(b) Have disobeyed their parents.

(c) Are orphans.

(d) Were forced into the streets by different problems.

(viii) Who is to blame for the condition of the street children ____________.

(a) The AIDS disease.

(b) The parents or guardian.

(c) The children themselves.

(d) All the three above.

(xi) One way of reducing street children suggested by the author is to____________.

(a) Assist parents’ separation.

(b) Encourage parental negligence.

(c) Educate parents on family planning.

(d) Punish the children.

(x) Suggest a suitable title for the passage ____________.

(a) Orphans.

(b) Homeless children.

(c) Children in cities.

(d) Village children.

3. With reference to the passage you have read, answer the following questions:

(i)Give one reason why relatives refuse to live with children who have lost their parents through AIDS.______________________

(ii)Mention two reasons why some children run away from home to live in the streets_____

(iii)What can the community do to help street children? Give one solution.___

Activity 1:

BRAINSTORMING AND INTRODUCING STUDENTS TO INTENSIVE READING SKILLS.

Intensive Reading

Intensive reading involves learners reading in detail with specific learning aims and tasks. You need to have your aims clear in mind when undertaking intensive reading. Remember this is going to be far more time consuming than scanning or skimming.

Teaching Procedures.

The language focus of intensive reading is reading for comprehension. Here a teacher may choose a short story, a narrative or any text.

The students in this lesson will be equipped with basic reading skills such as literal comprehension, reorganization of the things or ideas, referential comprehension, evaluation, and appreciation when reading the assigned text.

Another important thing for students, they should have already read or known skimming and scanning skills.

Procedures.

Pre-reading.

•   As a teacher decide some minutes to be used at this stage.
•   Start a lesson with a brainstorming of some important concepts if there are any.
•   Distribute the questions to the students.
•   Introduce to the students some vocabularies in the text.
•   Ask the students to predict what topic they are going to read. Their predictions here stimulate their interactions with the topic and the content of the text they will read.

While- reading.

•   Here, the teacher should now distribute the reading texts.
•   Allow the students to read the text carefully and silently by observing the reading time a teacher has allocated earlier.
•   After reading, allow the students to discuss the reading questions in pairs of in groups.
•   Finally, conduct the whole class discussion.

Post-reading.

•   Allocate a time to make sure the lesson is finalised well.
•   Emphasize or sum up a lesson by highlighting the important points and areas you are interested in.
•   Explain assignments or what is in next class period.
•   Close the lesson.

Examples & Uses:

• It needs clear and settled mind when it is applied.
• It involves filling in gaps, true or false question, completion questions, and multiple choice questions.
• If you need to list the chronology of events in a long passage, you will need to read it intensively.

Advantages:

• This type of reading has indeed beneficial to language learners.
• It helps students to understand vocabulary by deducing the meaning of words in context.
• It also helps with retention of information for long periods of time and knowledge resulting from intensive reading persists in your long term memory.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

• It is time consuming reading method.
• For students, reading huge amounts of information just before an exam does not help. This is because when they do this they do not concentrate on any type of reading process effectively. In the process, they neglect intensive reading. They may remember the answers in an exam but will likely forget everything soon afterwards.

EXERCISE:

Give students the text to read. Provide the comprehension questions about the text. When they answer the set questions well this means they intensively read the text to understand the meaning of the text.

Activity 2:

GUIDE STUDENTS TO ENGAGE IN MORE TASKS ON INTENSIVE READING.

TASK 1:

Provide students with copies of a text and group students into groups. Set the questions, and tell students to start reading a text.

Encourage students to read the text silently and answer the questions you have formulated that rest in the following areas of intensive reading:

•         True or false statements,
•         Filling gaps in a summary,
•         Scanning a text to match headings to paragraphs, and
•         Scanning jumbled paragraphs and then reading them carefully to put them into the correct order.

THE TEXT

In Tanzania, there are many famous people. The most famous people are celebrities. Celebrities are famous people who have excelled in certain aspects of life such as movies, music, and other aspects. It is not easy to meet every celebrity. Most of them are rarely seen. They are only seen at particular events like TV shows, movies, and various live performances.

For example, the musicians travel a lot. They need to travel and perform in various places within the country and outside the country. It is a tough job especially when the particular musician releases the new song or album and he/she needs to travel in order to publicise and sell it. Even if his/her songs are played in Radio stations and TV stations, he/she still needs to perform various live performances to sell his songs and promote his or her album and songs.

QUESTIONS:

(i)                Do we have famous people in Tanzania?

(ii)             Is it easy to meet celebrity? (Yes/No).

(iii)           Where can celebrities be seen?

(iv)           Where songs are played?

TASK 2: 

IDENTIFYING MISTAKEN SENTENCES

•   Prepare the sentences that have errors.
•   Allow students to read and correct the wrong sentences.
•   Read one sentence at a time and find the inappropriate vocabulary mistake or contradiction.

TASK 3:

PUTTING A TEXT IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER.

•   The students read a jumbled short text and put events from it into chronological order.
•   Ask students to read one sentence of the stories at a time and decide what is wrong with the sentences in terms of vocabulary (contradictions).
•   This exercise focuses on intensive reading.

Activity 3:

DISCUSSION OF ANSWERS IN PAIRS OR GROUPS AND CONCLUSION OF A DISCUSSION.

This sub topic produces a lot of sub skills. It helps the students to know how:

To outline.

To summarise main points.

To identify errors in sentences.

To answer objective questions from the text.

To judge the text read.

To read appropriately and accurately.