UGRU Journal Volume 3, 2006 1

At TESOL Arabia 2006, we presented a workshop to discuss various skills that students require in order to achieve greater comprehension and enjoyment while reading. We discussed the need to assist students in gaining the skills they need to decode texts quickly to aid comprehension. To better help students decode texts, we demonstrated both bottom-up and top-down strategies. Through our activities, we demonstrated the concept that there are many methods of building reading fluency, such as timed or paced- reading, word recognition, reading-aloud, re-reading and extensive reading activities, which should all be included in a comprehensive reading program. (Grabe & Stoller, 2001). We shared several activities that teachers can use to encourage students to develop these skills. We focussed primarily on activities promoting word recognition (bottom-up skills), reading rate awareness and development, and prediction (top-down strategies). We then applied these skills to a shared reading experience. Word Recognition: Word recognition activities are especially useful for students with a different orthography in their first language. They can be used for any skill level, from beginner to advanced. They can also be adapted to listening exercises (for pronunciation practice and recognition) and target specifi