Reading: beyond the words

Teaching students what to read is one thing.
Teaching them how to read is another —
and this is often overlooked! 

In many English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses, the focus naturally falls on speaking, debating, or translating — activities that are engaging and easy to structure. 

Reading tends to happen alongside, often without explicit guidance.

Yet, the texts that ESP students are expected to read can be challenging. They are often long, dense, written in specialized language, with little formatting to guide the eye!

This is particularly true in Legal English courses, where students are expected to engage with complex texts that often require more than just lexical knowledge to understand the hidden meaning in the targeted documents.