Teaching
Reading
My Personal Interpretation
By Angie Fabiola Obando-Brenes
Pre-Service Teacher, School of English
Faculty of Social Sciences
Universidad Latina de Costa Rica
Monday, April 24, 2016
Post 253
Reading
is an essential part of the language; therefore, it must be taught in the
English classroom. Reading is a way to understand the language and create a
response to it. Reading requests time to be developed, and harnessed. As
reading is part of a language, it is learned in the curriculum of English
lessons; as a result, reading could become secondary or be not well taught. Thus,
teachers should give reading an important place and time in their lessons and
know how to teach it. Reading is a habit that needs to be developed; moreover,
it has a very positive impact on the reader such as knowledge acquisition, better
spelling, more vocabulary and critical thinking. Reading is one of the best
ways of learning about the culture that the English language brings to the
learner. Teachers must take into account the different kind of readings and
reading levels, skills, principles to encourage students to read extensively.
There
are different reasons for reading in English, for instance, to studying or working
purposes, or for pleasure. Regardless the reason, reading is an amazing tool
for English language acquisition. As Jeremy Harmer (2007) poses, reading has a
positive effect on vocabulary, grammar, spelling and knowledge acquisition;
moreover, a good reading text could be used to work on speaking (give opinions,
ask question and share answers, a discussion, a round table, create a new
ending to a story, express emotions…) or writing ( to write an assay, a plot
analysis, a reader response… ). Reading
could be extensive or intensive. Extensive reading means reading for pleasure
normally outside the classroom, so students choose the book they want to read.
Intensive reading is the one that takes place usually in the classroom, and it
is guided by the teacher. There are different materials for reading for
example, novels, newspapers, magazines, web pages, plays, poems and others. The
teacher should choose the reading according to the level of the students, and
it should be authentic written material. Students should learn reading skills such
as scanning and skimming. According to the book how to teach English (Harmer, 2007) Chapter seven, the reading principles are the following:
·
Encourage students to read as often and as
much as possible
·
Students need to be engage with what they
are reading
·
Encourage students to respond to the content
of a text (and explore their feelings about it) not just concentrate on its contraction.
·
Prediction is the major factor in reading
·
Match the task with the topic when using
intensive reading text
·
Good teachers exploit reading text to the
full
Some
reading tasks are Jigsaw reading (to read a problem, look for information to
solve it and share the information), reading puzzles (to organize a text or Poetry),
play extracts (work on acting it out), using newspapers (match articles with
the headlines), and reading to stimulate speaking or writing. The main goal is
encouraging students to read in English extensively (Harmer, 2007); hence,
teacher must teach rending in the best way possible to create a good reading
experience.
Teachers should take advantage of
reading to teach the language. There are some institutions in Costa Rica that
have a single course for reading, but most of them are private. The public
institutions have to include the four skills in the same lesson; therefore,
some teachers forget to use rending and teach only grammar and writing. I was
in a public high school, and I spent like three years and half studying verb
tenses and some vocabulary (always the same). And the last year I started doing
reading for “examen de bachillerato”. I think what happened when I was in high
school does not make sense because reading comprehension requests time to be
developed, and managed. Reading comprehension contains processes that should go
from the easiest to the most difficult. I think that public institutions should
have more English lessons (to achieve a good level of English), and they should
include a single reading course to prepare students for the final reading exam
throughout the five years of high school. Teachers must try to include reading
in their lessons because it is an amazing tool that helps even to practice speaking,
listening and writing.
Reading is one of the greatest parts
of teaching English. Teachers could do amazing lessons including readings;
moreover, there are nice webpages and books to teach reading, for example the
National Geographic webpage or books, the NASA webpage, the BBC, the British
Council and others. For example the
National Geographic webpage (It is for free) has interesting readings with
their corresponding audios, so students are able to read the text and look up
new vocabulary, listen to the pronunciation, discuss the topic of reading and
write a reaction paragraph based on the reading. The fact is that teachers
should invest time in finding reading materials and creating the lesson plans
to take advantage of the readings. Students could learn vocabulary in context
and they can analyze grammar structures applied in the readings. Reading taught
in the best way will have good results in student's learning.
It is important to keep in mind that
the main goal is encouraging students to read extensively. Reading books is one
of the best ways to acquire knowledge besides acquiring the second language.
Students needs to spend time reading and teaches must spent time guiding the
students in good reading processes. Reading not well taught could make the
students reject reading. The key is to choose the right level, topic and task
to the reading according the students. I
think that the most satisfactory feeling for a teacher is to see their students
reading in English for pleasure and to achieve that teachers should work hard.
“To
defend ourselves, and fight against assimilating this dullness into our
thought processes, we must learn to read, to stimulate our own imagination,
to cultivate our own consciousness, our own belief systems. We all need
skills to defend, to preserve, our own minds”
|
-Taken
from the movie Detachment
|
Harmer,
J. (2007). "Teaching Reading". how to Teach English. Person Longman.
Monday, April 25, 2016
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