Natalia Ariza Herrera - 1

Mircoles 16 de mayo de 2012

Metodologa y Practica de la Enseanza del Ingles Practical Work N 2 with Teacher Lucy Fernandez Motivating and Supporting Reading Most teachers would agree that reading is important. Good readers make good students. I have always believed that it is important to let students choose what they want to read. In today's Internet age, getting children to read is becoming increasingly problematic, coupled with the fact that some students simply do not enjoy doing independent reading. If teachers are convinced of the value of reading and do their best to foster the habit, they will be able to convince students and help them to succeed. If the reading lessons are appropriate in level and are satisfying in terms of content, school students will read outside the classroom. This in the long run, will help foster intrinsic motivation and stimulate extensive reading on their own. Here are some important teaching tips for getting students to read: 1. Focus on the content - Make sure school readers enjoy the experience. 2. Avoid language exercises and tests. 3. Teacher should read parts of the story dramatically aloud. Other parts should be read silently by the class. This allows the teacher to help others who have finished or those experiencing language difficulty. 4. During semi-extensive reading, teach helpful strategies such as prediction and inferencing. 5. You can talk about what the students read at home (in the case of extensive reading) in class. Start the lesson with one leading question regarding the text. 6. Dictionaries should only be used for key words. 7. When students are ready to choose their books (in the case of extensive reading), guide them. Take a personal interest by setting up an attractive display of books. 8. Ensure the students choose short stories/books according to their own level and interests. They should read many easier books rather than a few harder ones. 9. Regular "silent reading lessons" enable you to check progress. Gather details about each student's reading abilities and habits. Julian Bamford and Richard Day (2004) in Extensive Reading Activities For Teaching Language propose certain activities to encourage students to read by providing support, inspiration, and incentives. For instance, I will mention the ones that I find the most comfortable; the Book Flood technique maximizes language development by making students to read books silently and individually during their language lesson. Reading Partners is a quite useful technique particularly with classes of 40 students or more. It also helps students to

Natalia Ariza Herrera - 2 motivate each other. If teachers want students to see the elements of fun in reading the suggested technique is Reading with Children. Teacher and students read a book aloud and talk about it together. For advanced students the appropriate technique is reading Diary in which students keep record a diary the various kind of second language reading they do outside the classroom. This encourages students to see that reading is not only something that is done as a class exercise. In Reading Lounge the teacher takes students to an area where students can relax and read. In there, students will be exposed to a variety of reading materials. Teachers can use these or any other technique mentioned in the chapter Motivating and Supporting Reading (pp48-85), but teachers can also create their own. Many of these strategies were developed as extensive reading activities with long term gains although, creative teachers can adapt them to be used with short stories and spots from course books, especially regarding students `contexts. The aim is to involve students in reading as a fun activity. I will apply some of the activities mentioned above into the design of a reading activity with the help of the class book Incredible English 5. Students will be asked to identify the spots (reading passages) that are included in the middle of each unit of the class book. (Ex. Fig. N1)Then the teacher will read them a set of questions she prepared to help students to engage with the story. This will aid students to make predictions and to infer some information about the reading. Students will be asked to read the spots at home. Once all the spots have been read, the teacher will ask for volunteers to perform some parts of the spots and the rest of class will have to say aloud the title of the spot. One way of monitoring the readings is to encourage students to keep a reading dairy. This has the advantage of being an individual and personal record, while at the same time documenting and reflecting on work done in or out of class. It can be written in the students` own language as well as partly in English, but as students` language level improves, they should be encouraged to use more and more English in their reading diaries. A reading diary can include an evaluation stage to encourage pupils to reflect on some or all of the following: * Was the story enjoyable for you? Why or why not? * What were your favourite or least favourite moments? * Who were your favourite or least favourite characters? * Was the story easy for you to read? Why or why not? * Would you recommend it to your friends? Why or why not? * What did you learn from the story? For example, useful language, cultural, historical, geographical information, etc. * Would you like to read another story by the same author? Why or why not? To bring to a close, reading is incredibly important for the progress of learners. Therefore, implementing reading activities can be very helpful for students to improve their oral fluency, writing, vocabulary, confidence, and promote students language development in all aspects. Reading activities contribute to student motivation and make

Natalia Ariza Herrera - 3 them a resource for language practice and use in reading, vocabulary learning, listening, speaking and writing. Day and Bamford claim that effective extensive reading teachers are themselves readers, teaching by example the attitudes and behaviours of a reader. If you are a first language reader of English, then consider reading extensively in your students first language. If English is a foreign language to you, then read English with your students. As Nuttall observed, reading is caught, not taught.

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