A.

Ways to boost your intermediate ESL students’ Reading Comprehension

So your students can read in English with pretty great pronunciation. That’s wonderful! But
do they understand what they’re reading? Better yet, how can you check? Regardless of the
material (news articles, fictional stories, blog posts, etc.), ESL reading comprehension can be
difficult to judge simply by listening to your students read. Many will grasp the ability to
pronounce the words correctly, but that doesn’t mean they actually understand everything. So
how can you improve your class’s reading comprehension?
Every student can increase their ESL reading comprehension with the right techniques.
Ideally, the goal is to have them understand in English, rather than spend time translating the
words to their native language, which is value reading comprehension can face miserably.
Acquiring the following tips will help them learn faster and improve their skills overtime.

B. The importance of Teaching Writing Skills in ESL

Writing is often overlooked in ESL teaching and learning. At a beginning level, it may be
seen as a task for the intermediate and advanced stages. Students will also shy away from
writing due to its many complicated rules, structures and idiosyncrasies. However, placing
importance on English writing skills is essential and has long-term benefits. Your students will
appreciate you putting English writing skills into your syllabus. Writing skills will be useful to them
in a variety of situations and can help them develop a more well-rounded English skill set. Writing
is even something they can fall back on in the event of a communication breakdown in an English-
speaking country.

It’s important for you to encourage your students to think about writing through well-
developed writing lesson plans. With a slight nudge and some guidance, they can take newly
discovered vocabulary and grammar and use it to craft structured paragraphs in many different
writing styles.

C. Importance of Literature
The statement that "literature is a mirror of life" may appear strange at first. One might
ask the question how works of literature, where there is a clear sequence of action and an
interesting story, can be the mirror of everyday life. Indeed, life is often boring and could feel
pointless on many occasions. Literature, however, can be said to be the mirror of life, because it
reflects and comments on aspects of things people encounter in their daily lives.

Even futuristic novels such as The Hunger Games can reflect life, despite the fact that its
world is alien to the modern human being. Th main character, Katniss, struggles with issues like
love, family, and death. These are familiar concepts to everyone who is alive today. Katniss's
struggle reflects how many teenagers react to life's difficulties today. She is easy to identify with,
although her world is alien, because she is human. She loves. She is afraid. She does not
understand exactly how to handle the stirrings of first love.

The same is true when going centuries into the past. The play Hamlet by Shakespeare, for
example offers not only the story of a prince and his dead father, but also how this prince is
human. His reaction to his father's death is utterly human. He experiences grief an loss like any
son who loses a father. When he realizes his father has been murdered, he is outraged and wants
revenge, which is another human reaction. So, although the worlds of royalty and Shakespeare's
time are alien to us, Hamlet's feelings are not. This is why Shakespeare's work can be regarded
as relevant even today.

Aspects of life are reflected even in works of fantasy and horror. In Bram Stoker's Dracula,
the vampire is a creature of fiction. However, the feelings Mina experiences when Lucy dies or
when Jonathan returns ruined from his visit to Dracula's castle are very human. As human beings,
readers can identify with these feelings. As such, Mina is a reflection of life and how we
experience it.

Poetry is perhaps the type of literary effort that best reflects life. It shows the reader how
the poet sees life. The poet asks the reader to enter his world and share it with him. In fact, this
is what any author does, regardless of the specific thing being written.

Literature holds up the mirror of other people and other lives to the life we as readers
live. This reflection can teach, inspire, make us laugh, or horrify us. This is the beauty and the joy
of reading.