A Young Person Who Reads Becomes an Adult Who Thinks
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Handout 1: Tom Sawyer text
Handout 2: Life Skills tasks
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Students will tell you that they don’t like reading, but this is simply not true. On social media and through instant messaging students are reading (and writing) all the time – more than any other generation before them. They do not think of this as reading. Moreover, they are following engaging narratives about people, and responding to what they read on various important cognitive, emotional and social levels. Our classroom practices must and can be adapted now to connect with this very positive reality.
So, if we introduce reading which is easy, in contexts learners understand and enjoy, they will be more motivated and can develop essential 21st century life skills alongside natural, meaningful language development. After all, in the real world, we read for pleasure or communication not for tests! We also read to better ourselves, to define and redefine our values by exploring the lives and cultures of others.
We must look for ways to introduce and exploit graded fiction to develop reading skills, language acquisition and self-reflection in our learners. We need to look at stories (for all ages), characters and themes that create practical and enjoyable experiences, as well as classroom and self-study activities. Extensive reading in ELT is not a supplementary option ‘for those who like reading’ or ‘for which there is no time or money’. It is a vital and central part of any ELT syllabus, parallel to (sometimes instead of) traditional grammar teaching, bringing considerable language learning results.
So, if we introduce reading which is easy, in contexts learners understand and enjoy, they will be more motivated and can develop essential 21st century life skills alongside natural, meaningful language development. After all, in the real world, we read for pleasure or communication not for tests! We also read to better ourselves, to define and redefine our values by exploring the lives and cultures of others.
We must look for ways to introduce and exploit graded fiction to develop reading skills, language acquisition and self-reflection in our learners. We need to look at stories (for all ages), characters and themes that create practical and enjoyable experiences, as well as classroom and self-study activities. Extensive reading in ELT is not a supplementary option ‘for those who like reading’ or ‘for which there is no time or money’. It is a vital and central part of any ELT syllabus, parallel to (sometimes instead of) traditional grammar teaching, bringing considerable language learning results.
Extensive Reading
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