Teacher Discussion Forums

[sissy]

Hy, I'm an Italian teacher I'm desperatly looking for interesting and motivating Reading comprehensions, I teach in a secondary school and my students have different English levels, thank you in advance bye

[emile]

email me at emiledodds(at)gmail.com and I will send you a small number (about ten) to get you started.


By the way, a good idea is to get a scanner with OCR (text recognition software) and then you can scan articles straight from the newspaper into your worksheets.

Emile

[Carol Keeney]

Hi!

I teach an English writing class at a community college and have found that the Readers Digest offers articles that are not too difficult. You also might want to think about writing some of your own comprehension questions using the ideas of Bloom. Check out my new book which offers a lesson on creating such questions from picture books. By studying this you can adapt these types of questions to more adult reading. Good luck to you. Sincerely, Carol Keeney
www.brandnewteacher.com

[Superhal]

There are many comic books available in translated versions. I'm certain Calvin and Hobbes is available in Italian.

[CEJ]

I recommend bilingual screenplay books (with tie in to the film on video) for low motivation, low level students, such as the ones I face in Japan.
The danger, though, is that the students try to read both languages at the same time, or fail to read the English. You can lead a horse to water, but if the horse isn't thirsty, he won't drink.

[Ben]

You might consider using Merit Software's reading comprehension software with your students. http://www.meritsoftware.com Students receive immediate and personal feedback as they work through the exercises. Mulitple forms of assistance are available when help is needed.

Even better for ESL students is that voice and speech pronunciation is fully integrated into the software. Students, at their own option, may hear the all the reading program's passages, answers and explanations spoken aloud.

This is particulary helpful for English language learners because they can focus on the content while learning how words are pronounced.

Ben Weintraub
Merit Software