Job Discussion Forums

[madeira]

Do you have 'Learning Teaching' by Jim Scrivener in your library?

He has about 10 pages dedicated to teaching reading... with some examples and ideas. Might be helpful..

[Iwantmyrightsnow]

If it is a compulsory course but with littlle student motivation I think you should argue for either sbolition of the whole clas texts or demand that they be at an appropriate level- a graded reader. Intensive reading as it is taught here is enough to kill anyone's inteerst in reading.

Get a hold of the Japanese article by Beniko Mason and get help to have a rationale for changing the course written in Japanese.


So many Japanese students have the readingind level of a 5 year old but why do we persist in giving them Time magazine to read?

[Glenski]

Iwantmyrightsnow,
I have never been FOR this class since it began 2 and 1/2 years ago, but asking for its abolition or change in the middle of the year doesn't help me teach it right now.

It it a small class 15-20 students that the J teachers hand-pick from their grades or other "performance". I don't agree with the choice of standards. When I was asked to interview 4 students who came from another junior high school instead of our own, I thought I was doing so to weed out students who didn't show potential. After the interview I said all 4 should not be allowed entry. The response? "Oh, Glenski, you didn't understand. They are ALL in the class." So, what in blazes was the point of wasting my time in an interview with these kids? Rhetorical question.

They are supposedly at an "appropriate level" whether because they are returnees, or because they have shown high grades in junior high English or because they claim to "like English", or any of the above combinations. Oddly, when over 1/2 have never read a book in English nor do they even like reading in Japanese, I have to wonder at the "standards" for selecting students. Besides, they practically are guaranteed A's. Homework doesn't count in their grade, even though it is the major source of my weekly lesson planning.

[Iwantmyrightsnow]

[TokyoLiz]

If you are looking at reading speed and vocabulary, I recommend you see

http://www.glencoe.com/gln/jamestown/reading_rate/timed_readings_lit.php

For motivating readings at various levels I recommedn the photocopiable book Reading Extra, 0521-53405-4

I have used both in my returnee classes. At one school, the timed readings book was used for senior writing/reading fluency.

[johanne]

Glenski,

I've never taught reading to high school students, but I have taught reading in French to Grade 5s who had been in French Immersion since kindergarten and I think there are quite a few similarities. My students were unmotivated and didn't enjoy reading in French. As well, they were lacking vocabulary and knowledge of idioms, etc. which makes reading such a chore, so I offer up my advice from this background. Feel free to ignore it all if it doesn't apply. One thing I found worked well, and perhaps this is too babyish for high school, was teaching how to recognize words through games. It was a challenge for the students to figure out the meaning of the word from context, or the root word, or the similarity of the word to English (this last one is much harder for Japanese reading English as there are way fewer connection that English speakers reading French). I asked the students to come up with a list of 10 new words per chapter and guess at the meaning without using a dictionary. Beforehand I had taught them how context could help but leaving words out of the sentence and having the students guess what "meaning" as opposed to "word" could be in the missing word. About 80% of the time they could guess. It's hard to convince them at first that they most likely do know the meaning of an unknown word just by thinking about what makes sense in the sentence, but once they get a few right they gain confidence. Anyway, every week students would share their word list in small groups and talk about how they figured it out. The group with the most words would get a prize.
Other things to make the reading more interesting is to create activities that tap into other interests the students may have. I have asked students to illustrate a chapter and those who like drawing more than writing quite enjoyed it. I stipulated that the drawing must show comprehension and that anyone looking at just the drawing should have a pretty good idea of what happened in the chapter. If you have any students interested in comics, they could rewrite the chapter as a comic strip. If you want to get them talking in English, have they write out a dialogue between two of the characters in the story and then read it to the class once you have corrected it. This would give them practice in "good" English and even the shyest, most reluctant student would be able to read it out with enough practice, even if their delivery was deadpan and monotone. It would also allow you to give them reading practice more at their level while at the same time building comprehension of the much more difficult class novel you have to teach. Also by putting themselves in the place of the characters it could (and I know this is a longshot but you never know) create some spark of interest in the novel. Another good thing is to have the students write summaries of the chapter rather than answer very specific comprehension question. With second language reading, students need to concentrate on getting the overall meaning at first, especially when reading above their independent reading level. Summaries show you what they have understood and with encouragement can make the students feel that they are not completely clueless about what is happening. Use comprehension questions to bring out important points that must be understood to follow the novel.
Anyway, this is just my 2 cents but I hope it gives you some ideas that you can adapt for your class.

[Glenski]

johanne,
Thanks for your ideas.
I will make a stab at the context lesson you described. I hope they have the motivation for it. Most of them had a similar lesson from me last year, but yours has a different spin on it.

Illustrating the chapters is already on my list of things to do. Great minds...

Summarizing the chapters was actually started today. I gave them one chapter to summarize (assuming they had spent the week reading all 6 pages of it), and on the handout I gave, I had asked for 3 particular sorts of information from the chapter. Can't make it any easier unless I actually write the summary for them. Haven't looked at their work yet, but some clearly had not even read the chapter (hardly anything written on the paper).

Will consider other things, too, but their major problems are:
1. No time to read because of other homework and club activities
2. No motivation to read because they don't understand the sense to the whole class
3. No desire to read the novel because it is higher level than they can read and it's about adult characters, not teens

TokyoLiz,
I haven't forgotten you. Will look into that book. Thanks.

Madeira,
Can you show me a sample of Scrivener's examples and ideas? I can't even find a table of contents for his book, let alone a description that shows it contains things I can use for building lesson plans.

[madeira]

Pm sent requesting fax number.

[wintersweet]

Coincidentally (?), there is a "think tank" (round table discussion) at ELT News on this exact topic.

http://www.eltnews.com/features/thinktank/

[hivans]

I am not sure if this help as it is something I did with very small groups of university students, but you never know.

I found that one problem was fear of reading and people just getting frustrated at having to check ever other word in the dictionary.

Well, on my CELTA course they did this big thing about comprehension questions so I lifted the idea, and distributed (at first) copies of just one or two pages to the students with a list of questions (usually about　５) and a glossary of some expressions that I knocked up.

I told them to take the texts home and then 1. Read the questions 2. Read the page(s) without using the dictionary or the glossary 3. Read the questions again, and think about the answers 4. Read the questions again 5. Read the page(s) again, this time using the glossary 6. If time permits, read again 7. In class, in pairs or 3s take turns to ask the other student the comprehension questions - and the other student has to fininsh his answer with "What do you think?" to try and get the discussion going.

It worked quite well for some students. I think that starting off with small targets helped - as students realised they could get some sense of books written in English they got more interested. I know I felt a huge lift the first time I was able to read something in another language. The idea behind my questions was that they only had to understand a few key things not get hung up on every word, I told them not to use a dictionary at all.

I used as my first text a (very good I think) English translation of Murakami`s short stories "After the Quake" - and the students were pleased when they could finish a whole story - and some of them got the confidence to tackle a whole book after this (others did not though I have to admit). I got a Japanese translation - and if students got into real difficulty I gave them the relevant pages from the Japanese original to help with the discussion (but they have to try the English version several times first). You might not be able to use this book with high school students as many of the stories had sexual scenes or references in them (nothing too bad, but maybe a bit strong for school).


Hope this might help, but good luck.

[stillnosheep]

Glenski, there is a whole load of info on the subject in the latest JALT journal (The Language Teacher; June, 2005; Vol. 29 No. 6; ISSN　0229-7938; Y950).

(Now let us see if that gratuitous plug gets deleted by the mods).

[madeira]

http://bigdaikon.org/board/viewtopic.php?t=51063

Might give some insight into the whole reading problem. Or maybe not.

[easyasabc]

Have you tried English To Go? It's at: http://www.english-to-go.com/

It has activities graded for student level and all the reading is from real news articles.