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[Tom Le Seelleur]

What ways do you get students, especially nationals, to start the reading habit?

[Tom Le Seelleur]

I think I will answer that first!

At present, most of my students that I teach reading to ( 4 groups ) have very little experience of reading at all. In research it is estimated that an average UK student will have read 36 books by the time they have finished secondary school. The same research suggested that the average for the UAE student was 36 pages.

Many of the Emirati students I teach and have taught have never read a book in their entire life apart from the Holy Quran. Their world knowledge and in fact their general knowledge of the Middle East is extremely limited. Hence the need to focus on the enjoyment of reading. Instilling the reading habit and the necessity of getting students to realize the benefits of being better read. Added to the problem is of course the need for students to read 3 long texts for their IELTS exams on a broad range of topics and having to speed read and accuratly answering 40 questions.

For me I try to get the students to read - very little feedback ie book reports or summaries or vocabulary work as this may impede the 'enjoyment' element so necessary. My child of 5 has read far more than all of my students put together and they are all over 18 years old.

By introducing students to simplified graded readers especially non fiction as they are going to also study science, maths, IT and engineering, male students (research supports) prefer to read factual texts. Focusing on readers and short stories from SRA's, the internet using sites like English-to-go, onestopenglish or A-Z, I can nurture a growing desire to read more and more and broaden their horizons, this in turn increases their awareness of the world and therefore the areas of reading covered by IELTS - education, health, environment, technology, crime and so on.

I bring a selection of books to class as well as short SRA's and newspaper articles. Students browse, find a comfortable place to read (this is not done in a classroom but rather a quite large area with plenty of comfortable seating). The students are then expected to read quietly and silently until they finish. A sense of achievement that within the time of one class or an hour they have read a book. Get them to do this five times a week and you have students finishing 60 or 70 books a term. It works with a lot of coaxing, persuation and playful bullying.

[007]

[Zoot]

007 - Rome wasn't built in a day. Great, good on you Tom for starting this discussion. I for one would very much like to hear the results of your efforts at the end of the term. For those who struggle with trying to encourage students to read, take a look at the literature available about boys and reading in the western world. By the way, Tom, what are SRAs?

[Never Ceased To Be Amazed]

[Tom Le Seelleur]

SRA
This is a reading laboratory that is very successful in building confidence in reading for K-12

http://www.mcgraw-hill.co.uk/sra/rl_index.html
Is a good starting point.

[Neil McBeath]

On the intensive courses at SQU we MAKE them read.

I do not think that it is the best method at all, but it at least gets students to do some reading.

Every eight-week block, students at the higher levels are required to rad three graded readers, and they are then given very basic multiple-choice/yes-no questions on the plot and the main characters.

The only way to get a high score is to have read the book, and kept the story in your head.

At lower level we require them to do book reports, but the problem there is that you cannot always be sure if the report is original work, or if an older relative/friend has done most of the work for them.

Interestingly, after a while some of the students begin to realise that readinbg is actually quite fun, and once you have got to that stage, the battle is nearly won.

[Sunburnt Individual]

I've found that enthusiastically giving a tagline or introduction to a topic or novel in class prompted a surprising number of kids to go and find the information for themselves. I dropped some hints about the nature of Lord of the Flies and at least half a dozen boys ended up asking me about it/borrowing it from the library/buying it. It wasn't all the same few kids that normally do all the classroom reading, either.

I tend to do that with general topics as well. I taught a lesson about the invention of the light bulb and mentioned that Edison's life was really interesting. A few kids picked up a biography or at least Googled him.

This is all in English, though. I don't know about getting kids to read in Arabic or any other native language they may have. Wasn't there some research that showed parents that read tend to have kids that read?