Think of your previous learning experiences concerning EFL reading, your memories of learning EFL reading at school and your past school experience in that respect.
1. How did you learn EFL reading at school? How do you describe yourself as an EFL reader? What is your own image as an EFL reader?
2. Describe and reflect on the previous at-school and out-of-school experiences (positive and/or negative) related to learning EFL reading. What did these experiences mean to you?
3.What are some of the influences/ teaching techniques or methods, people that shaped your image of yourself as an EFL reader and how did they affect you?
4.What are your beliefs about teaching/ learning reading as a prospective teacher?
How do you approach EFL reading instruction (the methodology you would apply in teaching EFL reading)?
5. Describe your philosophy as an EFL reading teacher. What do you think a good EFL teacher is/ isn't like?
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Actually, I cannot say that I am a good reader. the reason for this is I think my lack of concentration on the topic.whatever I read, I just cannot concentrate on the context,I just read without paying attention,so ı have difficulty to understand the core meaning.but there are of course some reading strategies and ı use them for appropriate situations.as an EFL reader,to the certain level, I have difficulty in understanding the sentences,the reason for this was mostly because of the language or lack of word knowledge.I had to look up dictionary often.in highschool at school,the teacher generally expected us to read the passage before coming to school.the logic behind this was getting the general idea about the topic,so while reading it again in the classroom, we started reading with general knowledge about it.another thing the teacher wanted us to find unfamiliar words before coming to class to understand it better.in the class, before reading,they introduced the context of the passage,actuallly the teacher tried to make connection with our daily life before reading and there was mini speaking activity before reading. by looking at the headline or pictures,we sometimes tried to guess what it was about.my english teacher in prep class in highschool, was really good in making connection with the pasaage and daliy life.before we saw the passage, he gave us key words,or drew something on the board and asked something about them and wanted us to talk about them.
ReplyDeleteat the early levels,sometimes our teachers wanted us to read one by one,one student read one paragraph aloud,another students read the other and it went on like that.In university, there were some changes in the reading strategies.for instance,generally our teachers didnt want us to read before coming to class or looking up dictionary for the words beforehand.we came to class knowing nothing about the topic.and in the class generally we used skimming and scanning strategies.by skimming we got the general idea.the subject of the passage was also important,generally they gave idea about country's culture,people's lifestyle.sometimes we made presentations,we tried to analyze the reading passages to the class,but I didnt find it very effective,actually.As a prospective teacher, I cannot say I use this or that technique. Acoording to students age,level, I would use different techniques. I can use readers theatre strategy,by which students learn by doing.or ı can use diffirent strategy acocrding to type or purpose of the passage.for instance if it is only for fun, we just can skim,but in intensive readig which generally acquire deep thinking and analysis, we can use another strategies.so,the strategy ı will use depends on the subject,aim of the passage,or levels of students proficiency or their age...I think good teacher must be flexible and can be use any tecnique if necessary.if one doesnt work,then s/he ought to try another one.the one who is stick to one strategy is a bad teacher,I think.
Assignment1
ReplyDeleteDilara Arpacı
1619832 FLE304/03
1) Reading is one of the most important things for the process of English learning. It helps to increase vocabulary capacity of a student and improves cognitive skills of the student. However, when I look at my previous reading experiences- especially in my first learning years-, I cannot see any special attention paid to my reading skill by both my teachers and me. The teachers focused on only grammar and because of this, we were educated in a system depending on memorizing. This is such a bad thing for students that most of my friends hated English. During high school years, we would use some textbooks in which they had some reading passages. If we did reading activities properly, we could have been better at reading. However, what we did was that following the passage while a student was reading aloud and then answering the questions given below the text. These activities were not attractive for students and everyone got bored during the lesson. These given questions could be more interesting, but they did not even help us to understand the passage. It did not help us to improve our cognitive skills. We just found the words in the text, memorized them and answered the questions. We were all reflective students, not trying to guess the meaning from the context. After I chose English language department in the third year of the high school, our reading courses started to be better. It is both thanks to our teacher and thanks to our own efforts. Our teacher brought authentic materials to the classroom and we discussed them critically. We tried to guess the meanings of the words from the context and it gave us chance to improve our cognitive skills. The more I enjoyed the reading activities, the more I started to read also extensively. Since I took the courses focusing on advanced reading in university, I am better at reading, because, I know how to read – I mean the methods, techniques, and approaches. For example, skimming and scanning are my favorites. I find them really beneficial. They both help to understand easily and save time.
2) In my opinion, reading must be a pleasure not a must for students. If they do not read the materials with pleasure and willingly, they cannot learn anything from that text. In order to have such an environment in classroom, I would give them the reading passages with the topics, which the students would be interested in. Apart from interesting topics, I would use authentic materials to read. I would use newspapers, magazines, articles, short stories, and novels for advanced students. I would try to create a discussion environment after each reading and I would encourage my students to make extensive readings in order to develop their capacity. I would care that we have a purpose in our reading activities and students are aware of these purposes. Otherwise, they cannot be determined without a purpose. I think, both bottom-up and top-down approaches can be used in classroom environment. However, if we need a distinction, bottom-up approach is better for the students in elementary level and top-down is more useful for the students in intermediate and upper students. Another thing I would do is that, I would give brief information about the topic, which they will read. Because, they should have a pre-knowledge about the topic in order to understand it better. Since the materials will be authentic in my classroom, they will probably contain English and American culture. Therefore, I should inform them before reading the passage or they can do some research about the topic before coming to the classroom.
I started to learn English at fourth grade of primary school. Firstly we learned to pronounce every single letter of the alphabet. Generally we tried to pronounce the words as our teacher do. There were some easy dialogs. The teacher read it aloud and then some of us read it again. When it comes to comprehension, after reading the text we worked on some vocabulary. We answered the questions related to the text we read. As time goes on texts became harder. There were pre-reading activities in warm-up and comprehension questions after reading. Now, as an ELT student I think I am an advanced reader. There is no problem in terms of modern English. We have learned well how to read, understand and comprehension of a text, which I believe extensive reading has more effect on comprehension. We read a lot of stages books in high school thorough the preparation time for YDS. However as an EFL reader I still have some difficulties while reading in my literature courses. For example this semester in our drama course we must read Hamlet by Shakespeare, but I frankly say that I can understand only basic story of the play. Maybe I am not a good reader or Shakespeare is not for me =)
ReplyDeleteAs you know there are many strategies in reading instruction. As an EFL teacher I do not think that sticking on only one of them will be a bit boring. Skimming, predicting and summary are essential for having a general idea and comprehend what you are reading. Scanning is necessary when we need specific information. Every one of these techniques should be taught students. As a teacher I should make sure that they can use them useful in an appropriate way while reading. Intensive reading should be encouraged during vocabulary or grammar working. Extensive reading, which is my favorite one, is needed to increase comprehension in English. Furthermore it will develop their level as EFL students.
1)I can easily say that reading is the EFL area that ı can do best. I started reading in English very early compared to my clasmates. I used to enjoy a lot. I still enjoy but of course as the level is getting high, reading is beginning to become hard. When ı read in English,ı used to understand the grammar but couldn't get the unknown words. So ı simply ignored them. Sometimes ı used to look up the meanings later and sometimes ı tried to get the meanings from the context. As my vocabulary memory begun to enhance, my comprehension level begun to increase. I can easily say that ı did not have so many difficulties in learning reading.As ı said, I started reading in English very early and ı used to read a lot especially out of the school. I sometimes bought English Newspapers, brochures. When it cames to at-school expriences, ı cannot say we worked on it a lot. We used to have one or two particular novel and we used to read them throughout the semester. With this, we sometimes used to read short stories or paragraphs. I cannot say these never worked but ı cannot also say these worked a lot.
ReplyDeleteAs ı prospective teacher, ı will absuletly give much importance to reading. Because ı think learning English starts with reading and of course comprehension. Along with reading you can teach vocabulary and grammar with integrations. Skimming can be a good technique for the students to have an overall idea about the text and about what they are going to read. And when it comes to a good EFL teacher, ı can say that he or she can make the material that she is going to use. Also she or he should not bore the students. She must definetly be an enthusiastic person. She should not be a close minded person. She shouldn not overload students with useless homeworks.
1-2. When we were learning EFL reading at high school, we used to look up for the unknown vocabulary before the class. In the class, our teacher used to read the text aloud sentence by sentence and teach us some structures from the passage. Then, we used to do the exercises related to the passage. After the class, I used to write down the new words and structures on my vocabulary notebook. I also used these new words while I was writing my diary.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, we didn’t read short stories or novels in English very much. If we had read stage books, for instance, we would have improved reading skills and broader vocabulary now.
3. One of the techniques which I use most is skimming and scanning. When I read a text, I read the heading and subheadings first, and skim the text. I don’t use a dictionary unless the text consists of many unfamiliar words. I re-read it when I find necessary. This method helps me save time. Looking up every single word makes me tired and causes me lose my enthusiasm.
4-5. In my opinion, teaching EFL reading should be teachers’ primary aim. Grammar should be taught within a reading activity rather than teaching it separately. Learning vocabulary and grammar might be easier and more enjoyable if they are taught within a short story, for example. Students should read stage books from the beginning. Reading activities should take place more during classes.
1- Actually, I want to start with a reality that I hate reading.. I hate all kinds of book but I learn reading in a way. Especially in high school prep class, there was a reading lesson. This lesson helped me a lot because there were short and real stories and we had to read them. Additionally they were interesting and informative. So we weren't bored while reading them. Except that lesson,one of my teachers gave as short stories and work sheets for them. So we had to read and summarise the book every week. However, I also found a way not to do it. It is of course bad but reading is really boring for me. However, the truth is that I learned reading with the help of test questions. Now, even if I am not able to read fastly, I am good at understanding the general opinion and finding the details that are asked to find. I love the skimming and scanning parts for reading and find them beneficial for me because it helps us understand the passage without totally reading it. It also helps us speed up the reading.
ReplyDelete2- For EFL reading at school, the positive side is that we have to read something and it is the only place for me to improve my reading in a correct way. Teachers know what should they do to teach us the clues for reading and the easiest way to understand the passages, contexts etc. However the negative side is that sometimes we have to read something that I want to read or we are not in the mood that day. The negative side is totally psychological. Out of the school, I can't say anything positive and negative because I don't remember that I liked a book or story and read it. So without school, learning EFL reading developed totally in a negative way for me :). Reading should be a pleasure and it isn't a pleasure for me :)
In elementary school, there weren't any specific tecniques that teacher used to develop reading skills. We just read the passages in our textbook. While reading the passages, we underlined the vocabularies that we dont know their meanings ,looked up their meanings and wrote the english words and their turkish equivalances in our vocabulary lists to memorize them.After reaing the passage ,teacher would ask some questions to understand whether we could grasp the main idea of the passage or not.At the early levels, Since I wasn't very well in English , I didn't develop reading strategies but thanks to developing my English and the courses I took, I learned how to read effectively. For example, during high school, even a word that was unfamiliar to me caused to not understand the topic and in order to understand the main idea I needed to analyze every sentence.However,as an efl reader, a word that is unfamiliar to me isn't problem for mebecause I can understand its meaning from the context and by just skimming I can have some idea about the topic of the passage by not analyzing the every sentence.As prospective teacher, a teacher should have detailed information about the every reading strategy, know how to apply the strategies with different students and situations.However only knowing the strategies theoretically isn't enough.Teacher should be able to apply this detailed theoretical informations in the classrooms.A good teacher shouldn't want to their students just memorize the words, reading the passage without understandin even a word of it.Firstlyi he or she should find an interesting topic in order to enable every student to contribute to the discussions on the topic because the onky reason of the students reading the passage is doing their homework and it becomes a duty for them when the topic is not related to their lives and it is boring. Teacher should know which strategy should be applied in which circumstances .He or she shouldn't use only one strategy should be flexible and change strategies according to the needs of the students.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was at high school, we as a class were used to analyzing the reading passages according to the questions. First we were used to reading the questions in order to search the answer more effectively. Our teacher always told that we had to know what to search otherwise without knowing what to search; it would be a time-consuming activity. If the question was related to the general idea of the reading passage, then we were looking quickly through the reading text in order to get a general idea of the text which is called as ‘skimming’. But if the question required us to find the specific information in the text, then we were looking through the text so as to find the detailed information. These were the basic strategies we did when I was in high school. I think these were the basics but they are not enough to be able to understand the logic behind the EFL reading, there has to be some other strategies and techniques for us to improve our reading skills and I was lack of these at high school but in the university I do not say that I am equipped with all of the strategies but I know some such as predicting, inferring, using background knowledge, evaluating.
ReplyDeleteActually, in the high school, we were used to doing the reading passages at school. This helped me a lot because I had a chance to ask the complex and confusing parts to our teacher immediately which was the positive side of it. The negative side of it was related to the time because we were a crowded class and everyone had questions in their minds needed to be answered. As for the out-of-school experiences, I do not have any because we did the readings at school as much as possible. I think it was good us to do the reading activities in class otherwise it would be hard for us to comprehend the necessary points.
My high school teacher had a positive influence on me since he did explained the parts we did not understand very well. He used some strategies which we benefitted from such as having a purpose, skimming, scanning, predicting, reading actively and integrating information. All of these affected me in a positive way because the way our teacher taught the reading strategies was very effective.
I think the process of teaching/learning reading is something that we have to pay great attention. If I take this process seriously, then my students will give great importance. I would probably integrate the approaches which are bottom-up and top-down because they have different importance. In the early stages, I would use bottom-up approach because it is important to recognize and decode the words by matching written symbols with their aural equivalents. Then in the later stages, I would use top-down approach in order to analyze the reading problems by having reader read a text aloud.
As I said before, a good EFL teacher does not just stick to the one approach. S/he has to integrate the approaches by using their effective and beneficial parts. For instance; one can integrate the bottom-up and top-down approaches. As for the reading strategies, a good EFL teacher should use as many strategies as possible because this will help to improve the students’ reading skills. S/he should not focus on the just skimming and scanning.
I think reading is one of the most important skills that one who learns a foreign language benefits from, because reading something is the most commonly used way of getting information about anything. We most commonly feel the advantage of knowing English while reading news on the internet or magazines published in English etc.
ReplyDeleteWhen I think about my process of gaining reading skills, I remember that there were two kinds of readings for which I used very different strategies. In order to deal with a passage which is a must for me (the reading on the exams) I used skimming first so that I can get the general meaning. Than, after learning what the passage is about I have a look at the questions that I’m responsible for answering, because knowing what my aim is important in terms of managing the time. So, scanning is another strategy that use. Underlining the interesting or surprising facts or information while skimming the text can be practical, too. I also like taking short notes of vital parts of the reading when the passage is long in order not to look for something again and again. There was a strategy that our high school teacher wanted us to use a lot which he called as ‘‘word attack’’ He used to advise us guessing unknown words in the passages instead of looking for every single word. But I think after finishing his/her study on the reading, the reader should search the unfamiliar words, phrases or structures so that get the underlying meaning or hidden implications. When I read just for pleasure, I do not use any special strategies. I just try to read with full concentration and catch striking points. Maybe, note taking and underlining may be ones that I use. I don’t use skimming or scanning. I read without any prejudices or expectations just to see what is there.
Reading is one of the most important and basic skills that should be got in human life. For this reason, it requires special attention in teaching learning process. When I think of my previous learning experiences concerning EFL reading, I remember a lot of efforts made by me and my teacher.
ReplyDeleteWhile teaching EFL reading at school, my teacher was bringing different kinds of reading texts to the class in every lesson. After distributing one of them, she firstly had us read them silently. At first she always said we shouldn’t get stuck in the unknown vocabulary. We should just get the gist of the history. This was very hard for me at that time. I insistently wanted to read the text with a dictionary in my hand to look every word that I didn’t know up because I used to think if I didn’t know the meanings of all words in the text, I couldn’t understand the text clearly. However, later on I saw that this was not the case. Even without knowing all of the words, I grasped the general meaning of the text. I also found out that always depending on dictionary was very tiring, boring and time consuming. It should be usen when really necessary. After reading silently, one of us read the text aloud. In this way our teacher also checked and corrected our mistakes related to pronunciation or intonation. Then we analyzed the text in detail. She sometimes allowed us to look the crucial words up in the dictionary and sometimes she made us guess the meanings of some words/phrases from the context. She asked some comprehension questions about the text and we answered them. To help avoid boredom, she provided us with various kinds of reading texts (academic, social). They were not old-fashioned, dull-readings. We learned many different words/phrases from them and made background knowledge in many different issues. One of the things that I liked most with our teacher was also that she always encouraged us to read outside the class. Now I understand that she gave importance to extensive reading. She was always on the side that reading skills could be developed with the continuous exposure. She advised that we should also read any piece of reading outside the class. No matter what the type of it was. It could be novel, magazine, newspaper. They had considerable benefits for us. There were always things that we could learn from them and share.
As a prospective teacher, I think I should also use different techniques and methods to teach reading. There are many alternatives for this purpose if we use them efficiently. I should design such courses to teach EFL reading that my students can both develop the target skill and enjoy it. For this reason, I will use different kinds of reading texts and activities related to them. I won’t use only the textbook as a source because it can be monotonous. In teaching EFL reading process, I’ll benefit from all kinds of ideas and applications according to the overall purpose, students’ profiles, their needs and interests. For example, I may give a pre-question requiring a piece of information central to the understanding of the text or I may stop in one part of the text and make them suggest what might happen next, etc. There are a lot of possibilities. When they improve their reading skills and gain enough vocabulary knowledge, I’ll teach them scanning and skimming techniques. I think these are very significant because my students may not always have enough time to read in detail. They may have to read selectively. In these times, these methods are very useful. In short I will try to solve their all kinds of problems related to reading and teach them this skill effectively. In this way I and my students will get the maximum benefit from teaching/learning process of EFL reading.
At the begining of my reading experience, my teacher told me that in Europe the definiton of literacy has changed. It is not simply writing some sentences and reading a text with correct pronounciation. It is much more defined with reading comprehension now.therefore,he pointed out how important reading comprehension is. we started to improve this skill by learning vocabulary and grammar, so I took mostly deductive education. after we learned lots of vobulary and grammar rules, we focused on reading comprehension. At this stage of my learning, I experienced transfer skills hypothesis, because I am a good reader in my first language and I have became a good reader in my second language. I like reading whatever I find and I have benefited from this habit of mine in my second language as well. I have started to read almost every piece in English even the titles and it has provided me cultural bacground for reading text. Considering my reading experiences I can say that finding a topic interesting and analysing the text carefully without skipping anything are very important in reading comprehension. I believe the text should be analysed by taking notes and teacher should give supporting information for students. Also, exposing students to excessive reading is useful.more they read, better they copmrehend as reading comprehension requires background information and that can be provided by reading as well. In my opinion the best EFL teacher is the one who motivates students best. Every lesson should be planned carefully and teacher should generate interest and enthusiasm in students, s/he should do carefully planned warm up activities and make students participate the lesson actively. In this process, a good EFL teacher should consider the level of students verr carefully so that s/he can plan activities according to their level. Also, a good EFL teacher gives input neither much nor little. S/he gives input appropriate to students and his/her input is new for students but it is also manageable enough for students. Besides, I believe that a good EFL teacher considers students' interests and try to make every lesson a fun experience:)
ReplyDeleteTo start with, reading is one of the most fundamental skills which we should give importance while learning English. Actually, I didn’t care about developing my reading skills at highschool mostly because of the education system which is based on memorizing. My prep class teacher at high school was trying to help us develop our all kinds of skills we can use in learning English. What I mean is that she used integrated teaching methods and it was very enjoyable because she dindn’t stick to only one method. Generally, before coming the class, we were supposed to read our reading passage that we were going to analyse in the class and our teacher expected us to find the unknown words in the passage and write them in our vocabulary notebook so that we wouldn’t have any problem while reading it. Moreover, to develop our extensive reading skills, our teacher asked each of us to find a cartoon character and seperate it into small parts and give a number to those parts representing how many books we wanted to read. After we read our books, we painted those parts different colours that we wanted. It was the activity that I liked a lot in terms of reading.It motivated me to do some extensive reading and helped me to get a reading habit out of the class. When I become a teacher, I may use this tecnique to persuade my students to do their readings.When I compare my reading skills at high school and university, it is much better because we can focus on reading rather than grammar or anything else with the help of our courses which include developing reading skills. Being aware of the techniques used in reading helps me a lot, as well. For example; I like skimming and scanning to get the general idea of the text I read.
ReplyDeleteHowever, at high school our English teacher made us read the reading passage aloud one by one and follow our friends. It was very boring because while I was reading I concentrated on the pronunciation without trying to get the meaning of the passage, so it isn’t a good tecnique to teach English reading. I think, a good EFL teacher is the one who doesn’t stick to one specific method not to make students bored and to make her/his lesson more and more efficient. Integrating some possible teaching methods is the best way. Actually the purpose determines the tecniques we use while reading. For example, if we read just for fun, we may use skimming or scanning but if we read to learn the deep meaning, we read more carefully. A good EFL teacher must be flexible, reflective, self-confident and prepared. Motivation is a necessary aspect that a good teacher must have, as well.
At high school in my prep class we had reading courses but actually I didn’t learn so much from these lessons. Our teacher read the text one time or made us read it aloud then we did exercises about that passage. These lessons were very monotonous and we all got bored. As an EFL reader I want to read what I like or wonder. First I make skimming and scanning then read one more time and try to understand the theme of the reading. I think reading lessons should be more interesting for example teacher can choose topics according to learners’ interests, trends…etc. At high school we studied more reading when we were 11th class because there are 21 reading questions in university entrance exam. These studies were very insufficient and exam based. Teacher didn’t teach us reading skills but test skills. For example we only skim and scan the passage and read carefully only the beginning and end of the passage. Our education system and university entrance exam make our English courses more exam and memorization based. Students don’t read English for any other purposes. I think teachers should suppose students reading English as a hobby in their free time. One of my teachers recommended us reading newspapers or magazines. Her suggestion seem a good idea to me. I started reading newspapers. If we can make learners read English as a hobby or because they want to read, the result will be better. If we can develop our reading skill, it automatically affects our vocabulary knowledge, writing and speaking skills. Unfortunately in our country reading is like a torture for Turkish students. When I become a teacher, I try to make my students read English as they want to do it. They can read anything but what they want to learn or wonder. May be I can ask them bring interesting articles they like and with those materials they choose they can develop their reading skills. They shouldn’t feel obliged to read. In my opinion everyone can get reading habit if the correct style is applied but there isn’t one best style it can change according to students’ characteristics. Teacher should try to find best style for each class.
ReplyDeleteActually, when it comes to speak about my reading background or past ı can say that I didn't do anything special for reading. In elementary school we did almost nothing for the sake of reading in L2 (i.e. English). My reading adventure started in high school with the prep class in which we had a course called " Reading". In this course we learned some reading strategies such as skimming and scanning. The teacher gave us the framework of reading. We were assigned to read graded books and we were writing summaries of these books and the teacher was controlling them. ın the exams, he reading questions were about whether comprehension or unknown vocabulary in the texts. When I was in the last year of high school I developed my own techniques for reading. as Iwas preparing for YDS in which there are 21 reading questions I had to be very careful and competent. So I can say that I am a good EFL reader.
ReplyDeleteI think making students read graded books is not an efficient way of promoting their reading skills. Because when you do something as an assignment it becomes boring and is seen as something that should be fulfilled. Then students read just for reading not for understanding. So students shold choose what they want to read. For example I don't like reading novels in English although I adore reading in Turkish. I thik the reason of this is the graded books I read in high schools.
As an EFL teacher I think I'll be try to find authentic techniques to involve my students in reading process actively. I will try to use materials the content of which is appropirate for my students' level and interests. I will let them bring their own reading material. I see reading as a way leading socialization, so I will make my students read aloud in the clas. In this way I think they can get rid of the anxiety they feel when they have to speak in front of many people or groups. I will motivate and control my students in their reading. And I will play feedback giver role in this process. And I will use a technique called "DIRT" standing for "daily independent reading time" in my class which ı think will be very useful............
Reading is one of the most significant skills in EFL since it helps us to increase our vocabulary capacity and comprehension ability which brings the mental development together. As foreign language learners, we should have been exposed to enough materials and time to read. At highschool, we were suppoed to read the texts beforehand and find the unfamiliar words from the dictionary. In the class, we listened the passage from the tape recorder and after that, teacher read aloud the texts. Lastly, teachers asked for volunteers to read the texts aloud. Then, teacher went over the unknown words by explaining and giving examples how to them in sentences. Finally, we answered the comprehension questions. As a homework, teacher sometimes gave writing something related to the passage.
ReplyDeleteIt was hard to read since we had a lot of lessons and homeworks at highschool which took so much of our time and we were not encouraged enough to read as EFL reader. Because of the education and exam systems, there left no time or not enough time read. It was vital to teach the grammar structures firstly for the teachers.
In my opinion, reading should be encouraged by the teachers as a first point. Secondly, teachers should be a good guide to students. For example, a student may want to read but does not know what to read and the benefits of reading or does not have access to the books. Teachers need to know the conditions of their students very well and help them accordingly. Also, there should be given a time for reading but not used fort he other lessons such as math, history or etc.
In our high school we have strange teachers. I really wonder how it happened that they came together in one school. My reading journey began with memorizing eighty irregular verbs in just a week, which is the first week of my high school education. Yes, we had really strange teachers. Have you ever seen a teacher that make memorizing eighty çarpı three words for his students a must in just a week? I had considered the option of going back to my hometown. Anyway, we did memorize and had a quiz. Then we start reading passages from a famous, or notorious book called “reader at work” (the pink one). We are supposed to read beforehand and answer those again famous “refer to” questions. But we had the answer key, so I gained nothing from that lesson. Our first reading lesson passed like that. Second one was more disastrous. We have another strange teacher who loves making up stories. He had stayed in the United States just for six weeks but he spoke about it for a year. And the result, we learned nothing about reading. In our other class in prep high school we supposed to read those graded books, and I read “the elephant man” through the whole year; she never cared what we did. Ok, I confess that we have some faults but the teachers were either exagerating (wanting so much from us), or just letting it go. Since our main concern is YDS exam, we didn’t deal with such teorethical issues in those years and I came to university. My reading lesson’s teacher was M..e G….z :-) Anyway, I learned nothing but one thing.. Reading passages that are employed in the classroom or given as an assignment for students should be useful and “worth reading” for the students. I mean, the student shouldn’t say “Ok, I read or supposed to read this. But why? For getting good grades? Ok, just let it go then…” The passages include such informaion that help them to keep going on the path of life easily and happily. Then they get pleasure, then they read.
ReplyDelete