Teachin Reading In The Classroom

TEACHING READING IN THE CLASSROOM

UNIVERSIDAD AUTONOMA DEL ESTADO DE MEXICO

FACULTADO DE LENGUAS

This paper will answer in a brief way the following questions, based on the reading by Harmer “Teach English”:

1. Why do you think is important to get students to read in English?

2. What are the must important skills students should develop?

3. From the principles behind the teaching of reading mentioned by Harmer (1998), which ones do you consider the most difficult to use with your group(s) of students (according to their interests, age, abilities, etc)?

4. What variations will you implement in the reading sequences mentioned in the Chapter (chose only one example).

Reading is important to be taught, because is a communicative, whole-learning activity. The written word has the role of facilitator enabling the students to practice their comprehension and language skills. Through reader-response activities, comprehension tasks, and gap fills, students get interested in reading and not only as Varaprasad (1997:24) points out that a reading text is often used only as a “means to impart grammatical, vocabulary, and content knowledge” but with great regard for the text’s rhetorical and personal effect on the reader.

In reading students should develop different skills, one of them is Skimming due to reading is an activity involving constant guesses, students should be trained to recognize the key sentence of a text, this key sentence usually sums up the gist of each paragraph and (by) this key sentence often appears at the beginning of each paragraph, Grellet (1996).

Scanning also must be developed for students in order to locate specific information; what we do is try to find in which paragraph the information we are looking for is likely to be; then read this paragraph with more attention; Grellet; (1996).

One of the problems that I can see with my students (adults) during reading activities is to find an interesting reading to be engaged and would like to talk about it; that is why teachers have to look for interesting and up-dated information in order to keep the attention and interest of the students. Besides the techniques which may make comprehension checks more interesting.

In regard to the example •3, it could be implemented a “Follow-up” activity which would take students beyond the particular reading text in one of two ways: by transferring reading skills to other texts or integrating reading skills with other language skills (Phillips, 1985). It is suggested to add to example 3, that students can begin a new text similar to the text already read in order to transfer this skill to the writing skill.

To conclude, it is important to mention that teachers must be aware of the importance of reading in the classroom, it must be considered that reader purposes and approaches to texts differ not only by text, but also by the individual readers, this means that texts should be selected carefully in order to fulfil not only the needs but also the reader’s expectations. On the other hand, teachers should use strategies that will allow students to develop the skills to make reading easily and more interesting for them.

References:

Grellet, F. (1996), Developing Reading Skills, Great Britain: Cambridge University Press.

Harmer, J. (2000) Teach English. Longman.

Varaprasad. C. 1197. Some classroom

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