Hi guys,
Sorry I haven't posted in a while, but my internet is still not working, and I just have a few hours when I can use it a week.
I found this very concise article about reading skills and strategies that can help you make sense of the chapters related to reading skills in your anthology.
Please take a look at the article. Then, let me know what you think about it. Is it too summarized? What else from the chapter in reading skills should we keep in mind when we teach reading?
I'm looking forward to reading your comments.
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Hi guys,
ReplyDeleteSorry for not writing anything before; honestly, I just checked our blog after professor Miranda e-mailed us. Anyway, I’d like to make some comments about Renee Hobbs’ reading: “What’ news?”, and Tovani’s one: “The power of purposeful reading”. Of course, I’d like to know what you think about them. In Hobbs’ article, it’s interesting to consider the way she makes students “make” a critical reading of a text. In other words, they have to try to get the author’s technique and purpose. They also work on the author’s intentions. Here, it is a good way to make our students improve their skillful judgment. However, one might not be sure of carrying out this activity all the time. I’m not sure if her ideas apply to beginners since they imply more advanced language knowledge. It also makes me think about our public education system (especially elementary school) in which students are barely asked to do a critical reading of a text. My reading is that Garnier is promoting this kind or reading in Spanish classes. Is this true?
On the other hand, Hobbs doesn’t mention anything about the importance of culture when one has to deal with a text. Even though it’s important to make students work on different types of texts, teachers should also remember that any text always carries a cultural factor that would affect the author’s intention as well the style. In other words, when doing a structuralistic reading, we have to remember that every student might have a different signifier, which is therefore a signified by a different sign. It means that students could get confused (or offended) if we don’t explain some culture.
Similarly, Tovani doesn’t mention anything about culture either. I really like the idea of activating students’ schemata in order to help their understanding of the text.
Finally, I’d like to know your opinion about the effect of technology in readings. Don’t you think that twitter, facebook and text messaging are changing the structures of texts? People are writing differently from the way they used to write 20 years ago. Now, we are using other codes (“luv u!”, “lol”). Don’t you think that we, as teachers should teach also learn how to decipher and read these new texts?
Hi again,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the article. I do agree with you that it is a great summary of the reading skills and strategies that we have been reading in the past weeks. I was expecting to read specific examples of how to activate background knowledge using authentic materials. In the article, the author is concerned with the use of reading strategies in the target language; however, the article doesn’t mention anything about time. Shouldn’t we, as teachers, consider time when we are carrying out any reading activity?
Hi Leonardo,
ReplyDeleteVery insightful comments. I think that when we use out-of-context textbooks (for example, textbooks created for the USA, culture, as you said, can become a big factor that influences students' understanding of the text. However, I see this as an opportunity rather than as a disadvantage. I feel that students enjoy and benefit a lot from learning culture-specific vocabulary (slang, for instance) and that this helps them to read and speak more effectively in the real world. In addition, a very important part of learning a language is learning about the culture itself.
In regards to your comment on technology and how it is impacting writing, I think that we should definitely acknowledge that these new type of writing is emerging and be familiar with it but I wouldn't necessarily promote its used in the classroom, except maybe if you are dealing with advanced learners. I feel that students have enough to deal with without throwing in informal writing terminology into the mix. I feel that they might become easily confused because they have yet to internalize a lot of spelling and grammar rules.
In terms of time, I definitely think that time is an issue. However, there are ways around this. For instance, you can always ask Ss to do most of the reading at home and then focus on meaningful reading activites with short passages in the classroom. Another good idea are jigsaw reading where you different groups of Ss to read and summarize different parts of long readings and then to share their summaries with the class. What about you? Do you have any tips to avoid spending too much class time on just reading the text?