Wow, it's certainly very interesting how different teachers and institutions incorporate extensive reading into their courses! Thanks, Violeta for starting the topic.
I see that some of you teach English majors at university. Clearly the type, amount and assessment of extensive reading will be different for these students than for those of us who teach students who only want/need to learn the language in order to communicate. When I was at the University of Barcelona, English majors were required to have the equivalent of a Cambridge Proficiency level at the end of their second year at university in order to continue as English majors and there were a number of required literature classes. When I taught at the Open University of Catalonia, on the other hand, my students came from a variety of disciplines, but they were not English majors. They were required to reach the equivalent of FCE before graduating - but they were not required to do any extensive reading in their English classes as they were already reading books and articles in English related to their field of study.
At the Escoles Oficials d'Idiomes, state-run language schools that in addition to teaching languages also provide students with official certification of their level of proficiency, we have an assortment of students aged 16 and up. Many of our students are university students who get credit for the classes they take at our schools or teachers who need our certificates in order to teach English at lower & middle school level or teach other subjects in English at high school level, but we have students from all professions as well as the occasional pensioner or stay-at-home mom. At the end of 5 years at the EOI, our students reach a B2+ level equivalent to the CAE. In these courses students are required to read a minimum of 3 books a year (unabridged in the 4th and 5th year) but are encouraged to read more. So as teachers, what we need to do with regard to extensive reading is help our students find books that are appropriate for their level and which they will enjoy, because as Paul says on his class blog: the first rule about books for extensive reading is that you should find them interesting. If a book you choose isn't, you should stop reading it..
Normally during the first semester the entire class reads the same book and we do a number of class activities based on that book. I find it's especially important to choose a book the students will enjoy for the first class reading because it will either motivate the students to read more or turn them off reading. Because we have such a variety of students, we can't choose anything too demanding intellectually or linguistically (Claudia - I think Whitman is one of the most compelling and influential American poets and I would love to be able to read Leaves of Grass with my students but in my situation it would be suicide). This past year we chose The curious incident of the dog in the night-time for 4th level (upper-intermediate) and our students loved it! It was easy to read, original, and the topic led to a lot of discussions on everything from autism and phobias to parent-child relationships. We did not test the students on the book, but conducted a series of in-class activities based on it.
As for the kind of activities I prepare for my students based on the class reading, these can vary and depend on the book but here's a selection of some that have been especially successful:
- students supply an alternative ending for the story
this can be done in a number of ways, sometimes I have them read the book or story up to a certain page and then have them work in groups to come up with an ending. they either write up the ending in the form of a play and act it out in front of the class or write it up as a story and post it on a website for the other groups to read. students then vote on which ending they prefer - then they read the original ending and see which group came closest to the idea of the original author - they can then talk about whether they think that ending or the one the class selected is the most credible. An alternative is to select an important decision point in the book or story and have the students rewrite the ending based on what they think would have happened if the character had taken the opposite decision.
- students write up quiz questions
students write up questions based on the plot as well as the new vocabulary they have learned - these questions then become the trivia questions for a quiz game. students get into groups and each group is assigned a topic or a chapter they have to think up questions for - depending on the game I ask them to think up a certain number of easy, medium and difficult questions. having students think up questions themselves makes them work through the material more thoroughly and the competition between groups makes them read the book more closely in order to win the game. which quiz game you choose is really beside the point - I have played jeopardy, trivial pursuit, who wants to be a millionaire, snakes and ladders... both in class and online and all with questions written up by students
- students meet the author
before we assign a book we have a look at the authors who are coming to Barcelona to present their new books or for conferences and if they have a book that corresponds to the students' level, we see if we can get them to come and give a talk and answer students' questions. as the students read the book they think up questions they would like to ask the author - get into groups to choose the most interesting questions and think of the best way to phrase them, which will force them to rephrase and combine similar questions. during the interview they make notes of the author's answers which they then use to write up an article. this can also be done online by holding a video conference or communicating with the author in writing. another possibility if the author is not reachable is for the students to write up the questions and then look up the answers to their questions by searching various internet resources such as online interviews, the author's blog or literary websites. you can also put students into small groups, have each group research a couple of questions and then use those questions to produce an online treasure hunt for the entire class, and for future classes as well,
- students research people, places and events
students are put in groups and each group needs to find information on one of the historical figures, places or events that come up in the book and write a wiki entry on the significance of that person, place or event and the role it plays in the book. these entries should include not only text but also images, audio and/or video (if possible) and links to further resources. these entries can then be linked to form a reading guide that can be used bu future students.
I'm sure none of my ideas are new and many of you have probably tried them yourselves, but what I wanted to point out is that there are a lot of ways to get students to work on a class reading without having them take a test on it - and these activities will be a lot more rewarding and students will retain the information and knowledge they acquire a lot longer than by studying for a test. Personally, I do not like the idea of testing extensive reading. IMO students should be encouraged to read in English, just as they should be encouraged to watch films in English, participate in online discussions in English, participate in leisure activities with English-speaking people etc - all of these are ways of becoming more fluent in the language by gaining exposure to it. And for this purpose any reading will do: a music magazine, a classic novel, a professional journal, a daily newspaper, the wikipedia... whatever the student enjoys reading.
When students or groups of students are reading different books, the type of activities you can carry out in class varies. As Jane points out, you can have students give an individual book talk in front of the class. My experience is that if you choose this activity, it's important to give the students a task to do while they are listening - e.g. think of 3 questions they would like to ask about the book, take notes on the each book and then discuss in groups which of the books they would like to read themselves, giving reasons for their choice, or use some pre-established rubrics to assess the performance of their peers - something to keep them from disconnecting. Although talking in front of a large group can be a useful skill for students to master, with up to 30 students in class, having each student give an individual talk in front of the class often turned out to be too time-consuming and so I'd have the students do the activity in small groups. Before the activity in class, students were supposed to think up some questions to ask their peers about the book they read in order to determine whether they would like to read it. in groups, students ask one member at a time about the book he/she read. after each member has answered questions about his/her book, each student explains which of the books presented by their classmates they would like to read and why. then students swap books.
As this activity creates no permanent artifact, I was hoping to find a way to use Shelfari or another social reading network for students to write down their impressions about the book they read and say whether they would recommend it to future students - the activity I explained in my first post to the group and will not repeat here. Another activity students could do on Shelfari would be to read through the reviews written about the book they read, find a review they disagree with and respond to that review explaining what it is they don't agree with. They could also read through the reviews and write down the adjectives the reviewers use to describe the book, decide which of these are positive, which are negative and which are neutral. Then they would have to select those adjectives they feel most closely correspond to the way they feel about the book and use them in a review of their own. If this last step is not disclosed to students until after they have the done first activity, it is less likely that they will plagiarize, as they will only have the adjectives to build their review on, not the context in which they were originally used. The problem with book reviews is that students tend to copy the ideas (and even entire sentences) of others. IMO not all extensive readings should end in book reviews, there are many other formats, e.g. stories, letters, articles, dialogs... that can be written based on reading assignments - which although they may not be appropriate on a platform like Shelfari, could be written collaboratively and shared on a wiki - and add more variety in terms of types of discourse used by students (I mean if you have your students write 18 book reviews a semester as they do at Paul's school that really doesn't leave much time for other writing assignments - does it? or maybe Japanese students are much more industrious than Spanish ones).
posted 1 year ago. ( reply )
