Chapters 20 and 21 in
Brown talk about the teaching of reading and writing. Last week we discussed
the previous chapters on the teaching of speaking and listening. It’s important
to remember that each of these language skills is developed best in association
with the others. One of the skills of reading comprehension that is discussed
in the chapter is to identify the purpose in reading. Students want to know why
they’ve been asked to read something. This also goes along with making sure the
reading passage is something that interests the students. If the text isn’t
something that interests the students and they don’t understand the purpose for
reading it, they won’t put forth the effort needed to make sure they understand
it. I think that a good topic for reading passages is the culture of the language
the students are studying, but it’s important that the cultural information in
the readings still interest the students. From personal experience and from
what I’ve observed, students like to hear more about the daily life of the people
in the countries they are studying, not about historical facts and stories.
The
use of graphic organizers is a great reading strategy since they help students to
organize the information presented in the text. Graphic organizers or other
helpful strategies should be used as both pre and post reading strategies. The
chapter talks about the SQ3R sequence to aid students with reading comprehension
(survey, question, read, recite, review). Reading passages are very beneficial
with L2 instruction since they help students work on their reading
comprehension skills in the language and can also introduce or highlight
different grammar concepts. It’s also very important to use as many authentic
texts in the language as possible since they are more contextual, therefore
more meaningful.
Chapter
21 talks about the teaching of writing. Many teaching strategies involve the
combination of reading and writing. After reading a text students can write a
reaction to it or answer short comprehension questions. The book states how
with reading and writing there is a heavier demand on vocabulary than with
speaking. From my experiences of being in an L2 classroom, when students have
to write in the L2 they always want to know how to say different words. I
remember one of my high school Spanish teachers would tell her students to go
look in a dictionary when they wanted to know how to say a word. Even though
this approach may sound a little harsh, I tend to agree with her. L2 teachers
would constantly be telling students how to say things when in reality students
have the resources necessary to find out how to say anything in the L2. I also
think it’s important that students learn how to talk around what they want to
say, describing the word or concept in another way. This is a great skill to
have especially when the learner is communicating with native speakers of the
language who don’t speak that student’s native language. That student can’t
just ask the person they’re talking with how to say the word that they want to
use since they don’t speak the student’s L1. The student must then resort to
talking around the word. A difficult aspect to teaching writing in the L2 is
deciding what written errors to correct in student work. This is a topic we
also discussed in 343. This is a difficult question that has no correct answer.
No matter what approach teachers take, I think it’s important to stay consistent
with all students but to also make changes to grading accordingly.
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