I have always thought reading is very important in the way it involves many good things to be worked. It gives the students the opportunity to be connected to a real language. It let students increase their vocabulary and be familiar with structures. What do I mean with “be familiar with structures”? Let me tell you! When I was preparing for taking the FCE exam, my tutor used to say: “when you are not sure about any structure, write it as it sounds to you”. She meant that sometimes we cannot not even know why the words have to be in such order but we “think” is like that, it happens because in any time we have read that structure before and it sounds to us, this is the magic of reading. Searching different pages I found very helpful the one where you can read and the same time listen to the reading! And the information is up-dated! Why I am saying that? You know that the Royal Wedding was just past yesterday, that page has already an exercise related to that, even Laye did the task using that page! Good!
I also looked for an exercise to help my students feel more confidence in writing words, and I did my ABCD objective using a page where students practice their spelling by playing. I found that page really fun and useful.
On the other hand, planning a lesson with technology let me know there are a huge number of activities to be developed with the use of it. I wrote my lesson plan related to a structure I have to teach in the first level at the university, it is “There is /There are”. I found GOOGLE MAPS very useful for practicing it, that page has nice pictures of different places and I saw some beautiful ones of my country, students are familiar with those pictures, so they can write sentences of our real context.
Finally writing about the concerns I get in my jobs makes me focus in what I will do for solving them. What worries me is that a big number of students don’t read! I think reading has to become part of us and our students. In my opinion just practicing over and over again it might have the category of habit. Another relevant problem I face don’t have environments where they can practice their English, they just TRY to do it in class, but is it enough? I don’t guess so! Do you?
Katty
Hi Katty greets from Cusco Peru.
ReplyDeleteI would like to comment the last part of your post when you mention your worrying about the number of non-readers in class.
You know when I was at school my literature counselor was always pushing me to read novels, once I asked him about how many books he had read lately, he just looked at me and said none.
It means that we as teachers should act firstly like models, so for example what I usually do is to talk about an author and ask my students about the author's book. It really works.
Regarding to your students have you tried introducing your friends to your students? I mean people who speak English?
I always do my students just love it.
see you soon.
Harold.