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

...