Think of your previous learning experiences concerning EFL reading, your memories of learning EFL reading at school and your past school experience in that respect. How did you learn EFL reading at school? How do you describe yourself as an EFL reader? What is your own image as an EFL reader? Describe and reflect on the previous at-school and out-of-school experiences (positive and/or negative) related to learning EFL reading. What did these experiences mean to you? What are some of the influences/ teaching techniques or methods, people that shaped your image of yourself as an EFL reader and how did they affect you?
What are your beliefs about teaching/ learning reading as a prospective teacher? How do you approach EFL reading instruction (the methodology you would apply in teaching EFL reading)? Describe your philosophy as an EFL reading teacher. What do you think a good EFL teacher is/ isn't like?
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I think nearly all students in Turkey go through the same procedure. When I was in primary school our teacher used to want us to read the passge and find the words that we do not know or familiar with at home. I used to read and find the words then at school we would answer the questions and it was like a nightmare! I was so bored all these activities.
ReplyDeleteWhen I came to the high school a new era started. My teacher would expect us to read stage books and summarize them. That story book were really enjoyable to read. She would give us the minimum number but I would expand it. As the time passed, we also started to read newsweek weekly. this magazine was authentic enough to get world knowledge and at same time input for us.This style has been always fine with me.
As my level in my English-learning life, I have started to read more more native stories, novels and current materials.
I believe that top-down style often makes reading easier. I think the general meaning of the material makes more sense. It also makes readding process more interesting and enjoyable. It sounds like a normal reading when it is compared to the read-find-the-words process.
If a teacher wants his/her students to read more and willingly, s/he should enlarge their views in order to draw their attention and help their self-development as well.
In turkey, students starts to learn English on the 4 grade of their primary school. In an average state school, the major focus is on grammar rather than the other four skills of the language,namely; reading, writing, speaking and listening. Students are bombarded with the grammar of English and at the end of the 8the grade(4 years of English education), they can hardly understand simple passages of English which are şn beginner level. That is the case with me also. Isn't it so absurd that after 4 years of English education, the learners cannot even understand the simplest passages?
ReplyDeleteIn high school, in prep-class, I draw a more optimistic picture. We had a special class for reading English stage books. We were assigned to read specific pages and in class we had discussions about the relevant pages. Sometimes, our teacher gave us quizzes about the book and if we had enough time, we listened to the relevant pages from a CD read by a native speaker. This was a new era for us and for our English because we had a lot of fun during the classes and we started to have a notion of English.
If I am to teach English and if my focus is on reading, I would probably use both methods, bottom-up and top-down, in my classes; because I believe that if a teacher restrict himself with one method, it is hard for her to be succesful in what s/he does.
I would Start my teachings with bottom-up method which emphasizes the relation between sounds and symbols, so that my students can get familiar with sound system of the new language. After a certain time passes, when I believe that my students are ready for reconstruction of the meaning, I would conduct the top-dpwn method which has more focus on meaning.
My situation was so different from my friends. In the primary and secondary school we had no instruction on reading. In the high school we had an instruction on reading like the one that Bilge had in her primary school years, so it made no difference on my reading skills. Therefore I had to study hard and develop my own reading strategies. At the beginning, I thought that without knowing all of the words in a reading text I wouldn’t understand anything. Hence whenever I had a passage to read, I looked up all the words that I didn’t know. As you can guess I was looking up every third or fourth word in the passage and (there is no need to say) I spent all of my time looking up those words in the dictionary. As a result I understood almost nothing from the passage and reading even a short passage became a torture to me. Then I decided to use a different strategy. This time I looked up none of the unknown words in the dictionary and tried to guess the meaning of those words from the context. Again I comprehend nothing from the passage. I was on the brink of going mad. After a long time, I found out that I didn’t have to know meaning of all the words in the passage and some words can be skipped. The necessary thing was to know some key words in the passage and some of them could be guessed from the context. The main focus should be to get the general idea. From these experiences I came to a conclusion: In order to understand a text we don’t have to know meaning or pronunciation of all words, knowing some key words of the passage is enough to get the gist of the story.
ReplyDeleteAs a prospective teacher I think the most important point is to give students texts that are suitable to their levels and to take cross cultural aspects into consideration. In the high school our teacher gave us newspapers which were being published in which English is spoken as a native language. In order to understand them I made a great effort, but I understood almost nothing even though I was in the upper-intermediate or advanced level. In addition, the topics of the articles came unfamiliar to me and it was boring for me to read them. Thus I don’t want to use such authentic materials in my instruction so much because (from my experiences) I know that even a daily newspaper can be too difficult to understand and it can be unfamiliar to my students. As these factors can affect reading comprehension in a negative way I won’t use them or I can use some simplified versions of those authentic materials. I will also try to bring some enjoyable texts instead of scientific or other boring texts to attract students’ attention because I know that one of the most important conditions of success is to take students’ interests into account...
My reading experiences actually began in high school. I could not remember anything about reading in primary school. I just remember the songs that we were taught to be familiar with english more.
ReplyDeleteIn high school,at prep class, we immediately began to read stages books in lessons. We had 5-6 books to read in lesson apart from that we were strongly advised to read more. ın lessons we were reading the book chapter by chapter and along with the teacher. Sometimes teacher could ask us to act so as everyone to understand the scenes clearly. In those times we had lots of fun.Sometimes he asked us to tell what we had understood from a specific part. If we did not know the meaning of a word then either he would say or we searched ourselves from a source like dictionary. After prep class we did not pay so much attention to reading until we chose out departments in high school. We had to pay attention many lessons apart from english, in that year, we only read and tried to understand and looked unknown words up and that was all. After begining to study in our chosen departments we read again stage books but this time they were from high levels. Everyone had her own book, after reading her own book, everyone told it in front of the class and then changed it with another book of her friend then read then told etc. It was going like chain. Apart from that we could not do anything as we mainly dealt with exam.
Actually, when I looked myself I could not see an eager reader. When we do the reading in class it would make me bored. but I must confess that they were very useful for me to improve my own understang skills about both the reading passage and the unknown words. Altough I am a eager reader in Turkish novels or anything to read, every english one is not enjoyable for me. I am selective for english in that topic.
The prep class reading activities were more effective for me to use my own class for a reading lesson. I am also one of the ones believing that a teacher should not limit himself or herself to one method. I know that it is hard to know which method sould be used in which class in which level etc but as time passes every teacher construct this if she or he does not limit himself or herself to one specific method. When I will focus on reading while teaching in a few years time I am planning to use top down method for the ones having difficulty in understanding passages wholly and for the ones having prejudices for a reading passage when they hear its name and the other bottom up method for the ones loving details may be with the sound and symbols songs. Enjoying yourselfs should be the main focus I believe that it is motto of a lesson, if it exists, then no problem..
I cannot say that I have many reading experiences I got in primary school. As it is a tradition, important point was grammar and the other skills were ignored. If there was a text, the teacher would read it aloud. Then, in high school years, it changed a bit; but not much. Students started reading in order to answer questions which were to teach some specific grammar topics. The most frequent reading activity was to read stage books and summarize them. Doing that was so boring and waste of time, in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI believe that in our country, teachers do not give enough importance to reading activities; pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading activities. In fact, they do just post-reading activities which is to answer questions related to the text.
In short, I think reading activities should be integrated into writing, speaking, vocabulary and grammar skills in order to increase their effectiveness. We should not think them apart from the other skills. I think using authentic materials which are at appropriate level for the students is the most important point in addition to their appropriateness for the purpose of reading activity. We should benefit from visual elements while reading especially at beginning level.
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ReplyDeleteActually, I hate so callded education in Turkey. Noone taught me how to read in English. They just tried to give the grammar and make us memorize vocabulary. There you go! You can read and understand the text now.
ReplyDeleteWell, that was not the case for many students. I am a lucky one, I do everything so fast, I find the best strategies by myself, I never had any difficulty in reading. People were almost done with the first paragraph when I was done with all. I also understand completely, while many people cannot. I gave lots of thought about it, I was raised with 3 languages and learned 3 different alphabets when I was very young, and my eyes are really working well. I think these may be the reasons.
Until I was in METU and took the reading course, no systematic information or strategy was introduced to me. Müge Hoca gave us a list of highly used prefixes and suffixex and stems. So when I see 'tele' I know that it means "far" etc. It really helped and reduced the number of unfamiliar words. And the more I understood, the more I read because it was more pleasurable, and the more I read the faster I became and I developed new ways and strategies. I think everyone can make their own way, which will be the best way for them by reading and reading.
When I think about my past experiences,especially early ones, I notice that actually I haven't done much reading. In the primary school the only reading activities were about the reading passages in the book. We did intensive reading. We looked up the words in a dictionary and answered the comprehension questions in the book. Actually, I couldn't read fast and couldn't understand the general meaning of the reading passage without looking up a dictionary for some words.
ReplyDeleteIn the high school,however,we did much reading I believe. Our textbook was a good one in the prepatory class and via this book we learned how to do intensive reading. Our teacher wanted us to buy some books. They were stage books in fact,but they were good in terms of authenticity,because we read Rain Man, Jurassic Park and Brave Heart.I really liked these books. We did extensive reading and after reading the books, we summarised the book. After preparatory class, I didn't do much reading. While preparing for university entrance exam, I attended a course. In this course I met the teacher,who shaped my image of myself as an EFL reader. He wanted us to read authentic materials and do extensive reading, which gave me great pleasure. I only looked up the words I wondered and after a while I noticed that I wondered a lot of words. It was a top-down method.
In the university, I do much reading. Some of them are intensive ones such as the articles,which we read to answer some specific questions. The others are extensive and the meaning is importance. When I consider about my own perceptive, I can say that both intensive and extensive reading are important and necessary. I believe that students should do extensive reading all the time. I think all the methods should be included in teaching reading. While choosing the method students' levels, their interests and time we consume for reading are all important. Above all, to me top-down approach is especially fruitful, because meaning is primary importance and students learn how to predict in this approach.
My previous English teacher said "a good reader is also a good language user". The best way of learning foreign language is to get into it; and the easiest way to accomplish this is to read. That teacher of mine told us that from now on you will read in two ways:
ReplyDelete1. COMPULSORY: you will read as musc as you can. while reading the books you will understand as much as you can. you are not allowed to look up to dictionary for unknown words. You are not allowed to give up reading. but you can look up the words only after you finish reading. They are most probably the most frequent words.
2. OPTIONAL: you can look up to dictionary.
First, I felt bad because it seemed so hard to understand without dictionary. It was... and then I realized that I could understand what I was reading. No need for dictionary.
I read an article saying there is no need for knowing all of the words; understanding 70% of what is written means understanding the whole withou any loss.
Then I started to read newspapers in English; I felt like a native.
So, extensive rading is the best way of teaching a foreign language.
As far as I remember, until prep class in high school I did not have any reading experience. We were just taught grammar again and again for six years. By the time I started high school, I started to learn English effectively. Our teacher gave importance to reading besides. After we learned basic grammar and vocabulary we started seriously reading and listening. We used to have homeworks on reading stage books and then we would discuss about the books we read in the class, then we exchange them with our friends. Some of the good remembrance of me about them is the small bazaar of food in our school -“kermes” in Turkish- in order to buy new stage books for our class library. Every year almost every class would do such events. They made us happy and brought us together as a class.
ReplyDeleteAnother way of reading activities in our classes is reading and analyzing Newsweek as homework. Finally we tell the class what we read, the vocabulary, the topic and what is told in the passage. By these activities we would learn new vocabulary and our knowledge of world would extended.
These are the methods and techniques we used in high school prep class. In my opinion, they were very useful and they became also habit for me. It raised my self-confidence because I can read and understand the books and newspapers. Also they were externa reaiding so that we enjoyed them but also they were our responsibilty and discussed in class with everyone so that it was like internal reaiding as well.
As conclusion, my experience of EFL reading started from high school and continues. I think my teacher gave us the important points (clues of a good reader). The more we apply and use them, the more we would be succesful in reading.
I started learning English in fourth grade like most of my friends. In these years, my teacher wanted us to find unknown words before our coming to the lesson. While reading the passage in class, the teacher was stopping reading and asking the meaning of common unknown words. After reading one or two times, she asked questions about the text in order to make us understand it better. In my high school years, we were reading books and summarizing them. In order to prevent writing summary without reading the book, teachers were asking questions about these 40 books, which was the number of the books we were required to read throughout a year, in the final exam which is crucial for passing the prep year. I liked to read these books, but now, to be honest, I don’t read as much as in those years, which is a shame for an EFL student. Also, I strongly believe that reading books in my high school years improve my English a lot with regard to grammar, vocabulary, besides reading. However, in my primary school years, teaching method could be different. It might be more enjoyable, more interesting rather than the traditional methods.
ReplyDeleteI think teaching methods in EFL classes should be applied according to students’ level and age. For example, if the students are young and at beginner level, teacher should prepare the materials game-emphasized or the reading passage should attract the students’ attention. To illustrate, you can’t want primary school children to think and to read a text about globalization. They can’t concrete on something which they aren’t interested in. In addition, teacher shouldn’t have only one technique because he should know every student is unique and there are different types of students who have different levels, interests, perceptions and learning method. A good EFL teacher should be aware of all these.
As our friends said, I think the reading methods all over the Turkey are the same. When I was in primary school, I remember that we did little for the sake of reading. Our English teachers usually taught us grammar and at the end of each lesson, they wanted us to form 5-10 sentences for homework about the grammar items we learned. When we come to reading, they wanted us looking up the words memorizing them before coming to class. While I was looking up the words and reading the passage, I understood little because I didn’t know what the words might mean in the context. The lessons were really boring; there were no interesting topics and activities. As far as I can remember, there was no reading in the exams, the exams generally included grammar exercises.
ReplyDeleteUntil I started high school, my image of reading was negative. After I started high school, my image of reading began becoming positive. We started reading graded books and we didn’t need to look up the words. We just learned words in the context. The topics and exercises became more interesting which made reading an enjoyable act for me.
When I become a teacher, first of all I won’t restrict myself to only one method. I will try to use every method appropriate for the reading materials. I will try to make lessons more enjoyable and interesting. I will use authentic materials which are appropriate for the students to a great extend…
I remember my first readings at high school. Reading and understanding a
ReplyDeletepassage was too diffucult for me, because there were many unknown words
and different usages in a text, it was like a torture to me. I did not know ı could
understand a passage by just scanning and skimming. I used to use dictionary for
each foreign word. I was too time consuming. I wanted to read and understand I
was interested but, it was too diffucult to concentrate on each word and meaning.
Our teacher were focusing on just grammar or some special usages in the text.
They were not successful in efl reading ı think because, an effective efl teacher
should lead students to read, understand and analyzse the passage, but he/she should
not focus on a just a detail, for example he/she sould not focus on just vocabulary or grammar. The passage sould be used in a effective way. It sould include some extra
activities related to passage. In high school, I did not know the ways of good efl reader,
but now thanks to our education and teachers, I think I can understand and anaylze a
passage as a whole. It should requires some tasks and I am aware of it, so I hope I also
can help the others about reading. The readings in high school was boring, ı remember we read some pasages related to mechanics, mathematics, and engineering. They were not interesting form e, we read them because, we just need to do the task. We were reading
also some books, but we were just focusing on some idioms and usages. Our teacher were trying to teach us mostly grammar. I see the difference in university, because the teachers
use many methods for reading, they give tasks to students, they use authentic materials, they
use writing,speaking with integrated to reading, so it is more effective and enjoyable.
bahar izmir
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ReplyDeleteTo read a paragraph or longer passage fluently, the student needs to be able to pick out the main points from the text in order to recover the meaning, or gist, of the passage. To understand the main points of a paragraph, the student needs to be able to make inferences about such things as the relation between a cause and its effect as well as which nouns are referred to by pronouns.The reader's goal is to extract coherent meaning from the text. Though literal comprehension is a priority for the reader, he or she is usually more concerned with maintaining coherence than with memorizing and reproducing the exact text. The coherent meaning constructed by the reader will be somehow related to the reader's prior experience and to the structures already formed in the reader's mind. So as a prospective teacher, they are important to give students opinions and make them good readers.
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