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TEFLChina Teahouse: Teaching: Reading:
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Internet resources in teaching extensive reading
The Internet is quickly gaining popularity in many Chinese cities. More and more people are talking about the Internet and using it in their everyday lives. Some of them even say they cannot imagine their lives without it. Given the rise in use of the Internet -- especially in the business world -- it is worth both evaluating and attempting to steer its impact on English teaching in China.
Teaching English as a second language has changed quite a bit over the years. Prior to the nineteenth century, the so-called Grammar-Translation method was the most prevalent, replaced by the Direct method (1880-1920), and followed by the Reading method (1920-1940), Audio-lingual and audiovisual methods (1950-1960), and Communicative approach (1970-1980). Although each technique has its advantages, they all present problems within the four walls of the classroom. Especially within the Chinese educational environment, sources of information are often not available, materials are not up-to-date, and the students are not as easily motivated to participate in oral activities as in the West. The consequence, of course, is low effectiveness and efficiency in language teaching and learning.
With the ongoing development of communications technology, many of these problems can be overcome. In this paper, I will focus on teaching extensive reading while analyzing its problems, posing Internet solutions, and providing an example of the new teaching design.
Teaching language points
I suggest that you introduce a new text by planning a class activity that focuses on its meaning. If it is a funny story, for instance, you could ask the students to write a few sentences about something funny that happened in the dorm or on campus. I guess this is what would be called a pre-reading activity, something to motivate the students to explore the text and to connect it to how they themselves communicate.
In past years, I tried global comprehension of the texts. I found that if students had no problems with words and sentences, this method worked well. But,the fact is that the average students complained about too many new words and difficult sentences in the texts so that they suggested that I better focus on language points and not on global meaning.
If I have to teach a text that I think is too difficult, is poorly written or is in some other way inappropriate for the students, I start with advice to them about how to read it. For instance, if the text is too difficult, I tell them to try to guess words from context, ignore words that are not essential to the meaning, simplify sentences by "reading out" clauses and phrases that are not essential to the main sense of the sentence, etc. Have them read it and then ask, what is it about? They might think they do not understand, but they understand some of the meaning. Make a list of "meanings" they got on the blackboard. Then affirm their comprehension. "You really did get a lot out of this text that you thought was so difficult."
It has been the students' habit to learn English by intensive reading. Therefore they naturally feel much more comfortable with the learning of language points than global understanding. However, if we teachers can make it clear that reading for overall understanding is more important than recognizing particular words and phrases, they would accept the new method, especially when they realize the fact that almost all tests for reading are looking at comprehension of the selected passages.
