Reading Lessons in Senior High School
Abstract ： It is necessary to give extensive reading lessons in senior high school which will enlarge students’ vocabulary, develop their good reading habits and skills and foster optimistic philosophy. This article is mainly about the necessity of giving extensive reading lessons, and some of my practice and self-reflection on it.
Key words: extensive reading; vocabulary, students
According to the New English Course Standard ( Abbreviation as New Standard in the following), The main goal of English teaching in Senior school is to develop students’ ability of self-learning and co-operation, to form effective English learning strategy and improve their ability to use the language freely. Especially, we should enable students to get information, analyze and solve problems by using information.
But in our traditional reading lessons, teachers usually forget to provide students with proper and enough reading materials, neglect to enlarge students’ vocabulary, and fail to develop their good reading habits and skills.
Considering the problems mentioned above, I think giving extensive reading lessons is necessary and practical. Last year, four teachers, including me, made an attempt to give extensive reading lessons. Generally, one lesson every week. We selected some reading materials, edited them, gave lessons and collected feedbacks, students were asked to have short tests and carry out self-evaluations. I think it’s a good beginning.
1. The necessity of giving extensive reading lessons
Since the New Standard set a much higher requirement in vocabulary and reading ability. If we don’t add more reading quantities, if we don’t make every effort to enlarge their vocabulary, and if we don’t make full use of English resources, how can we achieve the goal?
1.1 Requirements of New English Course Standard in Reading
In the present outline, students are requested to master 1200 words and 750 idioms and phrases. In the new standard, there’re nine levels for students. For senior high school students they should acquire level 7 before graduation. That is, in the level 7, students should master 2400-2500 words and 300-400 phrases. As for reading ability, students should not only get information, grasp the main idea, understand the writer’s writing purpose, but also guess the meaning of new words in the context. What’s more, they are required to get information in the internet and read English newspapers and magazines. Besides the textbooks, they are asked to read materials of over 23,000 words.
1.2 Problems with traditional reading lessons
Although our teaching methods have been greatly improved, there are still many problems, such as not proper or enough reading materials, vocabulary handicap and little guidance of reading habits and skills. Besides, teachers always focus on language points and ignore students’ feelings.
1.2.1 Problems with reading materials
Our reading material is not so suitable, they are too far away from students’ life, activities and experience. Firstly, all textbooks are behind the times. Since our textbooks were published in 1992 and first came into use in 1993. Much information is out of date. Take SEFC Book1 Unit9 Computer. Nowadays computers are common in each family. It’s not surprising that CAAC has bought a new computer. Internet has changed people’s life completely. It becomes a new life style. So we should add more information on internet. Secondly, in our textbooks, there are too many facts and introductions with little emotion. But according to the New Standard, we should foster students’ correct philosophy, the best way is to read literature works which can move them deeply and affect them. But there’re too few literature works.
1.2.2 Problems with vocabulary learning
Vocabulary is really a headache for both teachers and students. In the current textbooks, students can only master 1200 words and 750 phrases. Absolutely, such a small vocabulary prevents students from full understanding of the new reading materials. How can students improve their reading ability with such a small vocabulary? Most teachers think remembering words is the task of students themselves and seldom give instructions on remembering words. In my opinion, the only way to enlarge vocabulary is by reading, reading and reading.
1.2.3 Problems with reading habits and skills
In our reading lessons, teachers usually focus on the reading contents, but neglect to guide their reading skills and correct their reading habits. The most serious problem with reading is that students always read slowly and they like to read from word to word, from sentence to sentence. Some students even like to read aloud, using fingers or pens, pointing to the words. What’s more, our students usually preview lessons, but it will be meaningless for them to do skimming and scanning. Guessing new words from the context is also not necessary, for they have previewed the word list.
2.My practice on giving extensive reading lessons
Last year, four teachers in Grade1 managed to give extensive reading lessons in our school.. We usually had a meeting preparing lessons every week. At the beginning of the term, we first assigned tasks for each unit. Who will take charge of the units? Here are some of our practice on opening the extensive reading lessons, such as how to choose reading materials, how to give lessons, and how to carry out reading training after class.
2.1 Some principles for choosing the extensive reading materials
There are so many English resources for students to learn English from English newspapers、 magazines、 English songs、 TV shows、radio programs and internet. You can find whatever you need. But how we choose proper reading materials is critical to our lessons. There are some principals we followed.
Firstly, make sure what interests our students most at present. “Students should be given the opportunity to relate their own lives, activities, and interests and concerns to the second language and to what is being read in the second language” (See Wilga M Rivers). On Valentine’s Day, we guide students to read some famous love poems and love stories of Napoleon and Josephine. During the SARS period, we gave students reading materials from the newspaper 21st Century; “Look on the brighter side”. At that time everyone was afraid of the SARS, they were never so close to the death. The passage not only taught students what we should do to prevent SARS. The most important is that they learned how to face the difficulty in time of danger and thus form their optimistic outlook on life.
Secondly, we should give students various reading materials in every field including politics、 economy、 science 、culture and so on. We collected poems、 plays、 essays、and famous speeches. So they had a chance to appreciate famous literature works. I preferred to choose some short novels which can build their good characters and form correct values. For the Unit18, we tried O’ Henry’s two famous novels, “ The cop and anthem” and “ the last leaf” which was very popular with students. We not only learned the novels, but also have discussed the writing style of O’ Henry which always has a surprising ending. Besides, students learned the meaning of life by reading “ the last leaf”.
Thirdly, choose some articles according to the titles of each unit, especially on introducing foreign customs, places of interest and cultural background. Also, they should be neither too difficult nor too easy. They should agree with their cognitive level and also learning sequence. For unit19, we introduced Women’s Right Movements and also the living conditions of African women. For unit23, we gave pictures of pyramids and mystery of Abu Simbel. For Unit 24 The science of farming, students are not familiar with Jia Sixie. So we chose an interview of Yuan Longping, who was awarded with State Supreme Science and Technology Prize for his high yield hybrid rice species. Here are the reading materials from unit15- unit26 in SEFC Book I.
Units Article Source
Unit15 Western table manners Internet
Unit16 Russian Forest Fire BBC radio programmes
Valentine’s Day Crazy English
Unit17 Joining hands to save Chinese tiger Beijing Journal
Unit18 The cop and anthem English Square
The last leaf
Unit19 Women’s Rights Movement
Working Women in America,
Britain, Africa Internet
Unit20 Look on the brighter side 21st Century
Unit21 For the sake of others Albert Einstein
Unit22 Big Ben; Tower of London; Loch Ness Landmarks
Unit23 Blarney Castle; Great Sphinx Landmarks
Pyramids of Gizeh; Temple of Abu Simbel
Unit24 The Father of hybrid rice- YuanLongping Internet
Unit25 The professor and his invention Old textbook
2.2 Some practice on giving reading lessons
Usually we have the extensive lesson in the fourth lesson in each unit, one lesson every week, if time permits. Since it is a new lesson, we have no model to copy. It’s completely different from the intensive reading lessons, especially on how to improve students’ reading speed and examine the understanding of the materials.
2.2.1 On teaching methods
After we choose the right materials, we should make sure what type of the text it is, as we shall take different methods to deal with different texts. As for poems, just let them read again and again and then find the rhyme and beauty of the language. As for novels, it’s important to know the writers’ attitude for thesis. The students should be encouraged to find the main idea and key words. There are no fixed or best teaching methods for extensive reading lessons. We always change methods according to students’ evaluations.
2.2.2 On vocabulary learning
As we know, the reading quantity should come to a certain amount which can improve their reading speed. So how we deal with unfamiliar words in extensive reading lessons is very important. There are three usual vocabulary learning strategies. “ Word list, Semantic field, Context.” ( see Lu Qi )Teachers may make a list of new words if the text is too long and there are too many words. Teachers can also encourage the students to predict new words by using prefix, suffix, synonyms and antonyms. Teachers should give proper instructions and help to learn vocabulary if necessary.
2.2.3 On reading habits and skill
Forming good reading habits should not be neglected. Although teachers paid little attention to it, there’s some advice on guiding them to find key words, key sentences, and the main idea of each paragraph. 1) Ask them to make a summary of what they read, with the help of key words. 2) Guide them to grasp the time and space order of the text.3) Help them to find clues of the text.
To be a successful reader, they should be
Know the topic of the text
Read around words you do not know
Make use of all available information in the paragraph to comprehend unfamiliar words
Take chances and predict meaning
Guess the meaning of unfamiliar words from the context
Skip unfamiliar words that are inconsequential to the meaning of the total phrase or paragraph.( see Francoise Grellet )
2.3 On activities and evaluations for extensive reading lessons
There’re many classroom activities for reading, not just choices. We can ask students to read poems, do True or False exercises, fill in the blanks, rewrite the passage, hold a discussion. On Valentine’s Day I guided students to read the poem written by Ireland poet. Then I asked students to discuss “what is love”. They are very interested in it. After that, I made a summary as following: Love is giving, love is living, love is taking someone’s load, love helps them along the road. Love is caring, love is sharing, love will seek the best for others, love treats everyone as brothers. Sometimes after reading, we can ask them to do a short test to check the comprehension. Also, we can ask them to do self -evaluation.
Self-evaluation chart:
What do you read?
Like it or not?
Why?
Any wonderful sentences:
Any different opinions :
Your thoughts of reading:
More suggested reading materials:
3.Self-reflection on the extensive reading lessons
After one year’s experiment, we obtained a lot of valuable experience. The following is some of my self-reflection on extensive reading lessons.
Firstly, we find it important to co-operate with our teammates. To find suitable reading materials requires a great deal of time. Just like Kennedy said: “United, there’s nothing we can’t do; Divided, there’s little we can do”. So does our teaching, especially in such times with advanced technology. I think the team in Grade1 did quite a good job. Thanks to my co-workers Mr. Zhang Nan、 Mr. Cheng Peng、 Miss Cai Ai’er and Miss Wang Shucong.
Secondly, we teachers must change our concept of reading. We should not always think of MET, but try our best to make the students enjoy their reading and give them what they like. Reading is not just for doing choices. We can’t always ask students to do choices. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, so do our students. Too much reading training is boring; but reading is enjoyable. We can provide different exercises such as shortened passage with key words, True or False, Finding main ideas, ask them to guess the word meaning using prefix and suffix and discussion..
Thirdly, when I’m teaching I’m always thinking why not give our students better reading materials, using English newspapers、 magazines、 internet information、 English literature works, such as novels and plays. This is so wonderful a world, why not find some information, guide them and lead them to a more wonderful English world? Although English teachers have tried their best to design every lesson and even every question, but in fact, students are not interested in it, first because they are very familiar with teacher’s teaching model and second because our reading materials are already out of date indeed.
Fourthly, when I’m giving literature lessons, I’m always thinking of opening literary lessons, because in our text books, there are too few texts which can satisfy students’ inner desire. I know it has a high requirement of teachers who must have a good knowledge of literature and also a good quality of humanity. In our extensive lessons, some short novels are much more popular than our text books because they are meaningful and can strike the students’ hearts quite easily. I think reading some literature works can help them build good characters and form correct philosophy and values. But so far no systematic reading materials suitable for senior students have turned up yet.
Fifthly, extensive reading should be carried out not only in class, but also after class. We can hold a reading meeting and ask students to recommend a good book they have read recently. As for home reading, the pre-reading and motivational activities should take place in class to prepare students for the inferring later reading . (See Wilga M Rivers).
As opening the extensive reading lessons is only an attempt, Up to now in our country, they are no systematic materials for senior high school. Sometimes we will make a mistake. Once we chose a passage that is too difficult with many new words which result in failure in teaching. But after one year’s experiment, I find students are much more interested in reading and their reading ability has been improved more or less. I do believe that we will achieve more if we stick to it for two more years.
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