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ESL forum >
Techniques and methods in Language Teaching > reading and teenage students
reading and teenage students
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saszka2
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reading and teenage students
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Hi everyone,
Have you got any successful methods of teaching reading to teens?
I find it really difficult to do reading with my students. When I ask them to read for general meaning and say what the text is about they do it, but always answer in their mother tounge. That �s fine though, because at least I know whether they got the gist or not. It gets worse when they have to look for more detailed info and answer questions. They always say that they don �t understand words and when I tell them what the words mean they say that they don �t understand sentences. So we end up translating everything into L1 which I think is not effective as far as reading is concerned.
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25 Mar 2010
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gossipgirl
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Hi :)
I �m writing my project work about improving reading skills through culture-based text at elementary level (age 14). I always start my reading lessons with warm-up activities - usually questions, then I explain just the key words (the most difficult words or the words the students have to understand in order to complete the tasks). After that I direct the reading task - match headlines, put paragraphs in order, etc. and I always ask my pupils to justify their choice by reading the words or sentence which would indicate on their answer. Next, the students read for more specific information - usually true/false or questions and again they have to prove they are right. Then we work on new vocabulary - I always prepare short exercise, e.g. match the definitions to the words or match the words to their L1 equivalents - my students are extremely engaged in those kinds of activities. The learners LOVE to think! We just have to give them such activities which will involve thinking and we can �t follow the books all the time. When kids see something new (not connected to their regular books) they are motivated to do the task. I think that the coursebooks do not develop students � thinking, exercises are easy and there is no emphasis on vocabulary. This way I don �t have to translate anything. Good luck!!!!
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25 Mar 2010
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bilics
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Hello from Germany,
Having taught English for more than 30 years I definitely know that students only understand if they really want to understand. To be honest, some textbooks are really boring. Why don �t you just try an e-mail project with kids from abroad? As soon as teenagers have friends to communcicate with they will be extremely interested in finding out what their partners are trying to say. Another successful approach may be to have them read authentic American and/or British young adult literature. Although these books may be more difficult, students usually find those by far more interesting than the readers that were written for ESLstudents.
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25 Mar 2010
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fikretnns
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Hi,
I have been teaching for about 14 years at the university. I can say that there is no magic formula to get your learners to like reading. What works though most of the time is find a text that is really interesting for them to read. Here I could agree with bilics in the sense that as long as our students find a text worth reading, they read it without much effort by the teacher. However, students who are especially learning English for academic purposes in the preparatory classes at universities form a kind of misconception that reading is not as fun as they expect to find when they come to study at university. The thing is here providing them with necessary strategies to improve their reading skills because it is what they need when they start to study in their academic field. Therefore, most of our students tend to see learning English as something to get rid of as soon as possible to start whatever they want to do in their future learning career unless they want to become an English teacher. :) Anything that a teacher does in order for his/her students to develop some awareness of reading strategies will be useful.
What you could do here may be find more interesting texts or materials other than potentially "boring" coursebook material, especially authentic ones form the Internet, such as excerpts from news websites or blogs, which may provide more enjoyable reading "experience" for our learners.
Good luck! :)
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25 Mar 2010
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darkeststar
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you can do some brainstorming around the topic before they start to read, it doesn �t matter if they come up with L1 words, then you can translate them on the board and they will start to get familiar with those words in English, and it will facilitate the reading work.
You can also give them an extra lesson about secquence connectors so that they will be able to previously understand words such as: therefore, because, however, so, nevertheless, besides....etc. which are very important that help us to understand any text.
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26 Mar 2010
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