MY FAVOURITE READING STRATEGY

Reading is a challenge in the English classes, especially because our students do not usually read a lot, not even in their native language. I have learnt in this module that extensive reader has got much more advantages than intensive reading, which is what I mostly do in my classes. I will try to improve the extensive reading part.

I work reading almost every day in class, we use it mainly to read the instructions of all the activities that we do and also most of the exercises we do, we read them aloud, but I reckon that this is not a reading that students or even I enjoy; it is just that it is easier to focus their attention if we are working with written rather than oral texts.

My favourite strategy is the use of the reading to work other skills, especially oral ones. I usually use this one especially with lower level groups; this year I am using it with 2nd FPB. It consists in the following: I tell them to read the text on their own and silently and underline five to six words that they do not know how to pronounce (maybe they know their meaning or maybe they do not, we focus on its pronunciation), then we listen to the text read aloud (by me or played on any device that we can make use of), they should focus on the pronunciation while they are listening and finally they read it aloud making the effort of reading the words they have chosen correctly, in this way, they focus on learning the pronunciation of some words of their choice, it helps them develop a better understanding of the text and of oral comprehension. If all the class does it well, they get a prize, that is, extra points, listening to a song in English of their choice, getting time to do homework in the class and so on, it depends on the day.