Reflecting on Unit 2 of the Reading and Vocabulary course, I can say that I was happy to receive answers to some of my questions and apply the knowledge in teaching my students.
A lot of times in my work I need to look for texts for my students and evaluate to see if I could use them in my lessons. Before taking this course, I would mostly rely on my common sense in that - I would look at the content and the vocabulary. I would ask myself if my students would be bale to understand it or would it be too difficult for them ( maybe too many unknown words).
After completing this part of the course, I am glad I have a more solid foundation to rely on than just my feelings.These are the three criteria (Brown & Lee, p.441) I will be using from now on for selecting an appropriate text for my learners :
1. Suitability. Will my student be interested in reading this text? Will it motivate them to learn more?
2. Exploitability. Can I integrate another skill along with reading during my lesson? Is there a grammar rule which we could learn/revise with the help of the text?
3. Readability. How easy is it for my students to understand the text? Is it going to motivate or overwhelm them?
I have noticed that sometimes I tend to forget about the most important factor when choosing a text - my student’s interest- and only go after exploitability and readability. This unit was a great reminder of how important it is to keep it in mind our students’ interests and needs as well as their background knowledge.
I really enjoyed the Think Aloud exercise where we were supposed to decide if the text about residential schools would be suitable for our students. Having those three criteria on hands made it very easy to make a decision. The text won’t be suitable for my students who are preparing for IELTS test; however, it might be a good extra reading as my students are planning on moving to Canada in the future.
I also found the strategy of looking at CLB descriptions when deciding to adapt the text. I have realized there are a number of ways to adapt a text, such as:
1. Shortening and/or simplifying sentences/paragraphs.
2. Reducing the amount of information.
3. Rephrasing some of the complex sentences
4. Pre-teaching new vocabulary.
My “a-ha” moment in this unit was using Readable.io. app. I actually had no idea a tool like this existed and was very surprised (pleasantly!!) to know that big part of our job can be automated! Not only it counts the number of lengthy words but can also define the grade level and if I can integrate other skills in my learning.
A couple of websites I found on the Internet that are great for levelled reading are One Stop English and Engloo. My IELTS students have to read news in preparation for the exam and Engloo is great for that. The materials from these websites can also be used when planning reading-focused lessons.
I have enjoyed getting answers to my questions but what I am enjoying even more is that I have already started putting the outcomes of the unit into my practice and seeing some positive results.
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