Interview

Beatrice Mikulecky

Beatrice Mikulecky holds a master's degree in TESOL and a doctorate in Applied Psycholinguistics from Boston University. In addition to teaching reading, writing, and ESL, she has worked as a teacher-trainer in the Harvard University Summer ESL Program, in the Simmons College MATESL Program, and in Moscow, Russia. She is the author of A Short Course in Teaching Reading Skills and co-author of the Reading Power series.

Beatrice conducted this interview by e-mail with ELT News editor Mark McBennett in April 2005. In May, 2005 she visits Japan to take part in Longman ELT's 4-city Skills Tour.

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ELT: These days the English language is often in the media and political spotlight for two main reasons: Its role in globalization and issues regarding reading and literacy. The latter is a subject you've written and spoken about extensively. How did you become a reading specialist?
BM: After I received my master's degree in education, I went to work at a private high school in Boston, and I was assigned to teach reading. I wanted to strengthen my skills as a reading teacher, so I took evening classes to become certified as a reading specialist. I found that it was a rich experience to teach and study at the same time. I was able to apply what I was learning about the teaching of reading in my own reading classes.

Reading is enjoying a resurgence, both in EFL programs and as a means to bolster native-language literacy. Do you see any connections between these two areas?
Yes, I see connections between a stronger emphasis on reading instruction in EFL programs and the enhancement of native-language literacy. Students can learn to read fluently and with good comprehension in English, and that success evokes a more positive attitude towards reading in their native language. Moreover, when students realize that reading is a thinking process, they can adapt many of the thinking processes that they learn in EFL to reading in their native language. And, finally, once students notice how much they enjoy pleasure reading in English, they are likely to want to read for pleasure in their native language, too.

Defining literacy as the ability to read, write and comprehend, can learning these skills in a foreign language have the reverse benefit of improving a student's literacy in their own language by making them more aware of the processes of language?
Literacy has most recently been defined as more than the ability to read, write and comprehend. It's the ability to do those things within the expectations of a particular cultural context. I think that becoming literate in a foreign language certainly raises the student's awareness of the processes of language, but it also highlights the role of cultural expectations in the use of language. This heightened awareness of literacy as a socio-linguistic-cultural phenomenon, in turn, can enhance the student's native language literacy. That's because once students have learned that English literacy practices include cultural expectations, they begin to notice the cultural expectations that underlie their native language and literacy practices.

You have said, in your book More Reading Power, that "learning to read well in English means learning to think in English." This of course can be said of any of the language skills. Is reading in any way unique in this sense?
Of course students must learn to think in English in order to speak, write and comprehend spoken language. We have found, though, that many students have the mistaken idea that reading is different, that reading is merely translating word by word from one language to another. However, effective readers read for ideas, for how the words are put together in ways that are unique to the language. That is why we stress the importance of thinking in English while reading.

How can we teachers here in Japan help students make a smooth transition from translating from English to their first language to thinking in English?
Here are a few suggestions:

• Students should read for pleasure, and the books that they read should be easy enough so that they do not need to translate words to follow the story.
• Students should be discouraged from writing the native language translation of words in English texts.
• Teachers should ask students to explain orally (in English) their answers to various exercises in their English books. How did they arrive at their answer? What is the logic that they followed?
• Teachers should model the use of the target language by using it as much as possible during English reading classes, especially in explaining why certain answers are correct and others are not...

You describe the four skills or activities necessary for improved reading ability as Reading for Pleasure, Reading Comprehension Skills, Reading Faster and Thinking Skills. Can I ask you to briefly summarize your thinking behind those four points?
Reading for pleasure is also called "extensive reading." Research has shown that students need to read a lot in a foreign language in order to develop reading fluency, a larger vocabulary, and a sense of immersion in the language. Therefore, pleasure reading is a vital part of the reading class. The important feature of pleasure reading is the quantity of books read, not necessarily the quality of the books. Students should select their own books, but they should be guided to choose books that are at their level of comprehension. Pleasure reading books should be what Stephen Krashen termed "comprehensible input." A book that is too difficult is inappropriate for pleasure reading. The books should be easy enough for students to read without having to use the dictionary constantly (fewer than 5 unknown words per page). For students at beginning levels, graded readers are a good choice.

Reading comprehension skills are the thinking processes that good readers employ, usually unconsciously, to reconstruct the writer's intended message. For EFL students, the most effective skills are those that help them learn how information is presented in English. In order to acquire these specific comprehension skills, teachers should focus students' attention on one skill at a time. Students must learn to talk about their thinking as they work on the skill, and they must have opportunities to apply the skills once they have learned them. This training results in metacognitive development—the ability to think about one's own thinking processes. Several studies have reported excellent results for Japanese students who were trained to use comprehension skills.

Reading faster, also known as "reading fluency," is essential for comprehension. Slow reading means reading one word at a time, and that is ineffective because the brain doesn't deal with the input of individual words. In order to be processed, the input must be in the form of ideas expressed in phrases and sentences. Besides being essential for comprehension, reading faster is the key to success in schools, colleges, and businesses where students are required to complete large amounts of reading. One of the major factors in student failure is the inability to keep up with the reading assignments.

Thinking skills training helps students learn to think in English. Thinking in English means learning how ideas are presented in English. This includes being able to notice and understand syntactic, semantic, and logical connections between ideas.

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