ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Marc Helgesen

Peter Viney

Curtis Kelly

Chuck Sandy

Panelists: Curtis | Peter | Marc | Chuck
Date: May 2005

Topic: "How does one set up a reading class, especially in situations where extensive reading is not an option?"

Curtis Kelly

Awe. Envy. For me, a paradigm shift.

Marc's comment at the JALT Think Tank Forum last year, "Reading is the magic skill" is still echoing through my mind. At that time, I knew little about teaching reading, but thanks to Marc and Stephen Krashen, I decided to find out more.

It is eight months later now, and I have learned a lot about reading. I have had lots of comprehensible input on comprehensible input. I have done extensive reading on extensive reading. And I tanked out thinking about the Think Tank on reading, even though there were only two contributors.

“Reading for pleasure? Not my kids, and I know a lot of you out there know what I am talking about.”

Once, at breakfast with Peter Viney and Charlie Adamson, I heard how year after year at Charlie's college, students doing extensive reading outscored students using other approaches in almost every measure. Better yet, I have had the good fortune to engage in long conversations on reading with the reading experts: Junko Yamanaka, Rob Waring, Howard Siegelman, and especially Beniko Mason, a dedicated researcher and one of Stephen Krashen's associates. Other journal pieces on the Internet have informed me of the research done by Carrell, Swales, Wallace, Mason, Bamford, Day, Grabe, and many others.

As for the SLA research, I have come to two conclusions:

• Explicit grammar instruction is not effective in causing language acquisition; opinions vary in regard to implicit instruction.
• Comprehensible input is the golden key to language acquisition.

Once again, the research shines a big light on extensive reading with graded readers as the premier approach to teaching reading. I concur. And as Marc told us in his 2002 Thank Tank piece (link above), you can get all the information you need on how to set up an extensive reading program at: http://www.extensivereading.net.

However, there are still a couple things I cannot understand, and I am calling for my fellow panelists' help. It seems that the theories only look at language acquisition in the ideal student. It seems that the research suggests that teachers can do whatever they want with willing, compliant students in any kind of institutional format. This is not the case. There is more to acquire than language. Not all students are compliant. Most of us are relegated to once-a-week classes where every student must use the same book.

I don't know what kind of students Marc and Peter taught, but the vast majority of mine have never even read a book in Japanese, and almost all of them say they "hate" reading. Reading for pleasure? Not my kids, and I know a lot of you out there know what I am talking about. The vast majority of my students work at night and the smattering of homework they are willing to do gets done just before and after the class bell rings. I cannot imagine an extensive home reading program working with these students, and I have done a few experiments that have confirmed my doubts. I have taken four of my more motivated students, who came to me with a request to learn more English, and I bought them a set of graded readers to delve into over the spring break. One did superbly, reading three books. One read one book and quit, and the other never even cracked the covers. Obviously extensive reading works for those willing to do it, but what about the rest?

Then, too, the research does not really tell us how to set up a reading class in the traditional classroom situation. Even if we assume outside extensive reading will be a boon for some students, for others, the only reading they will do will be in class. So how does a teacher handle reading in the classroom arena? Many of my Japanese colleagues do this terrible thing with Time Magazine or Shakespeare, where they have students plod through sentences word by word, looking them all up. I suspect they know that this kind of approach is ineffective, but maybe we have not given them a palatable alternative yet.

Okay, we know that comprehensible input is the key, and that other focus-on-form activities, such as grammar or vocabulary study, are a waste of time, but where does the comprehensible input come from? To what degree should we use listening and to what degree reading? If we do set up reading in class with one text for everyone, what kind of texts should we choose, especially for low level learners? Are certain kinds of pre-reading and post-reading activities useful, or are they all a waste of time? For example, some researchers say that activating background knowledge (schemata) before reading might help, while others disagree. Some say that helping students develop reading strategies might help, but to what degree? If we do such skills training, how much time should we allocate: minutes or hours?

Then too, in regard to post-reading, I suspect that teaching grammar and vocabulary is not very useful, and yet most people do this. Are my suspicions wrong? Worse, what about comprehension questions? I love using heartwarming stories in class, but I cannot think of a more effective way to kill their magic than following them up with a script of mechanical questions: "Junko, where did the boy find the puppy? Hiroshi, which of its legs was broken?"

So, my fellow Think Tankers, fire up your ingenuity, light up your creativity, tap into your vast store of knowledge and help me solve these problems. How do we set up a reading class that lures students into reading and makes the input more comprehensible? What kinds of activities do you propose for readings done in class by the whole class? I await your inspiration.

Panelists: Curtis | Peter | Marc | Chuck

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Curtis Kelly, Heian Jogakuin University

Author of Writing from Within

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