Motivting reading

Learners can find reading quite challenging. But appropriate texts and activities can make this process motivating.  It’s important to explain openly to your learners how reading in English can help their language skills

We read to obtain meaning and the more we read, the more skillful we become. It’s really important that all our learners are reading. That way they will increase their vocabulary, learn phrases and see words, phrases and grammatical structures that they have learned in class in context.

If a teacher wants to make the most of reading activities, they should first find useful, interesting and appropriate texts and secondly, create activities that will be effective in the class.

I have already wrote about the priority of the students' needs. So, a teacher should use only those texts that are up to students' needs and that are up-to-date, relevant to the present times.

• One context for motivating reading activities is class readers.

Essentially, class readers are stories that have been specially written for non-native speakers – so the language is graded. They are sometimes called graded readers. Using them, you can easily do reading activities with the whole class – with each learner referring to their own reader. Remember, though, that it is probably best if learners do the actual reading at home;

• Why not collect some interesting authentic texts for a ‘Fun Reading Folder’? You could use them for your fast finishers;

• Find reading texts from the Internet - they will be relevant to the reality and there are more chances that your students will like them. But don't forget that these texts should be interesting for your learners and not for you;

• Get your texts from newspapers - it will great if you could bring that newspaper too as your learners will see that it is real and will definitely be curious to look through this newspaper; 

• Look for texts about local events - this will be engaging and motivating too because sometimes learners don't know some things about their own country. And if this event is extraordinary, includes traditions and is connected to the history of this city/country, they will be glad to read this text. You can also suggest that you students should do a project about this event after having the text read;

• Find texts about what your students like to do in their free time

Common mistakes:

• no learner involvement - students should have a choice of what to read;

• creating stress - don't make students read fast. They will be nervous and such atmosphere isn’t appropriate for a good learning process;

• predictable - don't be predictable. If you give a task, your learners shouldn’t know in advance what they are supposed to do. So, may be try to change tasks you give ;

• nothing for fast finishers - those who read and do exercises faster than other your students will get bored waiting for the rest of the class. Don't let that happen;

• boring topics - try to vary the texts you use. If you have already read a text about technology, give a text on another topic ;

• no variety - if you only give a text and the same exercises - it's highly demotivating;

Speaking about activities for texts, we should mention that tasks that we ask our learners to do must be interesting and motivating – and our teenage learners like to be involved.

A teacher shouldn't forget about pre-, during- and post-reading activities.

Here are some examples:

Pre-reading activities

Look at the cover of the book.

Write down what you can see in the picture.

Read the chapter titles.

What genre is the story?

During-reading activities

Your friend has been ill and hasn’t started reading the book yet. Write a summary of what has happened so far.

Choose a character and write down what you think they will do in the rest of the story.

Post-reading activities

Design a press pack for this story. Include an advertising poster and information about the author.

Write a diary entry from the point of view of a secondary character, giving their opinion of the events in the book.

The Britlit project provides lots of short stories for teenagers, together with many pre-, during- and post-reading activities for them. You’ll find stories for a variety of levels and age groups.

Further reading:

The Britlit project  - http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/britlit

Links:

http://cambridgeenglishteacher.cambridge.org/