Beginning of Reading Module

By Category: The Four Skills

Recalled early reading experiences: our memory of first reading, our favorite book, where we prefer to read. We drew pictures of all this. It’s important to consider people’s early reading experiences when teaching it, and figure out how to recreate a positive learning environment.

Homework assignment for Friday

Think about how I approach a new reading assignment.

It depends on the assignment. For academic reading I proceed in pretty much the identical way: grab my yellow highlighter pen, flip through the book till I find the right chapter, and plunge right in. I usually don’t notice the author or the title, or even consider the topic. After a few paragraphs (during which I will have spaced out several times and reread lines more times than fingers) I’ll skip ahead to see how long the article is. As I proceed, I will continue to check to see how much closer I’m getting. It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m enjoying the article; I still do this because academic reading is “work,” I have a ton of work to complete, and I need to monitor progress.

Reading books I’ve chosen myself I approach differently. If it’s scholarly, I’ll still have a marking pen by my side, and I will read more slowly (and reread often as I space out). When I like something, I go, “Hmmm!” and highlight it. But it’s rare that I finish these books (nonfiction about a wide range of subjects) because soon something else calls my interest. Before reading these books I’ll often look for the publisher and publication date, read the introduction, skim the back cover and flaps, try to find a photo of the author, skim the TOC, and maybe turn to a random page and start reading, before I begin the book in earnest at the introduction. Sometimes I’ll just skim the intro, and other times read it in earnest. I have to be careful; I don’t want to lose interest before I finish the intro.

Read Writing One’s Way into Reading by Vivian Zamel

I did, and was anxious about how long it was and how much time it would take me. This assignment for two days from now is really big — on the heels of another exceptionally time-consuming assignment I handed in today. Moreover, I haven’t taken a single day off for two months, and have made reservations to leave town tomorrow for two days. I’m trying to get as much work done as possible before I go, but despite having been at school from 8 to 6 and worked steadily from my return home till now (10:30) I’ve barely made a dent in my tasks. But I WILL go away tomorrow, no matter what, and am resenting how hard it is to take care of myself.

At any rate, I was as always armed with my yellow highlighter pen. I vacillated between being cranky at myself for not being able to focus and interested in aspects of what I read. I highlighted everything I thought was important for a teacher to know, references I might want to check out, and any line or passage that just plain moved me on a person level or otherwise enlightened or inspired me. So it was a wider selection of types of highlighting than usual, when I’m just trying to capture the academic meat that I think I’ll be expected to know. But then my mind would drift off again. I’d read the same two sentences eight times. I thought about that guy who hugged me today, much to my surprise. I wondered why he hugged me: “is he just warm, or does he think I’m kind of interesting? I wonder if he’s thinking about me now? Damn, I have to stop thinking about that and get back to the sentence. I wonder how Molly and Eleni are. Boy, I can’t stand that boyfriend she’s got. So reading and writing… I really want to have time to pack. What time is it, anyway? Wow, what a perceptive sentence that is.”

I was intrigued by what Zamel said about writing. Her critiques of traditional approaches were close to my experience, so I really appreciated her perspective. It makes sense that writing can be an entrée into reading rather than the other way around. After all, which came first …? As a writer myself, I was moved by — and inspired to think of ways to include in my teaching — the writings of her students, which were astoundingly perceptive. Those, which she brilliantly selected to drive her points home in an accessible and authentic manner (which simultaneously illustrated her assertions), were to me the pinnacles of the reading. As mentioned, I highlighted certain of these passages, along with ideas for exercises and some references.

I haven’t done much teaching, but the one writing exercise I did with an ESL student did, sort of involved writing before reading (as opposed to writing through reading). I had her narrate a story to me about her childhood. She watched me write it. I took it home and illustrated it and brought it back to give her, so she could read it herself. She couldn’t, even though the words were hers. She spoke Nepali and still had trouble with the English alphabet. But had I not left to come to grad school, and had she been more committed to showing up to our sessions on a weekly basis, she would have been able to read her own story.

Among my favorite of the teaching ideas were:

  • Inserting marginal notes and elsewhere expanding them into reflections, maybe involving personal experience “Students come to see the legitimacy of raising questions about texts (a powerful alternative to answering questions about texts)”
  • The dialectical notebook
  • Reading journals

To end this part with a quotation from the article: her exercises “are ways to enter the text in an organic and powerful way and help students to understand that the reader acts upon and gives meaning to the text, that reading is a process of composing.”

Reading II (“It’s Not the English Thing: Bringing Reading Research into the ESL Classroom” by Auerbach and Paxton). Assignment: read this with Zamel’s techniques of reading.

My plan was to use the method of underlining/highlighting, and then note my reflections in the margins. Typically when I read I just highlight, and only occasionally (particularly if the passage has relevance to a paper or project I have due) will I jot add’l notes in the margin: either a restating in my own words, or “for paper” jog.

I was in northern New Hampshire when I did my reading, and in the bathtub: my first bath since I moved East. So I did my usual highlight but couldn’t make notes without dropping the binder into the water. Instead, I paused to think about why I’d highlighted a passage, and these were among my reasons:

  • It seemed a central concept to understanding the paper: Metacognitive awareness of their reading process and strategies enhances proficiency… transferring L2 research tools into the hands of learners and inviting them to reflect critically.”
  • It was something that I encounter in my own reading L2 (and even L1) challenges: “The belief that I have to know all the words in order to understand the reading.”
  • It was an important theoretical construct for my understanding of teaching reading: “L2 readers can compensate for a lack of English proficiency by invoking interactive strategies, utilizing prior knowledge, and becoming aware of their strategy choices… Metacognitive awareness is key.”
  • It was an important practical idea for my teaching: “…process of exploring a comprehensive range of strategies (e.g., pre-, during-, and postreading; vocabulary), extensive investigation of students’ reading histories and conceptions, discussion… and multiple opportunities for students to reflect on changes in their reading.”
  • Specific reading materials: excerpt from Malcolm X’s autobiography about his process of learning to read, and other “people being initiated into literacy” such as Frederick Douglass, Richard Rodriguez and Paulo Freire.
  • And any passage that moved me either on a personal level:
  • [From a student:] “We never think ‘now’ is our gift.”
  • [From the authors]: the importance of “helping students gain “the ability to feel when they read in English.”
  • [From another student]: “There are many ways of fighting a text to get what it hides inside.
  • Cautionary notes: The authors did not want to send “the message that process is more important than content.”

Are Vivian Zamel’s ideas useful to me?

Yes, they are. But they require a lot more time than our workload allows. I can’t do all the readings, take notes, reflect and attempt some of her other techniques like that dialectical note-taking style. However, part of SIT’s approach, with the constant reflection, is inherent in her ideas.

Postscript

Oops: I forgot to list the things I read each day. I’ll use yesterday as an example:

  • Computer: startup buttons, check the weather forecast, look at e-mails
  • Homework reading: books and binders
  • MAT blog: reading my preliminary notes so I’d know where to start writing
  • The little red reset button on the power outlet
  • Skimmed travel guide about New Hampshire
  • Looked at map of VT and NH
  • Started driving and read speedometer frequently
  • Lots of street signs about moose, falling rock, highway numbers, Mt. Washington Cog Railway and much more
  • License plates and models of passing cars
  • Names of scores of shops in the little towns, most of them containing the word “moose”
  • Scanned travel guide again, but nothing jumped out at me
  • Found road (by name) where my grandparents’ cottage was in the 60s
  • Read handwritten directions to my hotel and saw the hotel sign
  • Signed the registration form
  • Read some text books
  • Read and wrote in blog
  • Read the pub menu
  • Looked at the contents of my photo memory card and started getting photos ready for my blog, using the written interface of Photoshop and WordPress
  • Wrote a new blog entry. I’m noticing that when I write, there’s a whole lot of reading going on. I write two sentences, reread and rewrite them, add another one or two, go back and change the second, and so on
  • Glanced at an REI catalog looking for gloves and winter boots
  • Read the reservation info for my trip up Mt. Washington the next morning
  • Got into bed and read a chapter of God Sleeps in Rwanda

That’s all I can remember.

Comments received from Elizabeth, 11/30/09

Ginna, your final statement says it all – you bring together what fits you, your beliefs and your students’ needs. This is a rich, thoughtful paper that does much to take you on the journey of personal theory and practice. We learn so much more from what doesn’t go as we think it will because we tend to analyze it more. This can lead to deeper understanding and/or open up new avenues of thought which can lead to new insights/changes in practice When things go well, we tend to take all for granted. Donald Freeman writes about tension or friction between what we’ve always believed or done and something that challenges that view or practice, as necessary for growth. So, if we don’t question, we don’t grow.

You pose a number of questions in this paper – most of them you already have answers for, I suspect. But for those that still hover on the edges – take the time to invite them in. Flesh them out, consider other possibilities. What you discover in the process will become the foundation of your personal theory of teaching practice.

Thank you. Good work.