7. READING

READING

Reading

By Dr. Nanda Klapwijk Pretoria, South Africa

Read. Everything you can get your hands on. Read until words become your friends. Then when you need to find one, they will jump into your mind… and you can select whichever you like, just like a captain choosing a stickball team. Karen Witemeyer

People sometimes still wonder why reading is important. There seems to be so much else you can do with your time. Reading is important for a wide variety of reasons. Let’s look at a few: • Reading enables you to function in society — and much like reading, being functional in society develops a good self-image and leads to self-improvement • Reading develops the mind and improves your understanding of any one thing • Reading exercises your brain and improves concentration • Reading relaxes the body and calms the mind • Reading is how you discover and are exposed to new things — books, magazines, the internet. By being exposed to new things, you learn to develop empathy • Reading develops your imagination and creativity • Reading helps you grow your vocabulary and improve your spelling • Reading helps you to learn better • And finally, reading improves your reading. Yes, this may sound strange, but it is true — the more you read, the better you become at it, and the more you are bound to enjoy it — and the greater the chances that you will enjoy learning more.

Ultimately reading is everything. Reading changes everything. In fact, educational researchers have found that there is a strong correlation between reading and academic success. In other words, a learner who is a good reader is more likely to do well in school and pass exams than a learner who is a weak reader. And what’s more, reading is a great form of entertainment and can be done anywhere!

As children (start to) read at school, teachers can play an important role in helping to keep them interested in books. A very important part of building learners’ reading interest is the teacher’s own example — Do you show that you like reading? Do your learners see you read for pleasure? Do you discuss interesting books with your class? Do you promote reading in your class? Do you make reading fun in your teaching? Do you encourage informal reading in class?

It is also important that teachers understand the value of both intensive and extensive reading. Intensive reading is the type of reading you do in class, and would include focusing on a short, single text, looking at linguistic or semantic details, identifying key vocabulary, repeated reading of the same text, looking at main ideas versus details, making inferences, and so forth. In other words, it is the focused, intensive reading of a single, short text to develop specific reading skills and is usually a teacher-led activity. Extensive reading, on the other hand, is when learners read large amounts of self-selected high-interest books; the aim is to reach as much as possible. Extensive reading usually occurs outside the classroom, and the aim is to focus on meaning and to develop reading confidence and enjoyment. In fact, there’s evidence to suggest that reading for pleasure is more likely to determine whether a child does well at school than their social or economic background.

As far as the teaching of reading goes, as a teacher it is your task to lead your learners from learning to read to reading to learn. This means that merely being able to identify words is not enough — it does not constitute reading. You must UNDERSTAND what you read. Therefore your teaching should include the active teaching of comprehension skills. Teaching comprehension could include teaching various reading strategies, such as determining the purpose for reading a particular text, activating prior knowledge, developing knowledge about text characteristics, making predictions, making inferences, visualization, asking pre-reading questions, using fix-it strategies while you read, summarization — as well as metacognitive strategies, such as monitoring your own comprehension. This type of teaching requires time and preparation, but it will ensure that your learners become academically literate — which they need to be to succeed in further studies and ultimately in the workplace.

Frank Serafini said, “There is no such thing as a child who hates to read; there are only children who have not found the right book.” You can become the teacher who helps your learners find their right book. We invite you to turn the page, and in conjunction with the chapter on Vocabulary, start your learners on a path to reading enjoyment and success.