Reading courses - a question of self-motivation?

Andrew Barfield

Switch to Japanese.

I've been running a reading course this year with an Art and Design major group. The class meets once a week and has about 40 students. In the first term, I set the students the goal of 500 pages minimum for a pass grade, with better grades for the more pages read. We used a class library for this (Oxford Bookw orms, Yohan 1000-word level, Ladybird Children Series, Teenage Readers from Ma laysia). Some students reached 1000 pages of graded material; most 600 - 700. No explicit teaching of reading skills took place - except to read for enjoyment ; to choose books that were interesting stories for the individual reader; and to keep notes.

Each week in class, the students started off with social English where they stood up and had free conversations in English in pairs for about five minutes. (Later in the year, they rotated through two or three partners in this phase of the lesson.) Then they interviewed each other about their reading (how many pages; how much time; key points) before (a) setting their own reading goals for the following week (in terms of time and pages initially) and writing a brief report. The rest of class time was for reading and checking books in and out of the class library. At the mid-term and end-of-term points, the class was asked to graph their reading as well as report on what they had noticed about their reading in English - and again set personal goals. The second term largely followed the same pattern, but with students creating mangas as mid-term reports for one of the books they had read; with students writing and giving speeches in small groups; and with the minimum term goal raised to 750 pages. (Everybody reached that except for one in the class.)

In the third term, the focus has switched from graded reading materials to authentic text: Japan Times, Asahi Evening News, and so on, and art and design books in English from the university library. With newspaper materials, the students are required to prepare one article a week (they are free to choose whatever they like) by cutting it out and sticking it in their notebooks; writing English paraphrases of six key phrases; writing down five key points; a brief summary (2-3 sentences) and their opinion. In class, they pair up and report on their articles to each other; have a discussion before writing a summary of their partner's oral report and their opinion about the given topic. They are also asked to interview each other - and write a report about - their Art and Design book. Again, very little explicit teaching is given except 10 possible steps to follow with an authentic text (reading the preface in detail; reading the beginning and ends of chapters first; reading through quickly; mind-mapping, and so on).

The switch from the second term to third term took time - but is working. The students are reading more slowly with the authentic texts but are reading them , and are really becoming self-organizing and self-motivated readers in English. They also manage their newspaper reports well, and choose a wide range of interesting topics.

I've been collecting many reports from the class, and reading them. What strikes me so far are five things (hypotheses, if you like):

(i) learners can set their own learning goals in a content-rich course when they have the space to get on with things at their own pace in class and outside class;

(ii) the explicit linkage of grade and number of pages read can act as a useful motivating factor;

(iii) developing good group dynamics through treating the class as a social group with its own interests outside reading can help improve individual reading motivation;

(iv) the gap between graded material and authentic material can be bridged once learners have read a broad range of graded materials (1200 - 1300 pages);

(v)the main challenge for a reader in a foreign language may be psychological ('I can'/ 'I enjoy'/ 'I want to') rather than linguistic ('What does this word mean?' / 'I can't') if the reader has choice / control over what he or she reads. This element of choice is central to self-motivation.

These are tentative points of view. I'm planning to ask the students to write a long end-of-year introspective account of their reading development over the year - in understanding their points of view in depth, I hope to be able to identify key factors that can apply to other skills courses. I'm very interested in hearing from other teachers working with extensive reading and/or learners setting their own goals for reading. I'd also be very happy to share more in formation with you if you're interested.

Originally published in Learning Learning 2/1 (March, 1995), pp. 2-3. Andrew Barfield, 1995

Back to the Learning Learning index page

Back to the LD N-SIG home page