2.b) Improving your English through Reading.

Reading Helps You:

• develop your ability to understand written texts.
• develop your writing skills.
• develop your oral communication and comprehension skills. This can be even more effective when you listen while you read recorded material in the Resource Center.
• add to your vocabulary. New words appear in context and are often illustrated and repeated. This helps you understand their meanings.
• learn new grammatical structures and vocabulary. Constant contact with these will allow you to incorporate them gradually into your English.
• recall and remember grammatical structures. You will visualize them in context and this will help you incorporate these structures into your English.
• activate grammatical structures and vocabulary through constant exposure.

Suggestions:

• Read something that interests you.
• Read for pleasure and for general comprehension (extensively) and try not to focus on details (intensively).
• Use a dictionary only when it is impossible to understand the text. Readers are graded and classified by language level and should be used to develop your ability to get meaning through context.
• Do not feel obliged to finish reading a book that you are not enjoying. Choose another that will motivate you more.

Before You Read

To prepare and motivate yourself for reading

• Choose the book that interests you the most.
• Look at the cover and the title, read the comments on the back cover, read part of a chapter and decide if you would like to read the whole book.
• Try to guess what the story will be about based on this analysis.

While You Read

Try to have an objective in mind for reading. Then check to see if what you predicted was correct

• Try to read for pleasure without spending a lot of time on details or trying to understand all of the words.
• Only look up words in the dictionary which stop you from understanding the general idea of the text.
• If the book comes with a tape or CD, listen to it while you read.

After Reading

To show that you understood what you read and to have the opportunity to use the language you have seen

• Recall the story mentally and tell it to yourself.
• Summarize the story orally or write it down. Record this on a tape and listen to it.
• Choose events mentioned in the story that were not decribed in detail and use your imagination to expand on it.
• Copy a part of the text, leaving out some words and try to fill in the blanks without looking at the original text. See how many you got right by comparing them to the original text.
• Think of some famous actors who would suit the role of the characters in the book if it were made into a movie. Create a new title for the movie version.

Vocabulary

For every letter of the alphabet, write down a word related to the story, even if that word is not found in the text.

Important Tip

If you are reading a book from Longman/Penguin Publishing you can go to their website www.longman.com and find exercises called Factsheets by clicking on Penguin Readers. These exercises are free to anyone and you can print them out . Answers can be found in Factsheet Keys.

Congratulations! You have just done an excellent exercise. If you like these suggestions, go to www.cellep.com “Dicas” and print out your copy!

Bibliography

Prowse, P. 2003.”Extensive Reading”. English Teaching Professional,
Issue 27
Prowse, P. 2000. “When the Reading Stops”. English Teaching
Proffessional, Issue 15
Williams, M. 2002. “Ready for Readers?” English Teaching Professional,
Issue 25