Málfríður - 15.03.2008, Blaðsíða 14

1 MÁLFRÍÐUR
language is clearly attributable to free reading, and
studies of in­school recreational reading, such as
sustained silent reading (SSR).
In in­school studies, students who engage in free
reading for a certain time each day are compared
to similar students who have only „regular instruc­
tion.“ Reading has done well in these studies; in
my survey, readers were at least as good as those in
traditional instruction in 51 out of 53 comparisons,
and when the study was long­term (longer than one
school year), readers were nearly always better and
were never worse. The finding that in­school read­
ing works best in long term studies makes sense; it
takes some time for children to find reading material
of interest.’
Research has shown that FVR is an important part
of the language classroom – so let me share with
you some of the knowledge about readers I have
acquired during my 30 years in Denmark. Let’s start
at the very beginning…
What is a reader? At a conference in Istanbul some
years ago, I met Mike Esplen who wrote one of the
first ever readers called ‘Marco’ back in the sixties.
He wanted to create reading material for his weak­
est students, so he wrote the book himself, as at that
time, there was nothing like it around. His first book
was an ‘original’ reader (he wrote the story himself).
Following that, many other original easy readers
were published, and soon after came the first sim­
plified reader – which is a reader based on a novel
already published, but rewritten in simpler English
so learners of English can read it.
I remember reading Macbeth at level one with
an adult beginner class back in the seventies. It
was based on a 300 word vocabulary, and being
Shakespeare, most of the text was just names – but
the students loved reading it – they could tell their
friends that they were reading already Shakespeare!
The basic idea is that easy readers have controlled
language and content and are graded into levels of
difficulty. The amount of new and unfamiliar vocab­
ulary is controlled, and new items are repeated and
recycled so that they become familiar to the learner.
The illustrations (such as photos, drawings, maps
and diagrams) can give extra help in understanding
difficult words and events in the story. The organiza­
tion of paragraphs and chapters, as well as the use of
illustrations, helps to break up the information into
manageable chunks so learners can follow the story
more easily.
Running a Class Library ­ A class library is a library
of English books or texts made directly available
to students in the classroom. This is an advantage,
because it saves valuable time going forward and
backwards to the school library, and the teacher has
more control over what is being read. We are also
giving learners a clear message that we think read­
ing English for pleasure forms an integral part of
their course.
An important factor in determining the success
of a class library is that the students, as well as the
teacher, are responsible for setting it up and run­
ning it. The more involved our students become in
its creation, the more motivated they will be to use
it, and they should be encouraged to discuss which
books they found most – or least interesting. You
can develop the class library further and create a
book club, where learners discuss their opinions
or the issues raised, after reading certain books, or
even prepare a short presentation on a particular
reader. This builds confidence in reading, speaking
and presentation skills.
Written exercises and activities – are not a natural
part of FVR. The whole idea is for learners to read at
their own level, purely for pleasure, and it is impor­
tant for learners to know that they are not expected
to do any written or oral work afterwards but sim­
ply choose a new book and carry on reading. The
reason for this is that some (especially weaker less
able learners) might be discouraged if they know
that they have to do a book report when they have
finished the book. However, some learners may
want to do exercises or activities and there are often
some in the back of the book. You can find a treasure
trove of activities, worksheets, author information
and teacher’s notes on the internet (see later section
in this article).
Choosing Readers – you can choose the books
yourself, or better still, the students can help you
choose from catalogues or from the internet. Look
together at the descriptions for each book and the
cover images, notice whether there is an audio CD
accompanying the book and gently guide the stu­
dents to look at the levels you feel are appropriate
to them.
Different kinds of tests can be set to decide on lev­
els of easy readers for learners, but by far the most
successful way of getting it right is to use your own
intuition. Make an initial selection of two or three
titles from each level and read them through your­
self. You will then be able to suggest levels that will