This semester, I’m teaching a class that meets twice a week for four hours each class period—yes, four hours! When I first found out that I’d be teaching a four-hour class, I thought it would be the worst thing ever. I imagined that my students and I would be totally dead and bored by the …
Why should we give free reading time during class?
When I first started an FVR (free voluntary reading) library and gave my students time to do free reading during class, I have to admit that there was a part of me that thought, “They’re all just sitting here silently, reading…couldn’t they be doing that at home? Is this a waste of class time?” But …
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Setting Up My FVR Library
I’ve been wanting to set up an FVR (free voluntary reading) library for a long time now, but logistically, it seemed too complicated. Like most adult ESL teachers, I don’t really have my own classroom. I have a classroom that I use for the semester. But the classroom is also used by other teachers at …
Why Don’t Teachers Encourage Their Students to Read More?
Last week, I wrote about why students don’t read more. Today, I’m writing about why teachers don’t encourage their students to read more—because, of course, one of the main reasons why language students don’t read more is because of their teachers. Teachers often don’t encourage students to read a lot and/or don’t provide materials to …
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Why Don’t Students Read More?
I recently ran across Stephen Krashen and Haeyoung Kim’s article “Why Don’t Language Acquirers Take Advantage of the Power of Reading?” It was published back in 1997, but the issues are just as applicable today (though I’d like to think that we—language learners and teachers as a whole—are gradually moving in the direction toward taking …
Allison Lewis 