Teaching reading

Today we spent some time reflecting on our learning experience in previous reading lessons. To be honest, I couldn't recall the techniques, if any, demonstrated by my English teachers. We mostly responded to the teachers' questions and then read the passages aloud. The latter was especially important because we would have dictation. Therefore, I used to have the belief that understanding the content thoroughly is essential.

Now when I teach reading, I usually start with thinking about the reading skills that students have to acquire in the unit, for example, skimming and scanning, identifying specific information, and understanding references and inferences. I design some pre-reading activities to arouse their learning interest and while-reading tasks for them to understand the content of the passages. The reading lessons also provide students with the opportunity to learn extra vocabulary words and the target grammar items. To make it more interesting, I try to connect the content to their personal lives by asking them some reflective questions. If time allows, I will arrange some group work for students to so that they can communicate and collaborate with each other. To sum up, a successful reading lesson should involve the acquisition of reading skills and strategies. This can be achieved by employing different teaching techniques in different reading lessons because novelty is key to learning motivation.