Acts of Reading: Exploring Connections in Pedagogy of Japanese

Chapter 8 Implementation of Reading in the Classroom

174 Chapter 8 Implementation of Reading in the Classroom Hiroshi Nara This chapter attempts to lay the foundation for a diverse range of activities with the common goal of helping students read better. In each of the suggestions in this section, the reader will encounter familiar ideas that have already been discussed in earlier chapters. However, this chapter is speci¤cally concerned with practical aspects of teaching reading in the classroom and makes concrete suggestions for putting into practice principles advocated throughout this book. Principles to Remember The principles outlined here apply to reading classes at various pro¤ciency levels, from elementary to quite advanced. Suppose students have already achieved suf-¤cient automaticity with grammar, vocabulary, reading strategies, cultural cues, andso on,and havealready begun toreadfor meaning (and not decode).Onemight ask if it would still be necessary for them to do the preparatory reading exercises suggested here. The short answer would be yes; a long answer would be a little more complicated. Even when students reach this level, it is with respect to a speci¤c text or a text genre. When they encounter a new text, they will most likely discover new lexical items, novel syntactic structures, and other components of reading in which they are still de¤cient. In a sense, then, the point at which it can be said that a student has begun to read for meaning (and not to decode) is relative to the nature of the text. The hypothetical point on the continuum of reading pro¤ciency (threshold point) between decoding and reading for meaning is not ¤xed or ¤xable; it is always Nara / Implementation of Reading in the Classroom 175 moving. Recall that for in-class reading, texts should always aim for gradual buildup—all new readings ought to contain something new but still be manageable (see chapter 7). This new material will constitute the basis for prereading exercises. The situation is slightly different when the student reads outside of class, for his or her own edi¤cation and pleasure without the teacher’s intervention. In this situation , the learner can ¤nd texts at or below his or her pro¤ciency and read them. It seems, then, that the idea of a threshold of reading, ¤xed and unmoving, beyond which the reader can just pick something up and read it, and below which the reader need not engage in preparatory exercises, is not useful. Several of the principles presented below have resulted from an investigation into automaticity (see chapter 4 and Nara 2001). Some of them do not have bearing on reading in particular and are applicable generally to all learning situations. Engage and Maintain Attention and Offer Task Variety Cognitive scientists agree that focal attention is absolutely required for learning a cognitively complex skill (see Schmidt 1990). As a practical matter, this means that instructors should engage and maintain students’ attention in class. Certain transformation exercises (such as practice associated with audiolingualism) that require mechanical responses will bore students instantly, allowing their attention to wander despite the importance of the pedagogical point. It is prudent, therefore, to maintain task variety and to keep the learning situation “conditional” (that is, keep the next task unpredictable), strategies that have been shown to help maintain learners’ focal attention. Also pertinent in this connection is that we should not overpractice. If an item is overpracticed beyond mastery, performance is known to decline because of learner inattention, which is induced by boredom. Practice in Context Items practiced in context are more meaningful than those conducted without context. To borrow Quinn’s words in this volume, without contextualized practice , learners cannot learn appropriate rules of language games or participate fully in the games. At the same time, the practice in context must be varied; it must address as many possible and real linguistic situations as possible so that learners will have exposure to the full range of semantic and pragmatic import of an expression. Ask Comprehension Questions Whenever possible, the teacher should ask comprehension questions about the main idea of the text, rather than about details, and should avoid asking for a straight English translation. 176 Implementation Be Mindful of Layers of Modalities and the Density of New Information If an item is overpracticed beyond mastery (i.e., after automaticity has been achieved), performance declines. Performance also declines when there is an overload of new information that the learner’s attentional resource cannot handle. There...