As part of my dipTESOL coursework, I’m conducting a survey to investigate attitudes and perceptions towards graded readers among language educators in Taiwan, and I could really use your help!
If you’re an English language teacher, please consider taking a few minutes to complete my survey. Your insights will be valuable in helping me to better understand the gaps in the use of graded readers and contribute to improving language education practices.
The survey takes just 3-5 minutes to complete, and your responses will be kept confidential and anonymous.
Hi @ishaule, welcome to the Forum. Are you open to discussion here, or would you like me to close this topic now that your information is shared?
For example, I picked 3 a lot because my answer was “it depends” but that wasnt an option. A few times my answer would have been “not applicable”. People here might have a lot of opinions, but if you prefer we can close this topic. Up to you
This is a learning process for me! So any feedback is welcome. I understand that a “bit applicable” option would have been useful for schools or places that don’t use graded readers.
My plan is to first do this survey to find problems like this and then perhaps do some follow up interviews with people who have voiced some concerns with the format or the content.
For those who are interested in this, I would suggest they send me an email at ian.shaule@britishcouncil.org.tw and we can discuss how best to do any follow up.
However, I will be noting down all comments and using it in my final report.
“Learners have the necessary vocabulary to read graded readers.”
If they haven’t, then the teacher is giving them the wrong graded reader.
Or, do you mean that the graded reader recommended level is wrong? Say, B1 is too high? That makes sense in that most of these graded readers are designed for European learners.
If graded readers are being used to provide written comprehensible input (is there any other reason to use them? “Reading practice” should still always be comprehensible), the people reading them should, in principle, have the necessary vocabulary to read them.
To @OP, I just want you to know that I might skew your results (especially compared to what others are saying here), as I teach in a Montessori school. My learners are highly motivated, owing to the fact that they don’t have homework or tests or pressure to do anything but learn what interests them. I am also something of a comprehensible input maniac and am constantly giving my learners opportunities to evaluate their ability vs the level of the text they’re reading. My learners are perfectly capable of saying “I thought I could read this text but I think I need something two or three levels easier”. They know they should, at most, have one word they don’t recognize when they are choosing a text. Since we constantly reinforce the reality that everyone is at a different level at all times, no one feels pressure to pretend they can read more advanced texts than they actually can, so we see real results.
One problem with graded readers is they contain a lot of vocabulary, phrasal verbs in particular, that are translatable/understandable in European languages.
I use Reading A-Z mostly, which has a colossal butt load of texts at pretty much every level and some good follow ups, total beginner through upper elementary. But Oxford has some good readers for EFL students, as does Nat Geo, though significantly fewer texts
Not those, those are too hard if you’re not pre teaching loads of vocabulary, which is pretty mind-numbing and not particularly effective. They have a set from Oxford Phonics World (which, as the name implies, is a phonics program) that’s expressly for EFL. The readers build off the phonics words introduced into increasingly more complex text. Its a great thing to use in parallel with other texts (im always using multiple textbooks and leveled readers at once). Reading A-Z is still my main go-to, as you can easily print the book and hand it off to the child in question to assemble. But it’s not cheap, especially not the ELL (or whatever they’re calling it this time) add-on
In many language centres around the world and in Taiwan, it’s hard to properly assess and level the students. So in class, you’ll have a mix of abilities that could range from a student with B1 speaking but A1 reading, or one with B2 reading and no speaking ability/confidence.
This question about necessary vocabulary was supposed to be just that: graded readers will often have phrasal verbs, topic specific lexis, and idiomatic language. However, some learners struggle with this because it’s often much more difficult that their course books.
In my experience, some of my mixed level classes became overwhelmed with reading because they “didn’t know what the words in the book meant” or it was “too difficult”. Now, this to mean shows that its in part a vocabulary problem and in part an error on the part of the course designer.
Totally ok! This is my first time doing a large survey and I’m hoping for some interesting results. This whole thing is to teach me how to ask questions and approach teaching with a more academic and rigorous focus.
It’s kind of moot for me now, because I’m mostly retired. I only teach a few hours a week. But I’ve done this sort of thing a pretty good while in various situations (that doesn’t mean I’m any good at it), so I don’t have a specific memory of using graded readers. I know what they are, though.
I don’t fully trust my scanty knowledge of the subject of language acquisition, but I put a fair amount of stock in what little I know of what Stephen Krashen says about it (although I’m not an expert on his opinions, either), and if I recall rightly, he seems to have given the go-ahead for reading.
So me, too, and that would probably involve graded readers.
It depends on your goal on reading. If you want their reading to be comprehensible, it should be 95-99% comprehensible, ideally 99%, @ironlady has corrected me. That means one unknown word per 99 known words. If you don’t want the reading to be comprehensible, one might want to question why you’re providing the reading in the first place.
Obviously if you’re reading beginning readers with a common sentence pattern and clear pictures (think “it is a ___” over and over), you could have more unknown words, since the pictures would hopefully support the meaning, but one should never assume the word is actually understood, no matter how clear it seems to the teacher.
I think of how often I pick up children’s ㄅㄆㄇㄈ books and don’t have the faintest idea of what the image is supposed to represent. This reminds me that what seems obvious to a teacher is often not obvious to a child. (And my Chinese is very good, so you’d think id know what every little image next to ㄅㄆㄇㄈ practice would mean). You get into more advanced readers (like leveled literature, where they take a classic and simplify it) and your learners are going to really struggle if you dont make sure they understand 99%. You could always pre teach the vocabulary, but that’s wasting precious class/study time that would be better used acquiring language in more meaningful ways.
This is a textbook example of “the readers being provided are not in line with the learners’ needs”. If the text they are given is ever in any way more difficult than their course books, the solution is very simple: provide them with texts that are at their level, not texts that are too difficult. Theres this (really screwed up) idea in language teaching that, in order for students to be “challenged”, they need a butt load of new vocabulary with every lesson. The reality is that they need to constantly review the vocabulary they were already introduced to, with new words introduced and then constantly reused in meaningful context until their brain has absorbed it.
Krashen is the person who first proposed the concept of providing meaningful, comprehensible input in a language classroom. You need to interact with spoken language before you can be ready for reading, but you can’t develop reading skills if you’re not taught them. The only way to hone your reading skills in any language is to read enormous amounts of texts at a level that you understand.
