[quote]
Amy, I agree with you wholeheartedly. Reading provides the student with the opportunity to actually hear themselves speaking perfectly. But please note my use of the verb “to hear” in the last sentence. Silent reading, IME, is useless. But reading aloud is incredibly effective. Reading a passage over and over again, builds a database of perfectly spoken English that the student may reflect their spoken (and written) English against. They will learn to recognize their own errors and eventually, self-correct.
Think of it as the way an actor learns his/her lines.[/quote]
I think here, we’re seeing a difference of WHEN silent reading can be done. If beginning kids do silent reading, I too would say, “Why?” because they can’t read anything yet. Reading aloud at THIS stage is fine by me.
That said, I often give my higher level students 10 minutes of classtime to do silent reading, and herd them into the library wheile they wait for their parents, and GASP, they read to themselves. At this stage, I want them reading faster than they can speak, and they can’t do that reading aloud obviously, or reading silently and moving their lips. I read much faster than I talk. I expect my kids to be able to do the same, WHEN they are ready.
[quote=“jdsmith”]I think here, we’re seeing a difference of WHEN silent reading can be done. If beginning kids do silent reading, I too would say, “Why?” because they can’t read anything yet. Reading aloud at THIS stage is fine by me.
That said, I often give my higher level students 10 minutes of classtime to do silent reading, and herd them into the library wheile they wait for their parents, and GASP, they read to themselves. At this stage, I want them reading faster than they can speak, and they can’t do that reading aloud obviously, or reading silently and moving their lips. I read much faster than I talk. I expect my kids to be able to do the same, WHEN they are ready.
We’re just talking about levels of preparedness. [/quote]Agreed. And in the early stages, before kids can do much of any kind of reading, it helps a lot for the teacher to read aloud to kids. A little later, teacher and students can read a text aloud together in varying proportions depending on the kids’ level. At first they’ll just be able to sound out or recognise a few basic words; later, they’ll be able to read most of the text and the teacher can just fill in some difficult words.
Replace the word Japanese with Taiwanese here and I think that this falls somewhere into the realm of a good part of my job. Actually, doing this very thing used to take up a great deal of my time, sometimes it still does. I handle it, I just complain about it here.
Reading aloud does somthing to the way are brains our networked. Even if a child does not have much language, listening to someone read aloud is incredibly effective for language acquisition.
read anything. as soon as they start acquiring language take your books up a notch. Always stay one or two steps ahed of them.
My daughter is a native speaker, but at two years is already enjoying Roald Dahl and CS Lewis - because she has already heard so much before this. She laughs at the funny bits and shows she has comprehension- even though she is not yet speaking in senetences
Reading aloud helps children to extend their language even before they are able oto replicate that level in their own speaking
Reading aloud to children is possibly one of the most effective tools in language acqusition - especially when compiled with language activites that help learners acquire new vocabulary alongside it
[quote=“jdsmith”]Dr Suess books are great…[/quote]Yes! Do you use any of the CDs that go with them? Adrian Edmondson did a great one for Cat in the Hat with a kind of jazz backing.
When it was time to tidy up the room at the end of one class, the students decided they were all driving Cat-in-the-Hat cleaning cars, and actually things did get tidied up extremely quickly that time!
[quote=“joesax”][quote=“jdsmith”]Dr Suess books are great…[/quote]Yes! Do you use any of the CDs that go with them? Adrian Edmondson did a great one for Cat in the Hat with a kind of jazz backing.
When it was time to tidy up the room at the end of one class, the students decided they were all driving Cat-in-the-Hat cleaning cars, and actually things did get tidied up extremely quickly that time![/quote]
[quote=“jdsmith”][quote=“joesax”][quote=“jdsmith”]Dr Suess books are great…[/quote]Yes! Do you use any of the CDs that go with them? Adrian Edmondson did a great one for Cat in the Hat with a kind of jazz backing.
When it was time to tidy up the room at the end of one class, the students decided they were all driving Cat-in-the-Hat cleaning cars, and actually things did get tidied up extremely quickly that time![/quote]
Nope, usually I record them myself and burn them.[/quote]
Kidding 
