Monday, September 14, 2009

Getting students excited about books

By Warren Ediger - California, USA

"One of my early mentors told me that leadership is "knowing what needs to be done, knowing why that is important, and knowing how to bring the appropriate resources to bear on the situation at hand."

Helping my adult ESL students in the classroom and online tutoring students (mostly professionals) understand "why" has paid rich dividends.

Trelease, Krashen, and others have referred to the "home run" book - that book that is so engaging that it triggers the beginning of the reading habit. Your involvement with the students, to help them find that book (maybe not on the first try), may also contribute to accomplishing the goal you seek. See here - http://sdkrashen.com/articles/homerun2/homerun2.pdf

The "home run" phenomenon is one reason I tend to use popular fiction rather than graded readers. It's easy enough to help an adult student learn what is best for him/her and the quality of the writing is often better. There is a reason it's called "popular" fiction."

I live in La Habra (southern), California. I am no longer doing any classroom teaching. My time is divided between writing materials for international ELls who are working independently to improve their English and Internet-based tutoring, primarily with professionals and students preparing for the TOEFL. I will also be branching into speaking/presenting and, possibly, consultation.

Read more from Warren Ediger at http://www.successfulenglish.com/

3 comments:

Alex Case said...

I found this to be a rather odd article, not really of a similar tone to the rest of the content of this blog and not giving much information on the topic it is supposed to be about. Nonetheless, I do like the idea of a homerun book, hadn't heard of it before and would like to know more. How does one choose such a book? What level can you use authentic popular fiction from? How does that tie in with Krashen's i + 1? Etc!

Christine Smith said...

Hi,
I've few education websites and blogs. I'm very much interested sharing my website information with your website through link exchange. If you wish then please get back to me so that we can discuss further. Waiting your reply.
Wishing you a nice day.
Cheers,
Christine.
Christine@bestonlinedegree.org

Alex Case said...

I'm almost certain that the comment above from Christine Smith is spam