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TDF
Meeting
Wednesday night, May 13, 2009
Sequoia Grill
Topic:
Reading in a digital age
This
spring (2009), the Chinese Ministry of Education launched a program to
encourage reading among school children in urban and rural schools throughout
the country. This goal is laudable but why is it deemed urgent? What is the
government’s aim in encouraging reading? What kind of reading do they want?
Is there good reading or bad reading? How has teaching reading changed in our
digital age?
These
questions might seem elementary to Ex-pats lulled to sleep by their parents
reading to them at bedtime or to those whose education included reading for
elocution or stage tryouts. Bonding through reading print, sharing polished
observations is so deeply ingrained in Western culture that the idea seemed
mute to the pre-digital TDF members.
What
of the post digital readers? What of the Chinese student? Are the same or
similar challenges presented to them growing up?
The
answer, according to Chinese and Western teachers at the meeting, is no. A
variety of comments followed:
“Chinese
parents actually discourage reading for pleasure. Their view is that time is
better spent memorizing and reading for facts needed to pass school exams”.
“Parents
want their children to succeed in an academic climate that puts emphasis on
answering tests not on the skills learned from reading for pleasure.”
“The
parents themselves did not grow up in a culture of reading.
There
were few books of literature. Those that they had were instruction manuals,
propaganda or truncated versions of old myths no longer relevant” (sic) in
the scramble of progress.
Should
reading for facts alone be discouraged? What are the skills acquired through
reading for pleasure?
One
UK study conducted over a 20 year period was sited. The findings showed that
reading for pleasure physiologically changed brain wave patterns. Those
subjects who read for pleasure showed greater brain activity in both lobes of
the brain than those who did not.
Further tests showed greater cognitive and analytical skills in the
reading group.
Teaching
techniques mentioned as useful include “pre-reading” activities, like
explaining the title, talking about the author or going through the table of
context. These steps ground students and give them a greater sense of purpose
for reading.
Another
reading tool suggested for greater comprehension is a see/saw approach: first
read the table of contents, then the chapter heads, then the first paragraph
of each chapter and finally the last paragraph of the chapter, before reading
the content.
Most
Chinese learners still find basic word comprehension difficult. Reading aloud
was the most favored solution toward both comprehension and for the teacher
to determine the learner’s level of understanding. This exercise obviates the
basic lack of word understanding on the part of their students who struggle
to pronounce a polysyllabic word. To prepare teachers two websites were
offered:
www.wordle.com: This site takes a text and finds
the frequency and importance of words used in an article.
www.corpora: Here, comparisons and contrasts
are given between words using The Oxford English Dictionary as the source.
Other
sources mentioned are:
www.readbankokpost.com: this
newspaper has put a lot of effort in helping English language learners to
read the newspaper. You will also find guidelines for teachers.
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_page:
This is a great resource of texts to read. The interesting thing is that they
are all written in simple English, hence the name
www.in2english
www.guardian.co.uk
www.newyorktimes.com
The
final question posed to the TDF educators was what can we do to help?
One
suggestion was to ask bookstores to provide a list on their websites of
English language books for the young Chinese reader.
-provide
mailing services for those books to schools.
-request
book donations of their customers.
Another
suggestion was to create portable libraries that can fold up and be delivered
from one school to the next.
What
do you think? What should TDF be doing to help Chinese students learn the joy
of reading for pleasure? We look forward to your suggestions and will
organize implementation at our next scheduled meeting.
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