I encourage all higher level students to read books. Many students have an adverse feeling to reading as they believe it’s too hard and takes too much time. It may not be easy but reading is the best way for students to improve not only their vocabulary but also sentence structure.
Harry Potter is usually the one I suggest students start with as so many have seen the movie so they at least know the basic plot. But I always think it’s fair to offer them a choice. As I wasn’t much of a reader a few years back I know to never recommend a book that isn’t enjoyable. A few months back I gave two of my students a choice of “Animal Farm” or “Harry Potter,” both excellent books. My students went with “Animal Farm” I think in part because of the length. For those that haven’t read it “Animal Farm” is only about 100 pages and sounds easy, but it’s not. It is considered by many to be one of the finest books ever written and I completely agree.
They soon found out just how challenging it was. Last week I’m proud to say that they finished it. I know how hard they worked on it but they didn’t give up which is the key to achieving success. For some reason students often believe that they can do less than they are capable of. As experienced teachers we know what our students can and cannot do and it’s important that we challenge each of our students to be the best they can be.
It’s great that at Smith’s the classes are kept small and classes are divided by levels so we can cater to what our students need 🙂
Keep up the good work everyone.
Adrian,
Reading is the best way! I fully agree and if you augment that with making a short summary, written or spoken in each lesson and then discuss it is class, the students’ ability grows seemingly exponentially. Great work. I have a student now who has been reading The Winner by David Baldacci and she finished it but we are going through it in class together and she is writing summaries that I check and correct each week. Her writing has really improved and she can speak using longer sentences now. So I can attest to the power of reading to master English. Still they need a good coach too!
Al, SSE Okamoto
I love books and am a very enthusiastic reader and naturally pass this on to my students. I posted a SSE Soap Box article about reading not so long ago and strongly believe that it is the best way to review your students pronunciation and to help them appreciate reading English as well.
I recommend the Ladder Series of books to my students in which stories are graded into five groups and contain many different story genre. A major thing about these books is that in the back they have a word list which provides a Japanese translation so they are easy to read on the train without the need to refer to a dictionary.