MY READING STRATEGY AS A TEACHER: NOW AND AFTER THIS COURSE.

 

First and foremost, as teachers of a foreign language we must take into consideration the development of the four linguistic skills of our students, that is, speaking, listening, writing and reading. Secondly, we must constantly train in order to learn about new didactic aspects. Thirdly, we must reflect on our way of teaching and share with other teachers our ideas, as well as our teaching experience.

On the one hand, I would like to remind you that I teach English to young children at Primary Education and Infant Education, therefore I usually select the texts, as well as the textbooks. I read them stories and sing songs (since children between 3 and 6 can not read). Therefore, I consider that they begin to understand English vocabulary and grammar (intensive reading), as well as acquire the pleasure of reading (extensive reading). If we talk about strategies and other aspects, I use with these students BOTTOM UP KNOWLEDGE, since they must differentiate the sounds in an L2. However, TOP DOWN KNOWLEDGE is also carried out, because the children must guess what they are going to sing or what story they are going to read.

On the other hand, if I talk about Primary Education, I use ideas similar to the previous ones, as well as other texts such as comics, online readings and readings that students carry out from texts that they write about what they like the most. Therefore, I consider that intensive reading (I choose the texts) and extensive reading (they choose their texts), as well as bottom up and top down knowledge (the students try to find out what they are going to read or what will happen in the story through clues or pictures) take place in my classes.

Taking everything into consideration, I consider that at Infant Education my reading strategies are prediction and skimming due to the fact that students are acquiring the first linguistic notions in English and they learn globally (both in this subject and in others taught in Spanish ). At Primary Education, the three strategies are taken into consideration: prediction, skimming and scanning (students must look for information and more specific words from each reading).

To conclude, I would like to emphasize that I use many ideas (strategies, extensive reading, intensive reading, bottom up knowledge and top down knowledge), although I was not aware of some of them. From now on, I am going to find a balance between all these linguistic aspects applied to reading, as well as the three types of strategies.