YEAR I. READING

Course title	Course type	Completion requirements	Semester	Hours/week	Total hours
reading	classes	exam	1 and 2	2	60

Course objectives:

The focus is on introducing students to a range of reading strategies which will help them to understand the factual content of texts.

The course will:

- involve students in analysis of texts and of reading strategies,

- draw explicit attention to reading purposes and the need to vary strategy according to reading purpose,

- encourage students to read extensively outside class,

- introduce and practice the basic pre-reading skills of previewing, prediction, skimming and scanning,

- encourage students to think about the writer's purpose,

- enable students to identify the main ideas of texts,

- develop an awareness of text and paragraph structure,

- enable students to separate fact from fiction,

- introduce and develop the techniques involved in dealing with unfamiliar lexical items,

- raise students tolerance of unknown words,

- raise awareness of discourse cohesion features such as pronoun reference, demonstratives, substitution, reiteration, synonymy, hyponomy, logical connection, conjunction, apposition,

- introduce and practice dictionary skills

- equip students with various methods of recording, revising and storing vocabulary.

Course content:

Students are exposed to a wide variety of text types (or genres) during their reading course, including:

Instructional: timetables, diagrams, advertisements, operating manuals, instructions, rules and regulations, application forms,

Informative: textbooks, ELT methodology books, graphs and tables, encyclopedias, dictionaries and thesauruses, academic articles, journals and reviews,

Persuasive: advertisements, newspaper reports, editorials,

Literary: fairy tales and fables, children's literature, classic and modern novels, drama and poetry, critical reviews, literary criticism,

Popular entertainment: nursery rhymes, songs, popular romance, comics, science fiction, detective stories, thrillers, humour, popular journalism,

Social Interaction: personal letters, postcards, greetings cards, telegrams, messages.

Classroom Approaches:

Pre-Reading Phase:

— To introduce the topic and arouse interest/expectation,

— To motivate students to read the text,

— To provide language preparation for the text.

While-Reading Phase:

— To clarify text content, moving from global understanding to details,

— To consider the writer's purpose,

— To analyse text structure,

— To consider lexis, collocation and structure,

Post-Reading Phase:

— To consolidate and reflect on the reading passage,

— To relate the text to the readers' knowledge, interests and opinions.

Requirements for crediting the course:

Attendance and participation, vocabulary quizzes, and in-class reading exams. Reading exams take 60 minutes to complete and require the students to read three texts followed by a set of tasks that check comprehension. The tasks may include: multiple choice, sentence gap fill, sentence completion, matching synonyms.

Selected bibliography:

Greenall, S and D Pye Reading 2 CUP

Greenall, S and D Pye Reading 3 CUP

Jones, E American Short Stories of Today Penguin

Jones, E British Short Stories of Today Penguin

Maley, A Short and Sweet 1 and 2 Penguin

Porter Ladousse, G Reading Intermediate OUP

In addition to the books mentioned above the Reading sections from FCE are used.

Resource and Reference Book for Teachers

Carrell, PL et al Interactive Approaches to Second Language Reading CUP

Davies, F Introducing Reading Penguin (App Ling Series)

Grellet, F Developing Reading Skills

Grundy, P Newspapers OUP

Hess, N Headstarts Pilgrims Resource Books Longman

Holme, R Talking Texts Pilgrims Resource Books Longman

Nuttall, C Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language Heinemann

Silberstein, S Techniques and Resources in Teaching Reading OUP

Wallace, C Reading OUP

Williams, E Reading in the Language Classroom Macmillan