Combining Extensive and Intensive Reading Approaches for Incoming High School Students

Abstract

1. INTRODUCTION The primary purpose of this Textbook is to help students to improve reading proficiency and discover the joy of the reading through Extensive Reading (ER) outside of the class, while improving Intensive Reading (IR) skills and strategies in the class. The target students of this Textbook are twenty 16 year old students who are mixed gender and their proficiency level is intermediate-mid according to ACTFL. Classes will take place in a private institution. They have already graduated from middle school, but they have not yet entered high school. I have chosen this target group of students because they have quite a significant vacation period, thus allowing them the ample time they need to read rather than during the regular scheduled semester, which can get quite hectic. Practicing reading, and raising proficiency levels before entering high school will serve to prepare students for challenging Korean SAT test preparation. Taking advantage of this valuable vacation time is essential for high school students since during the official school term, they have little time to dedicate to ER. This Textbook consists of 10 interesting graded readers including: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Mark of Zorro, and The Wizard of Oz from MACMILLAN READERS. 2. METHODOLOGY This Textbook will integrate ER, IR and Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) as the principle theoretical approaches. According to Day and Bamford (2002) more than one or two unknown words on one page can hinder overall understanding. In this Book, in order to have students read extensively, an easy level of reading materials has been chosen. Students begin each unit by reading a few pages of the first part of the book and the biography of the author intensively in the class with intensive reading activities. Through this intensive reading practice, students prepare for ER outside of the class. Anderson (2008) stated that intensive reading allows students to learn and practice particular reading skills and he also encourages linking IR and ER when designing reading programs. During the class, students practice several reading skills and strategies through while-reading activities, for example, guessing/predicting various parts of the story, reading for main ideas, and reading for specific information. Students also practice writing during post-reading activities. For example, in the Sample Chapter, students learn past simple and past continuous tenses to write about their own personal experiences as one character did in the book. Students use these tenses in the rest of the Textbook while reading the biography of the author and making a timeline of his life. After intensive reading activities, students read the whole book outside of class, and they come back to class for extensive reading activities. In class, in the Sample Chapter, students recall what they read at home by matching the names of the characters with the descriptions and discussing/introducing their favourite scenes with classmates. Then, this Textbook provides opportunities to choose activities that suit each student’s learning style from several options such as designing a movie poster, writing a script, drawing a storyboard or practicing a performance. Teachers need to engage learners in communication to improve their communicative competence. (Savignon, 2007) Therefore, activities based on CLT will give learners opportunities to produce vocabulary and expressions they have learned while reading. They will be also able to think creatively and share their ideas about the reading materials. For example, students discuss ideas about the book cover, talk about their favourite scenes with groups and brainstorm together about how to make a movie after watching the video: “Lego Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” 3. EXPECTED OUTCOMES AND CONCLUSION By studying with my Textbook, students are expected to not only improve their reading proficiency and develop a habit of reading in English, but also improve their reading skills and strategies. In addition, through communicative activities, students should be able to share what they think about the content of reading materials.