Motivation and Reading in the EFL Classroom - Why don't Advanced Learners Enjoy Reading?
Stephanie Davis, UK
Stephanie Davis has spent 5 years in Madrid, teaching and developing materials for young learners (ages 7 - 16), and preparing young adults for the FCE, CAE and CPE exams. She now works in Oxford as Academic Co-ordinator for OISE Young Learners' Schools. E-mail: Stephanie.Davis@oise.com
"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
(Jane Austen; Northanger Abbey)
Menu
What is Reading?
Why Read?
Why is Reading Unpopular?
Implications for the Classroom
References
Students of any language need to be able to read in that language. Of this there is little doubt. However, exactly what is meant by 'reading' is less clear. Native speakers 'read' and process an enormous amount of material each day, and they approach it in different ways depending largely on their motivation for reading. Catherine Wallace (1992; 6 - 7) has identified three general purposes which readers have when reading: Reading for Survival, Reading for Learning, and Reading for Pleasure. A tourist checking the signs in a station in order to find the right train; a student poring over a thick textbook, stopping every so often to make notes; a young child following a story in the book as his mother reads it to him: all these people are reading, but in each case the reading clearly serves very different purposes and involves very different processes. In the case of foreign language students, what is important is the extent to which they can recognise this, interacting with and making sense of a particular text in whatever way and for whatever purpose seems to be most appropriate for them in the context.
Apart from being a useful skill in itself, reading in a foreign language is known to be a very useful and relatively painless way to improve one's grasp of that language. This is particularly true at Advanced levels, when students already have a thorough understanding of the basic structure and vocabulary of the language. This knowledge should theoretically give them the ability to confidently tackle and enjoy authentic texts on subjects which interest them. The benefits of extensive reading (By which I mean Extensive in both its senses: that of reading widely, and that of reading relatively long texts for pleasure) are enormous for students with a relatively high level of proficiency in the language. The high level of these students means that they have different needs and different problems from those which they faced at lower levels. Having already studied the vast majority of structures and ways of expressing meaning in English, Advanced students need to familiarise themselves further with the intricacies of these structures, rather than learning ever more. Through reading they can acquire (rather than learn) an understanding of the subtleties and shades of meaning carried by the use of a particular choice of words in a particular context. This applies equally to Grammatical Structures and to Vocabulary. While Advanced students are nearing the end of their formal study of the structural elements of English, their knowledge of its vocabulary will, as is the case with native speakers, continue growing and growing, and this growth can best be encouraged through extensive reading.
If the advantages of reading are so clear, why is it so difficult to get students to take an interest in reading inside or outside the EFL classroom? I believe that there are several reasons for this, which all stem from one general problem - deep-rooted fear of reading in English. Advanced students have a sufficiently high level of English to enjoy and appreciate good, interesting authentic texts. What they all too often lack is the confidence to attempt to enjoy it, or the realisation that Reading can be anything other than just another classroom chore.
Equally importantly, despite knowing a range of different reading strategies, and being able to apply these more or less effectively in class, students generally still see reading in English as somehow completely different from reading in their L1. A good example of this occurred in a recent reading class with an advanced group, during which I asked the students to make a list of all the things they had read in their L1 (Spanish) during the previous 24 hours. When asked, they had absolutely no problems identifying different reading strategies they had used, and grouping the 'texts' (which included road signs, menus, text messages, poetry, academic textbooks, etc) according to these strategies. However, when I then asked them how they would read 'a text in English', not one student asked me what kind of text I meant. They simply gave me the typical skim / scan / read for detail formula they'd learnt in classrooms.
EFL students may study English for a number of years, during which time reading is 'taught' through a succession of random texts in coursebooks, which may or may not be 'authentic' or even interesting to the students. The only two things which connect these texts with one another are the inevitable comprehension questions following the text, and the fact that the passages themselves generally get longer and more complex as the student progresses through the course. Given this background, is it surprising that our Advanced students have such a distorted and negative idea of reading in English?
As teachers of reading to Advanced students, I believe we have two responsibilities. The first of these is fortunately becoming ever more commonly addressed in classrooms: that of helping students develop effective reading strategies to enable them to extract different degrees of meaning from a range of challenging texts. These strategies may include reading a text quickly the first time in order to get a general idea of the subject; not stopping every time they meet an unknown word; recognising more and less important parts of the text, etc. These are undoubtedly very important, especially for students preparing for examinations, or those studying English in order to study in an English-speaking environment, but as we address this side of reading more, I believe we are creating a new problem. As we train students to tackle texts effectively in class and in examinations, we convince them ever more firmly that reading in English is something for the classroom, must necessarily involve difficult texts, and as such cannot be enjoyed for its own sake.
I believe our second great responsibility is to dispel this myth, especially among Advanced learners, and to show them that they can read in English for pleasure. Only if we accept this challenge will we create learners who can really interact with English texts in the same way as educated native speakers do. This is an area which teachers are often reluctant to address, as it has no easy solution. Wallace (1992; 7) points out that "if readers do not read for pleasure in their mother-tongue they are highly unlikely to do so in a second or foreign language." This may be true, but it does not justify neglect of the field altogether in the classroom, as it fails to take account of two important factors. Firstly, just because this is true, the opposite, unfortunately, is not. I have many students who love reading in Spanish but have never tried in English and would love to be reassured and shown that they can. Secondly, Advanced students are generally, by definition, relatively well-educated people who enjoy reading in some form or other, whether it be magazines, newspapers, websites, etc. We must make it very clear to our students that reading does not necessarily have to mean classic literature or even articles from the Times every week. A student who enjoys reading film reviews will benefit far more from simply reading the latest review in English on the internet, and enjoying it, than he would from ploughing through an article on the present political situation, however objectively 'interesting' it may be, or 'relevant' to the unit of the coursebook.
Motivation is no less important a factor in the reading classroom than in any other area of language learning, and at Advanced levels it can be flagging somewhat. This is due to a number of factors, such as lack of immediate visible improvement, boredom due to over-familiarity with the format of coursebooks, etc. However, as few teachers would argue against the idea that a motivated student learns far more effectively than one who is less motivated, the question of where motivation comes from or goes to is of critical importance. Rivers (1972; 118) quotes Ausubel as pointing out that "Motivation is as much an effect as a cause of learning". She continues, "The relationship between the two, he says, is "typically reciprocal, rather than unidirectional"." Therefore if, in the reading classroom students see that they can read in English for reasons other than simply to answer questions and prove that they have understood a text, they will be far more likely to go out and do it on their own.
If we are to encourage our students to read in English for pleasure in their free time, we face something of a paradox. We wish to help them see that reading is not just a classroom chore but can be enjoyed in English as it can in their L1, yet the context through which we try to present this idea is necessarily a classroom one. However, in my opinion, the task, though difficult, is not an impossible one, and the best way to do it is to divide the field of Reading into two separate areas, corresponding with the two Responsibilities outlined above. These two separate goals must then be explicitly explained to the students, and dealt with separately in the classroom through working to explode several myths.
The first of these is that reading in English means tackling a reading comprehension exercise in a coursebook. If all the texts which are dealt with in class come directly from the coursebook, it is not surprising that students should see reading as a classroom activity, similar to completing grammar exercises or learning seemingly endless lists of vocabulary. In an experiment last year I did an identical reading lesson with two very similar groups, using an identical authentic text in each case. The only difference was that with one class the text was reproduced on a page of the coursebook, (Inside Out Advanced Pages 8, 132, 134) and with the other class I showed them the original book from which I had photocopied the relevant pages (Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus). The difference in the success of the two lessons was a marked one. The class who were working from the 'original' material were far more disposed to be interested than the other group, showing more enthusiasm and working harder. It seems that the novelty of doing something different and 'real' motivated them enormously. This conclusion matches my experience with students of various levels and different nationalities.
Nevertheless, an authentic text which is, to the best of the teacher's judgement, interesting for a particular group of students will not be successful in helping them unless exploited in an appropriate way in the class. By this I do not necessarily mean the standard gist - detail - language work formula with which we are all familiar. Though very effective in developing reading strategies and therefore useful and necessary in its place, I believe that this approach is counter-productive when it comes to encouraging students to read for pleasure. The very fact of a structured exercise built around the text makes it unrealistic from a 'real-world' point of view. Wallace (1992; 5) says, "In the real world, effective reading means a flexible and appropriate response to the material in hand, and this is always guided by the reader's purpose; it means that readers are aware that they have options, including the option to give up". How often do we give our students the option to give up? However, a word of caution is needed here: I am not suggesting that we simply give students texts to read, without giving them some kind of reason for reading. This would, in its way, be just as unnatural as exploiting every text using the gist - detail - language work formula above.
Nevertheless, if we wish students to read a variety of texts purely for interest of enjoyment, then we need to provide them with opportunities of simulating 'real-life' and dealing with these options in class. Marco Rinvolucri explains how he gives out newspaper articles which he cuts out for each individual student while reading the Sunday paper each week. In class, the students read their article and react to it in some natural way such as briefly telling a neighbour the content, recommending it to another student who they feel would be interested, etc. They also give Mario feedback on the articles, and are encouraged to go out and find their own. In this way, students read something which will (or should) interest them, and this enables them to see reading as something which can and does form part of everyday life outside the classroom.
Similarly, from time to time it can be very natural to give students a controversial text purely in order to spark a debate. This gives them a reason to read, while simulating the common real-life situation of reading the newspaper and discussing the news with a group of friends. This works even better if the students can choose the texts themselves, and this, fortunately, has never been easier. With ever more widely available access to dozens of newspaper and other currents affairs websites over the internet, students are a click away from an unlimited source of real English which they should be encouraged to exploit and enjoy.
In other words, these activities encourage students to see reading as part of genuine communication about subjects which interest them. This is very important. As Rivers (1983; 116) says, "Students learn from the classroom (from the structuring of the learning activities) whether the language is for communication or not. They learn whether it is part of their reality or just some tedious, artificial chore that someone "up there" has ordained they must perform."
In order to achieve this, we need to supplement our core of 'Reading Comprehension' texts with other, authentic texts selected purely on the basis of the subject matter, and what the students will enjoy. It may well be that some of these texts would traditionally be considered 'too short' or 'too easy' for Advanced students, but as long as they are Authentic I believe this is irrelevant. Nobody would dream of telling a native speaker not to bother reading a certain book because it was 'too easy' for him. If we are to encourage our students to read in their free time we need to make them see that it need not be a chore.
There are many ways of simulating real-life reading for pleasure, and I believe that, as teachers of Advanced students, we have a huge responsibility to encourage them to read as much as possible. By adopting some of the ideas outlined here and helping our Advanced learners to enjoy their reading, we help them take responsibility for their own development, becoming far more autonomous outside the classroom. When students are nearing the end of their formal study of English, this skill is surely the most important thing we can give them.
David Nunan (1999) Second Language Teaching and Learning, Heinle and Heinle
Jack. C. Richards (1990) The Language Teaching Matrix, Cambridge University Press
Wilga M. Rivers (1972) Speaking in Many Tongues (Essays in foreign-language Teaching (3rd Edition), Cambridge University Press
Catherine Wallace (1992) Reading, Oxford University Press
(1991) Cambridge Skills for Fluency - Reading 2, Cambridge University Press
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Secondary Teaching course at Pilgrims website.
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