I was communicating recently with Carol Gaab (President, TPRS Publishing, Inc.) about the idea of doing less reading in level 1 as per recent discussion here. My idea is to use as many of those precious 125 level one hours for nothing but listening, something Krashen didn’t disagree with when I asked him about it last year in my high school, where English is not mastered by over 90% of the students. It’s just an idea I’m thinking about. Carol said:
It makes more sense to listen only, IF your learners have low literacy levels. However, if you’re teaching solid readers, then I disagree. I think that novels serve a number a valuable purposes, if you have students with solid literacy skills:
READING NOVELS…
- – increases vocabulary base
- – improves grammatical accuracy and spelling
- – enhances verbal skills by exposing students to new combinations of words
- – provides a platform to engage students
- – provides scaffolding for the TEACHER, when s/he runs out of interesting PQA/stories
- – from my own experience as a student, keeps me in contact with the target language in a no-hassle and engaging way.
Novels absolutely SAVE some teachers from disaster… and some students from complete boredom!
I think it totally depends on the population and the language one teaches. For example, when teaching an average beginning Spanish class, I like to start reading a novel by week 4/5. However, in my beginning ESL classes, we never get to a novel. Of course, I have limited contact time, but aside from that, L1 literacy skills are not that strong, AND reading in ENGLISH is HARD. Decoding is a challenge! Bow (tie vs. bend over), tow, toe, two, to, too, toes, does, live, alive, etc. etc. etc. We do lots of CONCENTRATED and scaffolded readings in beginning ELL classes. Novels don’t come into play until novice-mid/high.