Vol 06 No 4 TESL Reporter

              TESL
te ach g q Teachino english as a
vol 6 no 4

second language

laie hawaii

summer 1973

TRENDS IN THE TEACHING OF READING f virgwm stimch ANN 4
some thirty years have passed since michael west developed his NEW METHOD READERS primarily for schoolboys in india for many years thereafter the main thrust of reading instruction was toward smoothing the road for non english speaking students first by limiting the vocabulary and then by controlling the grammatical constructions used in the materials the aim was to enable learners to read english the satisfaction of readily grasping ideas through the medium of print in recent
give them

without

encountering

discouraging

difficulties today this effort persists and it is still needed in order to encourage students and

virginia french allen a well ii known authority on TESL is the author of Lv several texts including peodi e in liiviingstoln r nopl ne ed stoi this address was delivered at the TESL conference university of hawaii in january 1973 and is part of the working papers for that convention it is reprinted through the courtesy of the east west center vernon bickley and larry smith coordinators
f becoo f i ent times however teachers have beccoiincc increasingly aware of the need to train students to cope with unsimplified prose the kind of prose found in materials for native speakers there are several reasons for this shift in one reason is related to emphasis contemporary recognition of the fact that the reading of written english requires special skills beyond the skills needed for understanding the spoken language because most conversational speech is different from most written prose in the history of TESOL there used to be a time when it was assumed that writing was simply talk written down give or take a few features of intonation and punctuation used by one medium and not by the other it was

dr

COEATIN
trends in the teaching of reading by virginia french alilen page ml nii e
lesson in creative drama by eloise hayes and
1

adjectives in english by john T platt page 6 CCH BATESL graduates page 10 intercultural communication training A bridge for human understanding by kenneth E mann page 12

page 3 richard via some restrictions on reduplication of

TESL reporter page 2 a engineering textbooks discovered many further assumed that any second language su instances of postponed SU bjects after it and learner who had mastered the rudiments of oral english could easily learn to read nere she also found an extensive use of ther english since writing was merely a record well as many as nominalization ntt of what is spoken one seldom hears such prepositional used as noun phrases claims nowadays As david eskey pointed modifiers most of all she found much use out in a recent TESOL QUARTERLY of passive constructions an interesting anything that can be written can in theory sidelight upon this last point is provided by be said but the kinds of sentences that an article by louis B trimble in the current actually get said and the kinds that actually issue of the english teaching forum the get written are by no means identical article maintains that it is inaccurate to say consequently there has been a significant that passive constructions occur more shift of attention toward sentence types and frequently in technical wnbtiiing than ri tn grammatical constructions commonly elsewhere because many of the so called written and read but seldom heard some passive constructions found in scientific types of contructions that are never learned a prose are actually stative constructions A by TESOL students for conversational stative construction like a passive consists purposes have to be taught for reading of a form of BE plus the past participle form these include patterns with transposed of a verb but stattiives differ from passives in r elements eg adverbial clauses in initial at least three ways first they express states position eg although most people deplore or conditions rather than actions or it graffiti is widespread and prepositional processes second they may not occur with phrases in initial position often an optional agent or instrument and third accompanied by inversion of subject and they may not co occur with adverbs like verb eg of special interest to teachers is slowly hence the following is an example of the methiodology ho center language a stative construction participial constructions of various kinds also present great difficulties since they are the wells are located near the perimeter rarely taught for oral communication yet assi ve whereas the following illustrates theppassive frequently occur in written english construction furthermore they may turn up anywhere in the heat is recirculated in the fuel vapor the sentence zone examples though this distinction between passive and stative constructions should doubtless funded by the office ofeeduca tion the du ca be made project will begin on march 1 implications of the the mcconochie study for the teaching of reading remain valid she concluded that it occurred at a meeting called by th e TESOL students need not only to learn how district superintendent to form the passive but also to attach meaning to many irregular past participle included in the discussions were forms which are often touched very lightly comments by teachers planning to attend the meeting scheduled for january 3 in TESOL classes all too frequently students are sent off to memorize long lists since such patterns occur repeatedly in of irregular past participle forms without written discourse there is currently much much chance to master them what stress on these patterns in classes for advanced students need is guided practice in intermediate and advanced TESOL students reading material comparable in difficulty to what is read by their english speekiikg for more precise identification of sp aake an i grammatical constructions commonly found counterparts if the reading component of the course deals exclusively with simplified in expository prose teachers are indebted to jean material from which troublesome p paterrns a number of linguistic studies pat tte ns mcvonochie in a computer study of c continued on page 15