Reading Resources

Textbook: Middle School English 1, 두산동아.
Target Students: Middle School First Graders
Purpose: To facilitate apprehension of the textbook and to intrigue students of the content matter in relevant chapters
( chapter 4, 5, 7, 9, 10)

category: genre-based and lesson based

Chapter 4 : "Shopping at Insa-dong"



This chapter consists of various traditioal items that we can actually find at Insa-dong, such as 'gama', 'deungjan', or 'jegi'. The students, though some high-level students might be acquainted with these items, may not be aware of them. Moreover, the textbook is not realistic in that they do not give an insight as to what Insa-dong virtually looks like. Thus, to provide students with pertinent information of where Insa-dong is and what kinds stores or traditional food there are, I would present this site as a sufficient reading material. In the site, many pictures are shown to incite students' interest in reading the textbook about Insa-dong, let alone comprehensible description about the food and exquiste souvenir shopes at the place.
http://www.cnngo.com/seoul/visit/insadong-art-nostalgia-and-boho-550899

Chapter 5: "Making New Friends"


This chapter deals with how to make friends and why it is so difficult to make new friends on your own. Since the topic of this chapter is not that arduous for middle school students to follow, I would present to them a site that would foster more attention and intigue to them to a certain extent. In that aspect, a site that introduces a cartoon strip would be just right for them. In this site, the vocabulary is pretty easy, paving a way for all students to have interest. Some expressions or proverbs about friends or making friends may give them an input so that they could use them in real life situations.
http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/n/new_friends.asp


Chapter 7: "A Summer to Remember"

This chapter mainly focuses on an episode that one kid undergoes during the summer break. However, the episode might be considered a little bit boring and unchallenging for a few junior high students. Accordingly, provoking their imagination and letting them attend to diverse articles associated with 'summer' would indeed instigate their motivation of reading English texts. This article tells readers how they could spend a splendid summer and what kind of things to avoid at summertime. Some words might be challenging to students, but as the teacher play the role of paraphrasing them, or selectively screeing some expressions out would benefit all students' apprehension of the passage.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Tips-To-Spend-Summer-Safely&id=6208962

Chapter 9: "A Healthy Life "


Living a healthy life is extremely important these days. This chapter discusses about how to live an abundant life by following some safety procedures from an expert. However, I consider it to be a little monotonous and academic for all students to have interest in. Therefore, I would implement a reading material or site that would ultimately be of a friendly text to them. With this in mind, the following site is about an 'interview' of a famous actor. He appeared in many movies and drama hits. By letting students take part in an interview text, they could find it amusing, having to find out what their favorite actors think about being healthy.
http://truebloodnet.com/true-blood-ryan-kwanten-talks-living-healthy-balanced-life


Chapter 12: "Your Dream, Your future "

The chapter is based on 'future dreams and goals'. Of course, a lot of teenagers have their dreams of what they want to become in the future. Again, the textbook concentrates too much on explaining what the terms of the 'future' and 'goals'. Teachers can assume that students already have the roughest idea of what the words 'future' and 'goals' refer to. I do not find it a "must" for the textbook to explain in detail these definitions again to students. I think that students might want to go further to investigate what gadgets or items are already waiting for them in the near future. Therfore, choosing a site that would serve this purpose would be the one which elaborates on 'interactive resumes'. It is not too long, nor is it too sophisticated. A video activated would aid them in understanding the term, and I do think that it will keep them paying attention.

http://workinprogress.blogs.time.com/2007/03/06/why_interactive_resumes_are_th/

Journal 3

The reason for taking this course in the first place was actually to find any
methods or strategies for tackling reading activities that I would most likely to pursue throughout my life. Though my English capacity may be overrated by some of my counterparts, I believe that some aspects of my English skills should indeed be enhanced to a level in which I would not have that much of a problem when I go abroad to study or even engage in a discourse with people all over the world. Moreover, I find that reading skills in English could enable me to read, in depth, diverse books of disparate spheres. These can include books in the areas of philosophy, psychology, biology, physics, and management. In short, reading skills are essential, if not in need to me at all.
I am actually applying some of the strategies that I have learned in class to my English reading at this point. Some pre-reading strategies that I often use these days are setting reading purpose and identifying text structure and genre. I ordered the magazing "TIME" and it comes to my house once every two weeks. When I start to read it, I am confounded with all the international news and insights into the global world, including economy and politics. Then, I begin to wonder why I am reading this, usually forgetting the purpose of doing it. However, when I set certaing purposes for reading, it aids me in comprehension. The purpose for reading "TIME" would be to be aware of how the world is operating and to improve reading skills as a whole. Just like in the textbook, I think that 'while-reading strategies' are the most important. Post reading strategies can be utilized right after reading without any much effort, but I find it pretty burdensome to virtually use 'while-reading strategies' in reading. Identifyinig the main idea, making inference of the text or passage, and skipping ahead, in my perspective, are crucial to the apprehension of the given reading material. I contemplate that it takes much more time to solve related problems to the text if while-reading strategies do not work as they are supposed to. It might have been better if I had the time to utilize every single skills and strategies to implement to my actual reading, but I am satisfied to have gained some of the skills that could be of great help to me now and in the future. Overall, I have liked the way in which the class was structured, consisted of debates and presentations( teaching lessons). It really helped me in that some people provided me with clever solutions that I myself was not aware of at all. Also, it was worthwhile to hear from different people of different perspectives on the same subject. I think that this will pay off either in the near future or after some time later on. The important thing is that it was all education, and it will be part of me forever. By the way, you have done a great job, Professor Kim.( I was impressed by the effort you put in to prepare for all those books and items to clarify students' misunderstandings and discrepancies.)Thank you.

Journal 2

Today, due to unemployment, many people are going back to school, which are mainly graduate schools. Accordingly, since the achievement of academic skills depend highly on reading skills, making use of those skills while reading.
For me, as I am an undergraduate student, I'm preparing for admission to law schoo, which requires an LSAT(Law Scholastic Aptitude Test) score. When studying for this exam, I come across pretty difficult vocabulary words, especially implemented in the RC(Reading Comprehension) section.
Thus, I have utilized and always utilize strategies that I'm learning in this class. I use skills, such as recognizing words in context and drawing inference. As I read long passages, it's sometimes an arduous task to know every single word in detail. Therefore, I try to make the best sense out of an unfamiliar word by looking at it in context with other sentences or phrases. Moreover, I try to draw inferences from the given information from the passage, since there are some questions that actually ask me to make some inferences based on the passage.
Conversely, I almost never use skills, such as retrieving material from long-term memory or categorizing words and clauses. The main reason for this is that it is not such a practical method to retrieve material from the long-term memory at the same time I'm reading the text or passage. Rather, I have to use certain strategies to go back to the passage to retrieve specific information that I had forgotten as a short-term memory. Moreover, categorizing words and clauses takes a long time for me to make use of it. For instance, it's not probable for me to distinguish formal aspects while I'm reading about certain spheres that may be considered odd to me.

Journal 1

The reason why my brother doesn't want to go to Hakwon is that he is fed up with the boring memorization of words and mechanical drills of phonics. Even though phonics, by teaching them the sounds of the alphabet itself and the sounds produced by blending the alphabets in diverse ways, is seemingly the most effective way of teaching reading to kids, it is limited in that it might not provide them any more motivation if they reach a certain point. Thus, to give interest to him and to provide him with a motivation to learn, I suggest three methods: the storytelling method, kinesthetic method, and the game method.
First, the storytelling method would be more than enough to induce children to learn more. It focuses on teaching reading by utilizing many kinds of storybooks that might incite interest of all students. The teacher could take three steps in introducing the method to studens. Step one is to write on the board at most 3 vocabulary items they have to learn. The teacher can call on students to pronounce them, and if it's not pronounced correctly, he can correct the mistakes. After all students are aware of the pronunciation of all vocabulary items, he can then go on to reading the storybook he had brought for the class. Since it's soothing and provocative in repect to content to students, they would focus and also try to find the vocabulary items they learned before the reading. Finally, they are given the chance to read on their own the story books that may be of their interest. In this way, they would acquire automaticity as well as improvement in English skills.
Second, the kinesthetic method can be effective in getting unmotivated students to get back on track. The kinesthetic method makes use of certain body parts in learning language. Taking account of the fact that young children lack concentration for even 30 minutes, this will indeed make them concentrate more and not stray from the learning process. This can be done by first introducing about 3 or 4 words to students. Then, give them color markers or crayons to just follow what is written on the board. The teacher should, in this case, tell them that it's okay to make mistakes to lower the inhibition. When they are finished with their coloring or painting the words, the teacher steps in to deductively introduce the words and their meanings to sudents. Afterwords, students can engage in reading texts that includes the vocabulary that they have previously acquired by using their hands.
Lastly, the game method is one of the most effective, according to a recent research in UCLA, method in actually making children voluntarily learn language on their own. There are so many games in this world, and some of them can be implemented to teaching language to young children. One game can be Monopoly. Monopoly is a game that can be won when one rotates around the game board once faster than others. Thus, by putting in questions related to vocabulary items or main topic of a paragraph, children will strive to answer those questions only to win the game of Monopoly. Ultimately, by giving them entertainment, they will not only maintain interest in learning English but they will also reach a higher level of English proficiency.