Hi there! Today I wanted to write a different post. This week we covered the topic of gamification in class, but the truth is that I feel more excited to write about two themes I like a lot: reading and learning.
Reading is dreaming with open eyes.
Anyone who knows me a little will know that I love reading books. It has always been this way, and I think my years in elementary school have had a great influence on it.
I remember that every day, before starting the lessons, we used to read a chapter from our favourite books. Everyone brought their books from home, or they could take one from the school library, and we spent the first 15/20 minutes of the class reading.
I recognize that this is not possible when we hit a certain grade and age, but I saw several benefits from that routine, and I think there are more ways to include reading books as a central part of learning new languages.
When you read, you learn a lot of new words and vocabulary, which you can use later when doing a writing assignment. You also see the different grammar constructions in the language you want to learn, and I think you can learn by seeing these different grammar constructions on repeat in an easier way than studying in front of a grammar book.
However, not everyone likes to read, and I think one of the problems is the approach used in education towards reading. This is usually a must and most books may not be of interest to students.
If they have more possibilities, they may be more inclined to read a book, and if you want them to read a specific book, why not try to make it look interesting? There are certain books that teachers may want us to read because they cover a topic that will be important for the subject, but how are we supposed to know if they don't tell us anything?
I have had a mix of experiences. Some teachers made an effort to make us want to read the books for the class, but others simply gave us the titles and where to buy them. And believe me, the experience was completely different.
After that, I started reading in English because I wanted to. I already loved reading in Spanish, and although English seemed like a huge obstacle to me, I wanted to understand and learn it, so even though it took me more time, I started doing it.
I still find myself lazy for some days and prefer to read in my mother tongue, but I still know that I can get a lot of benefits from reading in English whenever I do.
Practice makes perfect, but the problem lies in not wanting to practice, not finding a sense to do it.
I hope and wish that I could make my students eager to read a new book and learn from it in the future, but time will tell.