Hello dear student, how nice to have you back here! In this post we are going to talk about reading, literature and how to incorporate it in the classroom or simply in our lives when we are beginners or intermediate and we do not have enough knowledge to read world literature in its original language.
First of all, I want to tell you that it is very important to read, but not to read for the sake of reading. Everything we read must be interesting for us, because if you are not a chemist and chemistry does not interest you, why do you force yourself to read chemistry texts? Okay, if you are asked to do so in school, that’s fine, but if you are not interested, you should not read that kind of texts because you will end up killing your motivation and that’s exactly what we don’t want.
It has been shown that those students who read more have better results than those who do not read. These same students have better spelling, syntax, know more vocabulary, progress faster than those who don’t read, have more control of complex grammatical constructions, write better, did I convince you? đ.
Are you a beginner or intermediate and don’t know what you can read?
There are some amazing professionals who have created graded readers. I’m going to explain to you what it is. According to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages there are proficiency levels A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2 (level A is beginner, B is intermediate, C is advanced) and there are also books for each level.
Why do I recommend including graded novels in your book list?
There is a very important factor to keep learning and that is to feel motivated. If we pick up a book and we don’t understand most of the words we will soon feel bad and sad and think we are incapable, but if we pick up a book that is understandable, we will create a feeling of super power that will drive us to keep reading and we will enter a loop of motivation that will allow us to progress without realizing it.
Another advantage of graded books by level is that they have a glossary, this is done with the objective of making the reading comprehensible.
There are people who wonder if it is possible to transmit so much information and emotions, limiting us in the words we use, there are also teachers who are against the graded readings because they think that it limits and simplifies the language and stops being natural.
Despite what may seem negative, let’s not forget that we have a limited level of the language and that we must go according to our progression and our level to keep our affective filter low and feel confident in our journey towards proficiency.
I have adapted one of Tom Sawyer’s adventures for my A1 students. A classic of American literature adapted to a beginner level Yes, it is possible! and my students enjoyed it (you can have access to it, if you subscribe to receive our free resources). The key is to make the text understandable and little by little I as a teacher make the text more complex and add more details so that the reading remains enjoyable.
Here are authors of graded novel who have dedicated themselves to creating graded reading so that our desire to read is not overshadowed by our level:
To finish this blog post I want to tell you that there is another very powerful strategy for reading and that is to read the same book among people with the same interests and then discuss about what we read, we have a literature club to which you are invited to đ.