The College English programs in Korea show a strong inclination toward practicality in order to enhance communicative skills. While this trend has helped alleviate students' fear about speaking in English, it also has brought about a decline in studen...
The College English programs in Korea show a strong inclination toward practicality in order to enhance communicative skills. While this trend has helped alleviate students' fear about speaking in English, it also has brought about a decline in students' reading competence which should be central to college-level English skills.
This paper focuses on the importance of 'reading' above all other three skills of English and suggests a model reading class and its teachers' manual with some theoretical backgrounds and some analysis of College English programs in general, particularly using a novella, John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.
Literature is known to have a lot of values as a material for reading classes. It provides variable linguistic expressions, helps students understand other culture, motivates them by giving enjoyment and makes them think critically and appreciate it. Especially the novel written in English has some strong points in English education. First, when students try to understand the plot of a novel, they connect their experience with the story and become more interested in it, which leads them to natural learning of English. Second, the novel enables the students to infer its plot from the context. Third, students can practice various reading strategies through reading novels.
The reading class suggested in this paper is based on the various principles and theories of teaching reading. Teaching materials for the class are both an original and an abbreviated version of Mice and Man, its audio book, a movie version, and its script. I suggest variable activities: keeping a reading journal, working together to make vocabulary list, analyzing characters with group members, predicting the story from the book cover, oral interview on reading, one-sentence summary, listening, speaking and writing activity connected with the story, dramatic reading, role-play, cloze test and discussion.
The most important thing in planning a reading class is teachers' endless effort and enthusiasm for better teaching. I hope what is suggested in this paper is helpful for them.