Course Title: English Extensive Reading（I II）
Course Code：12023, 12122
Number of Credits: 3 , 2
Teaching Hours: 48
Prerequisites: None
Overview
Extensive reading can play an important role in learners’ language education. As a consequence, Extensive reading should be a practical option for reading pedagogy in the foreign language curriculum. Traditional and popular methodologies will be reviewed, in particular, the grammar-translation approach, comprehension questions and language work, skills and strategies, intensive and extensive reading skills. The course will survey the main principles of extensive reading.
Learning Outcomes & Objectives
l Improve language fluency as learners develop active and passive (sight) vocabulary
Proficiency;
l Teach learners to become more conscious of written mistakes and develop a comprehensive awareness of grammatical structures;
l If an intensive reading program is implemented, learners can practice and apply the intensive reading skills learnt in the classroom during their extensive reading activities;
l Give learners the opportunity to improve their language level in a comfortable environment, in other words outside the classroom;
l Encourage learners to self-select appealing graded readers without the pressures of text analysis inherent to their academic studies.
l Encourage learners to read texts at a lower level than their academic reading requirements or competence.
l Allow learners to read at their own pace, which encourages the skill of individualized reading without the habitual dependency on a dictionary to translate every other word. That is to say, learners apply IR skills and strategies learnt in the classroom.
l By the end of this course students could be able to:
1. Present information, ideas and feelings clearly and coherently in front of an audience;
2. Convey ideas and information in conversations;
3. Describe the sequence of events, causes and effects;
4. Use words and expressions appropriate to the context;
5. Use correct pronunciation, intonation and register for different purposes;
6. Read aloud texts, familiar or unfamiliar, fluently;
7. Report findings；
Skills and Strategies Approach
Skills and strategies reflects the top-down approach which requires learners to recall background knowledge and schemata as the teacher prompts learners to produce the relevant background knowledge to help answering comprehension questions. Learners answer questions in groups and work on tasks which provide the teacher with evidence that learners have developed a global understanding of the text. Reading ability does not develop through a set of reading skills that claim to produce effective readers, but effective readers use a number of strategies, such as prediction, reflection, context, purpose and text-type analysis, in order to successfully interpret a text.
Assessment
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Form of assessment
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Weighting
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Assignment
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30%
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Presentation
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10%
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Exam
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60%
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Sources of Reading Materials
l Extensive Reading I (textbook), edited by Huang Yuanshen and Yu Sumei, published by Higher Education Press
l Source of Some Fast Reading Passages
News Week
Science World
Reader’s Digest
Pacific Friend
Washington Post
l Sources of Texts and Materials for Home Reading
Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. 1932
The Call of the Wild, by Jack London, simplified by Mick Bullard, Oxford University, 2000
Two Boxes of Gold, from Two Boxes of Gold
Fool’s Paradise, from Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories, by Isaac Bashevis Singer, N.Y.: Harper, 1966
Sleeping Ugly from Sleeping Ugly, by Jane Yolen, Putnam Publishing Group, 1997
The Divine Ms H, by Zadie Smith, from The Guardian, July 1 ,2003
Techniques That Might Smile upon Mona Lisa, by Elizabeth Olson, from The New York Times , January 1 , 2005
Internet Chatty Network, by Ethan Todras- Whitehill, from The New York Times, March 24, 2005
On the Wrong Side of the Global Divide, by Sarah Boseley, from The Guardian , February 18 , 2003
The Life and Times of William Shakespeare, by Jennifer Bassett, Oxford University, 2000
l Sources of Reading Skills
Reading and Study Skills: A Rhetorical Approach, by Joan Kimmelman, Harriet Kraniz, Charles Martin, Sandra Seltzer, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1884
Basic Reading Skills Handbook, by Harvey S. Wiener & Charles Bazrman, Hougton Mifflin Company, 1988
Efficient and Flexible Reading. By Kathleen T. Mc-McWhorter, Little, Brown and Company
Improving Reading, by Nancy V. Wood, CBS College Publishing, 1984
Reading and Study Skills, Book One, by Ronald B. Schmelzer, William L. Christen, William G. Browning, Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1984
Improving Reading Skills, by Deanne Milan, McGraw-Hill, Inc. 1992