Stephen van Vlack
Sookmyung Women`s University
Graduate School of TESOL
Teaching Reading
Policy - Fall 2003
Overview: This three-hour-per-week course is designed to provide students with a full account of the phenomenon of literacy from the point of view of reading. Rather than just focussing on teaching techniques students receive instruction in the development of literacy, both as a physical/cognitive achievement and a social phenomenon as well as going over practical teaching techniques. Following this, the course will be divided into two main sections; the background and practical teaching concerns. This is important because reading is generally seen as the most relevant and useful of the fours skills in the EFL classroom. Any practising foreign language teacher needs to be well-versed in the background and techniques of reading.
Objectives: This course has three main objectives: to get the students to have a clear understanding of the principles of how writing systems work to allow elementary literacy to develop, to look at the sociological side of reading to get an idea what reading and texts really entail, and finally to develop skills as more efficient teachers of reading, again from a literacy perspective. By the end of the course all students should be able to develop an effective English reading program for all levels and age groups with a full reflection of what English reading entails. Fun.
Texts and Materials:
Main text
Nuttall, Christine. (1996) Teaching reading skills in a foreign language. Oxford: Heinemann English Language Teaching.
-This is our main text and we will be going through most of it rather carefully. Make sure you have it and that you follow the assignments and readings from the text.
Secondary text
Ong, Walter. (1982) Orality and literacy. London: Routledge.
-This is a short text and we will not be covering all of it.
-In addition to the main and secondary texts there will also be a series of articles and chapters that students will have to read.
Additional Materials: Students must bring to each class a folder to hold any papers that the instructor gives out.
Methodology
English Only: Students must conduct all course work in English. This means all writing, note-taking, and discussion must be in English. Use of Korean will result in a significantly lower participation grade.
Classroom: Various approaches will be employed in the classroom. Direct lecturing on the part of the instructor will kept to a minimum while group work, presentations, in-class activities, and direct and indirect questioning will be stressed. Remember students, you are teachers and graduate students. You have to be critical of what you read, see, and hear. It is important that you question everything until you are satisfied that you understand what, how, and why but not necessarily in that order.
Attendance: Students are expected to attend all scheduled classes. Two or more absences will result in a significantly lowered final grade. Being late twice is counted as an absence. Arriving more than half an hour late is also counted as an absence. Students themselves are responsible for all material covered and assigned in class during their absence. If you are going to be absent and know it beforehand, make sure you contact your teacher as far in advance as possible.
Assignments
Homework: Students will be given homework for each class. This homework will take the form, for the most part, of reading and writing up summaries. In addition, students will receive written projects from time to time as well.
Exams
Midterm Paper: The mid-term paper is due in the eight week of class (October 20th) It will be either a take-home or an in-class exam. The students will decide. The midterm will cover the first seven weeks of the course.
Final Paper: The final paper/project will be due after the class is finished. The exact date has yet to be determined. The exact details on the final paper/project will be released at a later date.
Grades: Final grades will be based on performance in the following categories.
Attendance 10%
Participation 20%
Homework Assignments 25%
Mid-term paper 15%
Final paper 30%
Important Notes
-Late assignments will not be accepted for marks and missed in class work cannot be made up. If, however, you know in advance that you will be late or absent make sure you contact the teacher and maybe something can be worked out.
-The penalty for plagiarism and cheating is automatic failure. Don`t try it.
Instructor - Stephen P. van Vlack
Office - Graduate Building 308
Tel. - 710-9703
E-mail - [email protected]
Web site
There will be a web site for this class. Each week both before and after class materials will be added to the site, so make sure you check it regularly. The address is:
http://www.angelfire.com/ut/gaang
Bibliography
Gaur, Albertine (1995) Scripts and writing systems: A historical perspective. In Taylor and Olsen (Eds.), pp. 19-30.
Morrow, Lesley (2001) Literacy development in the early years (4th Edition). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Pilgreen, Janice (2000) The SSR handbook. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers.
Rogers, Henry (1995) Optimal orthographies. In Taylor and Olsen (Eds.), pp. 31-43.
Scholes, Robert (1995) Orthography, vision, and phonemic awareness. In Taylor and Olsen (Eds.), pp. 359-373.
Taylor, I. and Olson, D. (Eds.) (1995) Scripts and literacy. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Vacca , Vacca, and Gove (2000) Reading and learning to read (4th Edition). New York: Longman.
Venezsky, Richard (1995) How English is read: Grapheme-phoneme regularity and orthographic structure in word recognition. In Taylor and Olsen (Eds.), pp. 111-129.