| Abstrakt: |
This article shows that some rather common foreign‐language‐teaching reading practices are questionable. Very often, the emphasis is on the content of the text used in the instruction, and only rarely on developing reading skills. Questioning, one of the most frequently observed teaching strategies, hardly contributes to better reading achievement. Neither does teaching the content or explaining words. Explanations for this are proposed to be found in educational tradition, teacher values, teacher needs, desired teaching comfort and the influence of the testing format as used in examinations. In fact, teaching reading is to a large extent no more than sustained comprehension assessment. Some alternative types of exercises, materials and teacher activities, are presented, based on an analysis of crucial characteristics of the reading process and on some clues from learning theory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER] |
