Week 9: Teaching Reading and Writing

Just as important as learning to speak and listen in the target language, it's just as important as learning read and write in the target language. These four areas of learning each play their own imporatnt part when it comes to language learning because ultimately they all come together to build up one's proficiency in that language.

Important aspects of teaching/learning reading include the bottom-up and top-down processing as well as the Schema Theory. All of these draw upon how students construct meaning from what they are exposed to when it comes to reading. Depending on the kind of students you have, you may have to incorporate both the bottom-up and top-down approaches to teaching reading because more than likely we will have a classroom of diverse learning, as both concepts pose different ways to teaching reading. I really like the schema theory because it acknowledges and shines light to the fact that students always have background knowledge for different things, even when it comes to reading. This background knowledge ultimately plays a role in how they interpret and grasp the main ideas of the different things they may read. I believe that a big thing when it comes to teaching reading (as much with other teaching) is the role of affect and cultures on such a subject. Affective factors like self-esteem, motivation, language ego, and empathy play role in reading just as any other part of language learning. When self-esteem is high, as well as motivation, then instruction has been found  most effective, and I believe that along with this, texts and reading of interests, as Brown states, to the students will effect the learning and instruction process as well.

The reading strategies provided in Brown's chapter offer a great place for us as future educators to start thinking about reading comprehension in our students as well as the principles for teaching reading skills, which I found to be very important.

When it comes to teaching and learning writing, I believe that it is very, very important to emphasize on "writing as a process." I think that this kind of approach to teachign writing, will help students achieve at higher levels, because the traditional focus of the "final product" isn't looked at as the most important aspect when it comes to writing. Although my personal experience with writing a (in my L1) had the most important focus on the product rather than the process, it's safe to say that I applied more of the process aspect when learning my L2, and I believe it was more of a motivator when I was able to learn and understand my own writing process and revising. I also believe that the way we present out feedback for writing to our students will ultimately influence their achievement on a specific piece of writing, etc.

How do we stray away from the traditional focus on form and the "final product" and implement writing as a process and more so focus on content?