How to Direct Post-reading  Activities

                      辉   哥

  In English learning ,it is important for teachers to change the students’ passive study into active study. Among many ways of reaching this goal, trying to get students to participate in varieties of activities in class is particularly effective.

  In Senior English for China, reading skills and strategies are practised in a three –part tasks cycle that provideds repeated opportunities for the students to learn and practise them. In a simplified model, reading tasks can be divided into three stages: pre-reading activities, while-reading activities and post-reading activities.It may be worthwhile to note that while the “while –reading activities “may seem the most important, but it is in fact that what the students do before and after reading that has the greatest impact on both comprehension and reading. So post-reading activities play a very important role in helping stuents gain better understanding of the text, as well as poster their ability of using English both orally and written.

 As English teachers, how can we guide students in post-reading activities?

I.Discussion

 Senior English for China provides variety of topics which are familiar to the students.Most students are interested in these topics.After learning a text , they are able to and desire to express their opinions on the concerned topic.Classroom discussion helps students comprehend the text deeply and thoroughly and offers them good opportnities to express themselves on topics as well.We may divide students into groups to discuss for three to five minutes . Then , representatives from those groups are required to express their opinon to the whole class in turns.Such discussion can even lead to a min-debate sometimes.For example ,after reading Are We Endangered? (SEFC Book I A,Unit 10) I ask the students to have mini-debate about the cloning of animals:

 T: Today many people are talking about cloning.Some students are wondering why scientists spend so much money protecting endangered species instead of cloning them. Even scientists do not agree with each other. Work in groups of four. Two will be experts who are against the idea of cloning; the others will be experts who argue for it . Have a mini-debate.

The students who are for it said the cloning technology could save animas like the panda. It brings extinct animals back to life.Some animals have been dead for hundreds of years. People could be very excited to see them again. Cloning can bring in a lot of money. The students who are against it said cloning costs a lot of money, the cloning of the dinosaur could harm the environment. it could be a new enemy. Even if they are brought back, they can’t survive in today’s world. Why do they extinct?Because they have no place to live in.Mini-debate activity not only makes students change their language from input into output,improve their oral English and strengthen their faculty of memory, but also foster their ability of imagination and creation.

II. Role-playing

 The main purpose of teaching English is to develop students’ abilities of using the languge in a real situation.Role- playing offers stuents a real or half –real situation. It combines the situation with certain language materials learned closely.By participating such kind of activities, students can learn a live language.Besides, role –playing creates students’ enthusiam to study and arouse their interest in Enlish learning as well.Take Unforgettable Experience (SEFC Book1A, Unit 4)for example, from the passage we can learn something about the waves Flora and Jeff had experienced.I asked my students to make up a short play according to the situation,then asked them to play out the play in groups of threes. One played a part of Jeff, one played the part of Flora and the third one, the part of the expert in natural disasters.They made an interview about the waves.They worked in full swing.Later, they changed their roles one another. Finally, a chosen group acted the play out before the rest of the class, which bettered the classroom efficeency and made a deep impression on students.

IV. Passage summary or retelling

 As Senior students, they should be trained to become proficient at summaring the text both orally or in written forms.Passage summary or retelling helps students to be good at using the language they learned to connect ideas and lays a solid foundation of composition writing. In reading classes, I usually ask each student to retell the text using some given words or patterns chosen from the text. orally .The content of the summary can be quite different from that of the text. For example, after learning Good Friendst(SEFC Book1A, Unit I), I asked my students to retell the text using about 100 words.I will give some notes:

1.Try to use the past tense.

2.Make use of the key words or expression: a successful manager, send mail everywhere, little time for him , crashed over the Pacific , collect water, hunt for food , share joys and sorrows , give as much as take.

After learning The Silver Screen(SEFC Book1A Unit 5) , I asked the students to talk about what they have learnt from this lesson by giving some sentence patterns on the blackboard:

 I have learnt that…

 I begin to think…

 To my surprise…

 I realize…

 I think I will…

 Students do it one by one and they have the right to choose “pass” (to encourage students to give personal opinions and highlight the theme of this lesson.

V. Story – extending

The well-known English –teaching expert L.G Alexander once said, “The teacher’s efforts should not be directed at informing his students about a language, but at enableing them to use it.”Therefore, in my opinion, whether the students have learnt something or not from the text should be judged not by how much he knows about it, but how well he can reproduce the text .Of course, text-retelling or summary and story –extending is a good way to foster students’ ability of narrating in English. It improves students’ imagination as well.For example , I required my students to extend the story of The Rescue(SEFC Book1A, Unit 4)by asking them:Imagine what may happen later,and continue the story.Each of student has a different development of the story, most of them are resonable and interesting .Students have chances to share the ideas and then come to an agreement,the group leaders are required to give a report.

VI.Game playing

After we learned Are We Endangered?(SEFC Book 1A, Unit 10), I divide the class into eight rows, straight from the board to the back of the room. The first person makes a sentence containing the word in the text, put the sentence down on a strip of paper and hand it in to me.I whisper the sentence to the next person in the line. That student must in turn must tell the next one, and so on.Sudents whisper the message down until the words hve traveled all the way to the back of the row. When the last one hears the message, he or she writes it down. After that round is over, the students at the very back reads out their sentence one by one. I read out the original sentences. If the two sencences from the same group are exactly the same, the row wins. This can be a great game to review reported speech and to improve the students’ sentence-making ability.

 To sum up, in reading classes we English teachers should design post-reading activities meticulously and direct students’ reading comprehension and their abilities of using English can be improved graduanlly and efficiently.(段永辉）