Monday 7 March 2011
Results of poll on daily reading expectation
Below, I've copied and pasted in the results of the poll asking you how much we should expect to read every day. Tonight's reading of "Fire on the Mountain" in Golding's Lord of the Flies is within the limit that most people thought reasonable.
How many pages per day should AEP level 5 students aim to read?
3 comments:
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I'm happy with your answers. I was hoping that most people would choose one of the two middle options. 15 - 20 pages a day seems about right to me.
ReplyDeleteYou might find that challenging at first, but like any other skill, piano playing, football, swimming, or whatever, improved performance comes from practice that pushes you to do more at a higher level than before. But not so high that you are overwhelmed - I would not expect level 5 students to read 30 pages a day every day. In fact, I don't even ask level 6 students to do that. And I choose texts whose content is also challenging without being too difficult. There is a lot of new vocabulary in Lord of the Flies, but much of it you can safely skip over, and you definitely should not try to remember all of the new words you will come across - some of Golding's vocabulary would be unfamiliar to most native English readers.
I think how much student should read per day depends on what kind of writing they read. Although a novel has a lot of new vocabulary and various structures throughout story, they are written by one author with a certain style and words and structures are repeatedly used throughout the story. So, reading a lot would mean we find it several times which can allow us understand and remember it without being aware. On the other hand, in case of reading some serious academic writing, it has not much repeated words and structures that allow us rehearse them frequently. So, to understand well how the words and structures are used, how style they are written, what is it meaning in a certain context, we should read qualitatively, not quantitatively. It is like reading a novel 2 pages comparing with reading 1 pages of a academic article 2 times. I think both ways should be comparable.
ReplyDeleteBerm,
ReplyDeleteI agree. That's one reason the longer reading is a novel. The next readings are much shorter, but more academic and challenging.
Similarly, after one week of blogging the easy BBC News as an introduction, it would be a good idea to move to The New York Times or The Economist for some more serious writing.
That it should become easier as you get used to Golding's style is another reason why I think it's reasonable for us to continue aiming to read a full chapter every day until we finish Lord of the Flies next week.