Graded Readers and Vocabulary Learning

This week we are starting our novel, the Wrong Man by Kris Anderson. This Penguin Active Reader is a a book that has been especially created for adult English language learners.

Graded readers, published by Oxford, Penguin, Cambridge, Grass Roots Press, are designed for adult learners at various levels of reading proficiency. These books use controlled vocabulary that has been determined useful by linguistics studies of English corpora. Essentially, a corpus is a massive collection of  written text and oral sources that are inputted into a computer database, and scanned with a computer program that determines how frequently words appear in this database. This computer program, a concordancer, scans the texts and brings back a  frequency of occurrence number for all the words in the corpus. The frequency count, or how many times a word appears in texts,  is important because it helps us  understand which words are most frequently used by English language speakers. This,  in turn allows us to use our vocabulary learning time most effectively. Learning words that are  encountered frequently, allows  learners to understand most of the words used in most English texts faster. Thus, when you study vocabulary,  if you learn the most frequently used words in the English language, you are learning the most useful words.

Graded readers can be used for intensive or extensive reading. Readers used for intensive reading contain  activities that help learners understand the story. For this reason it's OK if the reader is a bit challenging, especially since a teacher will often be helping out.  When graded readers are used for extensive or pleasure reading, the objective is to read as many of these books as possible. This is done so that the readers have a lot of exposure to vocabulary and grammar structures that they have already learned. In this way, reading a graded reader cements the language that the reader already has. To read for pleasure, learners should choose  a book that they would want to read even in their first language. A second criteria is that learners should understand 98% of the vocabulary is the book.

Extensive Reading helps SS's become more fluent readers, improves reading and writing  test scores and makes one a more confident user of the English language. Graded readers are a tremendously useful resource for learners of English, and I can't recommend them enough.

Academic Success

Talking about study skills in this first unit of our class, makes me think back to the time when I had to learn about how to become a good student. I remember spending a lot of time at the Academic Learning Center. I think it's a good place to find a lot of resources. Here is a link to the University of Manitoba Academic Learning Center website.

I truly believe that  anyone can be a good student. All you need is to know how to manage your personal life and school life and some study strategies. I particularly appreciated the Concentration Tips from the University of Manitoba  Learning Assistance Brochure that we read today.  I've listed them below because I think they are very useful for students who have a difficult time staying focused while studying.


Ten Concentration Tips

1. Choose a quiet place with good lights and a comfortable chair.
2. Study difficult lessons when you are most refreshed
3. Highlight, take notes and self question to stay interested in your study
4. Use a worry list to write out your personal problems.
5. Take short breaks
6. When you start to think about sth. else, catch yourself and try to get back to work
7. Get lots of sleep regularly
8. Exercise
9. Eat well
10. Reward yourself to stay motivated.

  

Mother's day 2013 at Assiniboine  Park

Welcome to Week 2



On Sunday, May 12th we celebrated Mother's Day. My family and I had a wonderful day at Assiniboine Park. I know that in Europe mothers are celebrated on  International Women's Day, which is on March 8. When do you celebrate your Mother's Day  in your country?

 I hope the first week wasn't too overwhelming for you guys. In reading class last week, you learned at least 15 word families, and quite a few other expressions. You read a story and wrote your language story. You also took the placement test for Reading Horizons.

This week we will continue talking about being academically successful. You will also begin your lessons in Reading Horizons. I can't wait to see how fast your reading, decoding, spelling and pronunciation skills are going to improve.

My Language Story

I was born in Romania, and spent the first 12 years of my life there. My native language is Romanian, but I started learning Spanish in school when I was 8. I started learning English in school when I was 10. I learned a lot about English grammar in school, and because it wasn't very different from Romanian and Spanish, it wasn't too difficult for me

When I was 12 I moved to Canada, where I had to speak English not only in school but everywhere else, as well. In fact, I stopped learning English formally when I  moved to Canada.My Canadian friends taught me how to speak English well, and how to pronounce the words correctly. I also read a lot. I learned many useful words, and had a lot of exposure to good English sentences. Reading English books was a big step for me, but I used a dictionary a lot and with time I became a very good reader.

I continued to do exercises to improve my grammar.  I continue to work on my English,  and once in a while I ask my friends for help with pronunciation and confusing grammar points. Learning a language is a life long pursuit. If you  want to be a good second language speaker, you must commit yourself to continuously improve your language. My future language goals are to become a better writer and  a more confident speaker, so I plan to write as much as possible,  and do a lot more  public speaking.

Reading Horizons

In this class you will have a 2 hour lab. The lab will be on Mondays in Isbister Room 101. This reading lab is designed to help you improve your decoding skills, help you become a better and faster reader, improve your pronunciation, learn new vocabulary, and improve your spelling. The computer program we'll be using is called Reading Horizons. If you want to know more about this program you can visit the website at www.readinghorizons.com.

To begin with you will have to take a placement test. The placement test will tell you if you need to take all the lessons, some or just a few. After the placement you will listen to a demo of the program. You will need to complete each lesson before you can go to the next. However, at the beginning of each lesson you can take a short assessment and if you pass it, you will only have to complete a very short version of the lesson. You should always try to challenge the lesson so that you can finish as fast as possible.

Each chapter ends with a test. You will take the test and if you pass you can go to the next chapter. I will keep track of your marks and progress in general. Your mark for this lab will be a combination of progress and test marks. You are expected to work on Reading Horizons at least three more hours in addition to the 2 hours you spend in the lab.

Welcome 150 Students

In this course you will learn a lot of useful vocabulary and reading strategies. Your reading speed and comprehension will improve and you will become a better reader.

Reading Strategies

Reading strategies are ways to help you understand a story or article.  Reading in a second language   is different than reading in your first language. You need to know a lot of vocabulary and you need some help to understand the structure and form of the text. To understand the whole reading you will learn to preview, predict, and look for main ideas and details. These reading strategies will help you read faster and understand the text easier.

Vocabulary

The vocabulary you will learn in this class is useful   because you will come across these words many times in your readings. Learning high frequency vocabulary is the best   way to improve your reading comprehension.  To understand a reading and to use the words correctly in writing or speaking you will need to know more than just a word’s translation. You will also need to know the spelling of each word.

Knowing   a word’s translation is a very good start, but you will need to know a few other things about a word. The vocabulary sheets will have a words’ translation, synonyms, words family, and collocations.

How the classes will work

I will present the vocabulary you need to know each week in class. You will have to print out the vocabulary sheets from the DROPBOX FOLDER at the following  address https://www.dropbox.com/sh/c3qrl81dxmflfff/HckL-BgbZs.  Translate the words and fill in the translation box. Bring the sheets to class. I will talk about each word and expect you to write notes.  

When we finish the vocabulary, we will learn a reading comprehension strategy,  read a story and do some comprehension questions. You will probably have to do a writing or speaking assignment after each reading unit.

When we finish the week’s work you will be given a review. You can get the review from the DROPBOX FOLDER, complete it and bring it to class where I will give you the answers. Next you will have a test ( assessment) in class. The assessment will cover the vocabulary words from the week’s list and information from the story you read. Sometimes doing the homework will help you on your assessments.

In week 4 we will read a book called The Wrong Man. This book is easy and most students find it interesting. We will read the book in class, you will read it at home, you will listen to the book on CD, you will do some comprehension exercises and then you will get tested on this book.

In weeks 4 and 8 you will also have a midterm and final exam. We will review what we learned in weeks 1-4 before you take the midterm exam, and what we learned in weeks 5-8 for the final exam. I will also explain the instructions on the exam. Also, the questions on your weekly assessments will be almost the same as the questions from the exam. 

In week five you will be introduced to the Extensive Reading Library. I will expect you to read at least two more books from the library. I will explain more about this later.

One final note

 In this session I will be trying out a new book called 4000 Essential Words. We will try out 3 chapters from this book, and I will give you copies of each chapter. You will be tested on this book in the weekly assessments, but not on the midterm and final exams.

Let's have fun and learn some new words!