How to deal with vocabulary in reading texts
Posted: 08 Jul 2007, 09:35
Hi Lucy,
I'm writing in again with a question related to reading. In my class, I often give students extra reading material of the same topic as in the textbook to develop both their reading skills and their vocabulary. More importantly, I want them to be exposed to the target language as much as possible. Let me give you an example. This week, we work with the topic "Personality" and I give them two extra reading texts of the same topic accordingly. However, a few problems arise and I don't know how to deal with them. All the reading texts are followed by different tasks and they are by no means too difficult for the students. Yet, there are many new words in the text related to personality and the students in stead of trying to complete the tasks start finding out the meaning of new words. I told them that those words they can work out their meaning later when they have finished the tasks, and that those words do not affect their understanding of the texts. But my students just wouldn't listen to me. they keep asking me the meaning of all the new words. So even though I don't want I still end up explaining the meaning of all the new words in their native language (Vietnamese). I fell really bad about that.So what is your advice to me? How should I deal with words that are not central to the understanding of the text, and how can I convince my students that understanding a text doesn't mean to understand every single word.
I have one more question. I also ask my students to do extensive reading outside the class but I don't know how monitor what they do outside class. I want to make sure that they do read outside the class and I want to monitor their progress. Do you have any ideas on that?
Thanks so much
Hope to hear from you soon.
I'm writing in again with a question related to reading. In my class, I often give students extra reading material of the same topic as in the textbook to develop both their reading skills and their vocabulary. More importantly, I want them to be exposed to the target language as much as possible. Let me give you an example. This week, we work with the topic "Personality" and I give them two extra reading texts of the same topic accordingly. However, a few problems arise and I don't know how to deal with them. All the reading texts are followed by different tasks and they are by no means too difficult for the students. Yet, there are many new words in the text related to personality and the students in stead of trying to complete the tasks start finding out the meaning of new words. I told them that those words they can work out their meaning later when they have finished the tasks, and that those words do not affect their understanding of the texts. But my students just wouldn't listen to me. they keep asking me the meaning of all the new words. So even though I don't want I still end up explaining the meaning of all the new words in their native language (Vietnamese). I fell really bad about that.So what is your advice to me? How should I deal with words that are not central to the understanding of the text, and how can I convince my students that understanding a text doesn't mean to understand every single word.
I have one more question. I also ask my students to do extensive reading outside the class but I don't know how monitor what they do outside class. I want to make sure that they do read outside the class and I want to monitor their progress. Do you have any ideas on that?
Thanks so much
Hope to hear from you soon.