SRA Reading Labs
I recently had the opportunity to try out an SRA Reading Lab for a couple of weeks (thank you, David from McGraw-Hill in Tokyo) and was very impressed with the material.
We tried Reading Lab 1a (there are three levels, as well as a developmental level below level one) with elementary, junior high school, senior high school, and adult students.
The kit consists of a teacher’s manual, a student record book, a CD-ROM that allows you to do tests and record keeping on a computer, and twelve levels of ‘power builders’, short reading texts with comprehension questions. There are ten power builders at each level, and the first two levels have pictures and sentences instead of a reading passage.
Each power builder has an answer card so students can check their own, or alternatively they can do the questions on a computer, which has the advantage of recording the student’s score for the teacher to check later.
The questions on each power builder consisted of comprehension questions and questions that help students deepen their knowledge of vocabulary and language (for example, at some levels the questions deal with prefixes and suffixes, and their meanings, or ask students to decide which particular meaning of a word is used in the passage). One of our students commented that this was very ‘deep’ learning, and I thought this was a good way to describe it: it is a far cry from the superficial comprehension questions students are used to.
Students could work on the power builders by themselves, and check their answers using the keys supplied, so it was easy to use the materials in mixed-ability classes: students work at their own pace and teachers only have to answer questions when students run into problems.
Our students all enjoyed the materials and commented favourably on them.
Unfortunately, there were a couple of things that may prevent me from using SRA Reading Labs at our school. The first reservation I had (and this is a minor one) is that at the lower levels some of the vocabulary used is not very frequent, and thus there is almost no chance of EFL learners knowing it. This makes for a considerable mismatch between the skills being practiced (phonics, decoding) and the knowledge necessary to be able to answer the question. Our students were able to decode the words, but had no idea what a ‘rod’ was, or that ‘led’ was the past tense of ‘lead’. This is not the end of the world, and it could be argued that this provides an opportunity to learn this kind of vocabulary, but it was somewhat frustrating for our elementary school age students.
The real dealbreaker is the cost: 130,000+ yen per set, or over 1.5 million to get all of them. Much as I and my students enjoyed using the materials, I am not sure I can justify the cost. It is a real shame as the SRA Reading Labs were a great match with our current curriculum and aims, and they are very easy to use in class.
It seems from the websites that these materials are mainly used in public schools in the US, thus the relatively high prices, but I would have thought that the economies of scale would result in lower prices. Certainly the product cannot cost all that much to print, no matter how good the design values are (the boxes do look great, and students are attracted to them).
I am interested in whether other teachers are using SRA materials in Japan. I estimate that if the SRA Reading Labs cost half as much, they would sell a lot more than twice as many (although I don’t know how many they sell now). We would certainly be interested in purchasing several.
If you are interested, please contact McGraw-Hill Japan and they may be able to provide you with a loan box so you can see for yourself. Alternatively, if you are currently using Reading Labs in Japan, please comment below.
Forcing students to learn
I often hear teachers say ‘I can’t force the students to learn, all I can do is help them on their way’, and in many ways I agree with this sentiment.
However, as a learner of Japanese and, as of April this year, the piano, I disagree. I want my teachers to ‘force’ me, to establish expectations of what I should be doing between classes, and check to see that I am actually doing it.
If no-one is watching, I find it easy to get distracted by other things.
I am not sure how many of my students feel like I do, but it might be an interesting topic for a survey. Something to come back to once classes start.
8 Aug 2009, 3:10pm
EFL extensive listening Language learning listening self-study
by sendaiben
1 comment
EFL extensive listening Language learning listening self-study
by sendaiben
1 comment
The importance of listening
I think the importance of listening input for students cannot be overemphasised, yet it is severely neglected in Japan, in both public and private teaching settings.
I myself have not really focused on teaching listening so far, for the following reasons:
1. graded listening materials are not as common as graded reading
2. it’s hard to categorize listening materials at a glance, like you would with a written text
3. technical issues get in the way: you have to make the materials available to the students, and it’s not as easy as just handing them a book or a handout
However, I have decided to have a go at really boosting my students’ listening practice. I am going to investigate online delivery, lending CDs, and lending mp3 players pre-loaded with content.
I will post on any challenges and successes with the project. Comments on the subject are also most welcome.
Learning a foreign language
Learning a foreign language is not difficult, but it takes time and commitment.
Anyone can master a foreign language, and it does not require studying verb tables, memorising vocabulary, or buying a lot of books and resources. In fact, it doesn’t really involve any of the things we did at school in our foreign language classes. To be honest, many of those things seem as if they were just busy work, things our teachers assigned to us because they are easy to check and evaluate, and give both students and teachers the feeling that they are actually doing something. This is the good news.
The bad news is that it takes a lot of time to master a language. Let’s say you want to be in a position where you can understand pretty much everything people say to you in your daily life, as well as be able to watch TV, read a newspaper, and deal with any paperwork that comes your way. You will need a passive vocabulary of at least 5,000 to 10,000 words, and an active one of around half that.
In order to learn a word so that you know it passively (ie you can understand it when you see it or hear it) you will have to encounter it in text or aural input 20-50 times in context. In order to acquire it so you can use it actively (when speaking or writing), you will have to encounter it even more, as well as start using it yourself.
Doing the math (something I am not good at), you can see that you are going to have to read millions of words, or listen to hundreds or thousands of hours of audio, in order to get the exposure you need to the language.
Before you give up and go and take up a more sensible pursuit, such as counting grains of sand on a beach, however, there is a final piece of good news (I was saving it until the end):
None of this needs to be boring or a chore.
With the proliferation of free content on the internet, it is fairly easy to find interesting audio and text on almost any topic, as well as online translation, vocabulary learning, and grammar explanation websites, without spending a penny. I’ll be introducing some over the next few weeks.
Here’s the first one:
A wonderful online system for delivering graded content that is mostly free (you can pay for tutors to correct your written work or speak to). The founder, Steve Kaufmann, has a blog that is well worth checking out.