Czech EFL

Let the Czech check it out

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Free voluntary reading

I recommend all my students ought to read as much as they like and I really want to find out how free voluntary reading works so I've just bought The Adventures of Tom Sawyer + CD (Oxford Bookworms Library, Stage 1) for my brother. He's going to be my guinea pig but not the only one. As EFL Geek once pointed out, all language teachers should be learning a foreign language so they could better relate to what their students have to go through. Therefore, I also signed up for a year membership at Institut Français de Prague and borrowed a couple graded readers (littérature facile).

Mind you, I've been through 3 semesters of the worst possibly devastating grammar-translation university instruction of 'here you have a crap book, go memorize it and come back for your exam' type and first I've got to restore my relationship with French crushed by this horrendous approach.

4 Comments:

  • At 4:32 AM, Blogger Sean said…

    I'll be taking full-time Korean classes from December 1 - Monday to Friday 9:00 -1:00 and am looking forward to it. The program I'll be attending is the best one in the country with a very communicative student centred approach.

    I do wish that there were graded readers available in Korean, but they haven't yet been published. I wish I could persuade a publisher to do this, but am not sure where to begin.

     
  • At 7:36 AM, Blogger AJ Hoge said…

    Graded Readers

    Im doing the same with Spanish and enjoying it. I had the same devasting grammar-translation instruction in High School/College.

    But Im finding FVR to be very enjoyable and effective... especially when coupled with an audio version of the book on CD.

    Looking forward to hearing about your experience with French.

     
  • At 8:51 AM, Blogger johnkuti said…

    I'm wondering why you chose French...is Czech your first language?

     
  • At 9:16 PM, Blogger Jiri said…

    Why French? Hmm, there's no particular reason except I like how it sounds, find the culture somewhat attractive and want to know again how it feels when you struggle with learning a foreign language. Yes, my first language is Czech.

     

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