INTEGRATING READING AND WRITING FOR EFFECTIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING

Abstract

Writing is a difficult skill for native speakers and non-native speakers alike, because writers must balance multiple issues such as content, organization, purpose, audience, vocabulary, punctuation, spelling, and mechanics such as capitalization. Writing is especially difficult for non-native speakers because they are expected to create written products that demonstrate mastery of all the above elements in a new language. In addition, writing has been taught for many years as a product rather than a process. Therefore, teachers emphasize grammar and punctuation rather than decisions about the content and the organization if ideas.

Based on the positive findings of previous experience with ESL students at the lower levels there can be designed an integrated reading and writing course for the first-year students. The objective of the course is to help learners write more effectively, freely, naturally, and fluently while acquainting them with the literature in the English language.

To achieve the goals of the course, students are expected to read literature which also can include some selected contemporary poetry in English. Thus, the students can be exposed to contemporary literature of the US, as well as other parts of the world in authentic English. Integrating reading helps second and foreign language learners improve their language proficiency and develop cultural awareness of the target language. Although the fact that they can adjust themselves to the repeated vocabulary and the style of the writer [1, 179].

At the beginning, the stories are simple ones and represent cultures from different parts of the world. This is to help students develop a habit of reading. The students are involved emotionally and linguistically through communicative activities. For example, they are expected to recall some events and predict others. Similarly, questions about characters can be asked. Reading logs and worksheets can be prepared and given to students to be completed. The reading logs can include questions about difficult or challenging passages in the text, and the worksheets can have questions about events, characters, and the students’ opinions and reactions to the text. The aim for preparing these reading logs and worksheets is to encourage students to think through the questions, clarify and compose their responses on paper, and write extensively. In this activity mostly the content must be graded.