http:school'hkpcwong

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Reading - the key to success in English

• http//school.hk/pcwong

Prof. P.C. Wong Hong Kong School Net Department
of Information Engineering Emailpcwong_at_school.hk
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Question 1

• When students learn English, what do they mostly
  use?

Mouth
Eye
Hand
Brain
Ear
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Question 2

• How can we solve the following problems?
• ListenStudents not familiar with listening in
  English. They cannot differentiate oral from
  written English.
• SpeakingStudents seldom speak in English, and
  they are not expressive in English.
• ReadingStudents see a word but read another
  word, and they cannot decode complex sentence
  structures.
• WritingStudents always make mistakes with
  grammar, especially with Articles, Tenses, and
  Prepositions.

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Outline

• WHY?
• WHAT?
• HOW?

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About myself

• I grew up in Shek Kip Mei
• HKCEED, HKALE
• Graduated from CUHK (Electronics Engineering)
• From Kindergarten to PhD
• I had over 25 years learning English.
• I studied hard, but still I was not confident in
  using English.

Until 1990!
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About my son

• He studied in a local primary school.
• I didnt have a Filipino maid.
• My wife and I didnt talk to him in English.
• He didnt attend any oral classes.
• In P5, he finished the whole Harry Potter series.
• He didnt have foreign accent.
• After Form 2 , he wrote a story of over 10,000
  words
• His English was top in a very good EMI school.

And
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How?

• We read English stories with him for half-an-hour
  every night, for about 2 years.
• I started with simple ones, then gradually moved
  up the levels.
• My goal was that he would become a life-long
  reader in English.
• I learnt with him some reading strategies -
  Words, Phrases, and Sentences.
• Most importantly - We focused on developing his
  reading interest, reading strategies, and reading
  habit.

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Outline

• WHY?
• WHAT?
• HOW?

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3R Reading Scheme
Read Aloud(???) Read Apart(???) Read Again(???)
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Read Aloud (???)

• When you read, you listen. You develop your
  speaking and listening channels simultaneously.
• You become your 24-hour English teacher
• Speaking - Authentic English content
• Listening At your own pace
• Writing You can recall sounds of wordsand
  sentences from your mind, just like songs.

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Read Apart (???)

• We can understand better by identifying the
  components.
• We can reuse the components.

encyclopedia
en-cyclo-pedia
John and Jenny will meet a good friend in Tai Po
on Monday.
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Read Again (???)

• First time to get a rough idea.
• Second time to get some understanding.
• Third time or more to get some feeling.

There is a Chinese saying, If you read again
and again the 300 poems from Tangs Dynasty, you
can become a poet at least by stealing some of
the phrases.
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Take an example

• ????,?????????,???????????????,???????????????,???
  ???,???????????????
• This is an extra letter in the middle of the
  month because Im sort of lonely tonight. Its
  awfully stormy the snow is beating against my
  tower. All the lights are out on the campus, but
  I drank black coffee and I cant go to sleep.

Daddy Long Legs, Jean Webster
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Outline

• WHY?
• WHAT?
• HOW?

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How?
The three BIG Questions
How do I motivate them to read?
How do Idevelop their capabilities?
How do I develop students into life-long readers?
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Reading Program
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Excellent Reading
Boxes of graded books for class reading
More graded books in the library for extending
reading.
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(No Transcript)
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1. From Picture Book to Full Text
Page
Sentence
Paragraph
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2. From Level to Level
Level 6
Level 3
Class
Self
Class
Self
Level 5
Level 2
Class
Self
Class
Self
Level 1
Level 4
Class
Self
Class
Self
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3. From Reading To Learning
English Activities
Reading Platform
EasyDict
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A primary school in Shatin

• I taught two reading classes (P4/P6).
• After eight months
• We finished 12 books.
• They were no longerafraid of reading English.
• They became proactivein English activities.

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A CMI Secondary School in Tuen Mun

• They launched a program last September.
• In Oct., F.1 students said
• English was theirfavorite subject.
• They would readother English books.

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Summary
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