Reading for Understanding

After I read “Reading for Understanding” chapter 4, I have understood how important a role the metacognitive dimension plays in middle and high school students’ reading behavior. The chapter gave me the following insights regarding motivating students to enhance their literacy.

First, middle and high school students are adolescents who are mature enough to be able to think independently. It is necessary to work on their mentality, open up their mind, and make them do their own psychoanalysis. This is not only to make them understand that reading is a necessary skill that bridges the gap from their present stage to their future survival, but also to make them think about and monitor their reading behavior, analyze it, find the problems and then solve the problems on their own.

This metacognitive approach includes letting students know that literacy inadequacy is not a shame but a norm among all learners. Therefore, and most importantly, students should talk about what their reading problems are, so the teacher-student partnership can work together to solve the problems with appropriate strategies.

Second, what a great idea it is to set up a literacy-reading program and require students to read books based on their personal interests and proficiency level. As a Chinese language teacher, one of the biggest challenges in teaching Chinese language to non-Chinese speakers is that there exists very little level and content appropriate reading material. That is an urgent call for all Chinese teachers. It is also something I am very interested in doing – to write readable books for Chinese language learners.

Third, set up a system accountable to operate the literacy-reading program. It is very important to give students a clear purpose and reason for their reading; let them read with questions in mind, and find the answers to the questions while reading. It is the same idea as teachers asking students to do a “KWL” chart. I have always found this method a very efficient reading tool as both a student and a teacher. The “SSR” (Silent Sustained Reading) log is an excellent tool. A SSR log not only requires students to write down all their confusions and important reflections on their reading, it also requires the both teacher and students to follow their reading progress in detail. I certainly will borrow this for my future teaching.