Innovation in Language Learning

Language teachers frequently voice out that they feel unprepared when teaching reading-related activities in class, through which they can enhance their students’ reading skills [1]. A common feeling shared by teachers and students alike is one viewing reading-related tasks as boring, repetitive and tedious [2]. Therefore, while teachers wish to motivate students and continuously aim to put them at the centre of the reading activity, a common occurrence is that teachers end up feeling they lost a battle since notwithstanding all the teachers’ good will and intentions, students still eventually feel detached from what is being taught in class [3]. In this light, this paper intends to contribute to the field of research and presents the insights obtained from a two-year research venture involving three schools in Malta. The research venture started by receiving feedback from language teachers about how they feel when obliged to teach reading during their language lessons. The input was evaluated using thematic analysis [4] and results indicated that the interviewed teachers did experience the abovementioned challenging situation, highlighted by literature, each time they had to teach reading-related skills.  As a proactive reaction to this, adopting multimodal trends and techniques [5], the paper will present (tried and tested) suggestions through which teachers can feel more prepared and effective when putting students at the centre during reading lessons. The shared examples will be taken from a research venture where, together with the participating teachers, a traditional (non-modern) Maltese book written in 1986 [6] was transformed into a motivating multimodal reading text. As a conclusion, the paper suggests that to reach this, what helps is predominantly focusing on the likes and dislikes of the readers (i.e. the students in the class). With this teachers need to keep the linguistic level of the target audience in mind and design activities permitting students to involve themselves in task-based reading activities. These activities should be based on initiatives through which students feel encouraged to express their reactions through their favourite (frequently nonlinguistic) modes. These may include visuals, dance, songs, drama, clothes and colours [7]. The road is winding… but possible.

Keywords:

Reading skills, Traditional reading books, Multimodality, Pedagogical resources, Student-centred teaching and learning

REFERENCES

1. Moats, Louisa C. "Teaching Reading" Is" Rocket Science: What Expert Teachers of Reading Should Know and Be Able to Do." American Educator 44.2 (2020): 4.
2. Mariusz, Kruk. "Investigating the experience of boredom during reading sessions in the foreign language classroom." Journal of Language and Education 7.3 (27) (2021): 89-103.
3. Rusgandi, Muhammad Andi. "Reading Strategies in Enhancing Students’ Reading Comprehension: Are They Still Relevant?." IJET (Indonesian Journal of English Teaching) 12.1 (2023): 57-72.
4. Peel, Karen L. "A beginner’s guide to applied educational research using thematic analysis." Practical Assessment Research and Evaluation 25.1 (2020).
5. Kress, Gunther, and Jeff Bezemer. "Multimodal discourse analysis." The Routledge handbook of discourse analysis. Routledge, 2023. 139-155.
6. Zahra, T. “Il-ktieb tal-Fenek l-aħmar”. Gutenberg, 1986.
7. Jewitt, C. (2005). Multimodality,“reading”, and “writing” for the 21st century. Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, 26(3), 315-331.