The Reader has long been the black sheep of the EFL (English
as Foreign Language) classroom. 61) Teachers either ignore Readers, or
neglect and abuse them, failing to recognize their learning potential. The
reason for this can no longer be laid at the door of the publishers. Nowadays, a
vast range of material is produced suitable for all interests, age ranges, and
ability levels. It is more probably the attitude of the teacher, and thus, the
student, which is responsible. Are any of the following close to your own
attitude, or familiar to you from conversations with colleagues Readers are an
expensive luxury. The school cannot afford them. Other things must come
first. I am trying to get through a fairly dense syllabus to
equip my students, ultimately, for examinations; I cannot spare the time for
frills. Reading for pleasure is a private and personal thing. I cannot see how
this can be used in the EFL classroom. 62)I understand that extensive reading
for pleasure can only improve language, but I have no way of checking that
learning has taken place other than comprehension questions. These
activities reduce the pleasure. 63)The above are
explanations, excuses, reasons and justifications from teachers talking about
the scant use of Readers in the classroom. Their comments illustrate three
views prevalent at present. First, those teachers feel that time spared for
Readers will in some way deprive their students of certain key language skills
and abilities. Second, those teachers are fostering or even pandering to
students’ reluctance to read for pleasure. 64)Finally, those teachers are
unaware of how to use and exploit Readers in their classrooms and, there- fore,
provide a limited range of activities, Which, in turn, limits the responses of
their students. 65)If teachers take Readers into classroom with any one,
ore combination of the above attitudes, this will be imparted to the students
who will then also believe that Readers are preventing them from doing something
more important and are a waste of valuable learning time. They read only to
enable them to answer a comprehension task. It is up to the
teacher to convince the reluctant students that reading, either extensive or
intensive, is pleasurable. Only one of many ways of obtaining pleasure is to be
able to answer the teachers’ comprehension check questions the following day.
The world of reading will remain, and still be as inaccessible as ever to the
students.