Integrating reading and writing skills in every day classroom activities

Different authors agreed with the idea that reading and writing skills are closely related. Each one of them can be seen as the source of the other. Pintos (2009) claims that “appropriate input for acquisition of writing skills is achieved through reading because reading can provide primary models to start writing” (p.32).

According to Stotsky (1983), better readers are highly likely to produce more syntactically mature writing than those readers who can be considered poorer (as cited in Eisterhold,1990, p. 88) Consequently, Second Language teachers should take into account that an effective system in the academic discourse community is built by the integration of the reading skill into the writing one. Bloor (1985) proposes four approaches to make it possible,

1. Psychological approach, in which students practise the process involved in reading.
2. Linguistic approach, where students’s attention is drawn to the words and sentences of a given text.
3. Content-oriented approach, whose aim is to give students a specific purpose of reading. They can be presented several types of texts in order to produce different pieces of writing.
4. Pedagogically-oriented approach, where students are motivated to reading self-access materials which they can use at their own pace. (Bloor, 1985; as cited in Jordan, 1997).

Examples of every day classroom activities that can fit into the approaches mentioned above can be for instance: match the words with their meaning; look for the opposites of adjectives in a text; read the following paragraph then match the words in italics with their explanations or synonyms below, if teachers’ aim is to develop practising the process involved in reading. However, if the focus is on students’ attention on words and sentences of a certain text, they should be asked to solve activities such as: match the beginnings of the sentences in column A with their endings in column B; put the words in the right order to make sentences; complete the key words in certain definitions.

On the other hand, if the objective is to expect students to read a specific text with further purpose to be accomplished, they should be given tasks as the ones that follow: read the X Hotel brochure and write an e-mail to book a single room for 3 nights, ask if you can pay with credit card. Read the extract from the newspaper about this famous teenager pop singer. Write 5 questions you would like to ask them if you were an interviewer. Look at this advertisement, which adjectives would you add to make it more persuasive?

To promote or stimulate extensive reading, students could be given different options to choose to work on their own and share with their classmates and teachers. Some assignments that could fulfil this purpose could be, for instance: students can browse on the Internet visiting certain web pages, reading articles about specific topics and make a brief comment or report about them. They can also be given some short stories so that they choose one to read and then write the plot or prepare a strips of comics with the most important scenes of the story.

In conclusion, as Ferris and Hedgcock (1998) state, if we engage our students to develop their reading skill through the performance of varied activities, they will definetely improve their writing skill. Thus the relationship between reading and writing will greatly contribute to build an effective academic discourse community.









References
Eisterhold, J. C. (1990). “Reading-writing connections: Toward a description
for second language learners.” In Kroll, B. (Ed) (1990). Second language
writing: Research insights for the classroom. (pp. 88-102). New York, NY:
Cambridge University Press.
Ferris, D. and Hedgcock, J. S. (1998). Teaching ESL composition: Purpose,
process, and practice. London, UK: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Jordan, R. R. (1997). English for academic purposes: A guide and resource
book for teachers. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Pintos, V. (2008). Unit 1: Building up a community of teachers and prospective researchers. Universidad CAECE. Retrieved August 2009, from http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=2730