Hello everyone,
I strongly believe that reading is not merely a receptive process of picking up information from a page in a word-by-word manner. Rather, it is a selective process and characterized as an active process of comprehending. It is a real interaction between the author and the reader.
Therefore, it depends on your teaching focus and purpose with regard to reading. If you wish to help your students improve their pronunciation and speech, reading aloud may fit that focus. Yet if you emphasize reading comprehension and reading strategy use, it is important to ensure them to read silently but interactively and actively. Reading in advance is a good idea if you focus on discussion based on what your students read at home. However, if you tend to make your students strategic readers, you may find it important to teach them how to use reading strategies to be "good" readers as well.
I like teaching reading very much and I think it is teachers that can make reading acitivities productive in an interesting way.
I agree with ariuslynx in the way that there are so many interesting reading activities that teachers can employ to motivate their students. Surely, it is hard but worth trying. I like applying think-alound activity in reading and my students enjoy it. And there are tons of teaching resources we can make good use of.
For me, determining a purpose to teach reading helps me set relevant tasks or activities for my students in a reading class.
Bye for now
