[Peru]

I disagree with most of the posters. I believe that reading in class can be a useful assignment, but I can tell you that if you call upon them to read aloud it can be disasterous, especially if they can anticipate the reading order. They will immediately figure out which paragraph they are to be reading and skip ahead to review it to make sure there are no difficult-to-pronounce words. Reading silently is the only way to go.

But the other gentlemen does have a point. Endless silent reading in class isn't going to be that interesting and draws away from the point of encouraging verbal communication. I find it's best to have the students work in pairs with one student reading paragraph 1, the other paragraph 2. They can then summarize what they've read to each other (ideally in English) and then review what the other had read in order to verify that his summary was accurate.