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been charged to do: create readers” (2009: 4). Schools should strive simultaneously for
both skill and motivation, as cognitive skills and reading motivation are mutually
reinforcing and not alternatives (Kirsch et al, 2002). A language teacher that focuses only
on teaching children how to read is failing her/his students.
According to Baker et al, three things that effective teachers know and do, especially for
their disengaged or “reluctant” readers, are:
to enhance students’ sense of
competence
by providing them with materials
to read that are challenging yet manageable;
to reinforce students’ sense of
autonomy
by encouraging them to choose
books of personal interest;
and to support students’ sense of
relatedness
by giving them the opportunity
to discuss what they are reading with others. (2000: 10)
Krashen raises an even stronger voice:
Our problem in language education, as Frank Smith has pointed out, is that we
have confused cause and effect. We have assumed that we first master
language “skills” and then apply these skills to reading and writing. But that is
not the way the human brain operates. Rather, reading for meaning, reading
about things that matter to us, is the cause of literate language development.
(Krashen, 2004: 150)
Providing students with opportunities to choose and read texts that are personally
meaningful and important to them is a factor that keeps coming up in all texts about
reading promotion. But in order for students to be able to do this, the teacher also
needs to provide them with
time
; time for in-class, free, voluntary reading: “FVR, which
means reading because you want
to. Free voluntary reading is what
avid readers do every time they
pick up a book to read for pleasure.
The connection between voluntary
reading and powerful literacy is
that people learn to read by
reading” (Ross, 2005: 4). A print-
rich environment, as well as
teachers and librarians who
function as reading models are two
factors that seem to move students
towards successful FVR.
