A Carnival of Reading

The Seventh International Training Programme in English (ITP 7) at CIEFL was inaugurated on 15 January 2001. Dubbed “English for Professionals,” one of the thrusts of this twelve-week course was on access to information: i.e. learning to use resources from a variety of media in order to engage in lifelong learning. A subgroup of twentyfour learners from a variety of countries was identified as being at the Advanced (as opposed to the Basic or Intermediate) level of proficiency in English. I met with this group three times a week for six weeks, for an hour a day on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, to develop their reading skills in intensive reading (as opposed to extensive reading).

My group included learners from Cuba, Guyana, the Ivory Coast, Kazakhstan, Laos, Oman, Panama, Syria, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. The interests of these professionals ranged from foreign affairs through law, mathematics and computers to language, culture and tourism. The heterogeneity of the group was not limited to the variety of their interests and backgrounds. They differed as well in their classroom interaction styles: the Hispanics tended to be vocal and interactive; the Asians preferred to work individually with bilingual dictionaries. I therefore decided to introduce an authentic text with a different theme each time for each hour of class.