Teaching Reading in Greek Primary Schools

The Funway Reading Programme

Introduction
One of the most interesting studies on the nature of reading was conducted by
Kenneth Goodman (1967), who considers reading a Psycholinguistic
guessing process. Although most of Goodmans work deals with the
acquisition of reading by native speakers of English, mainly children, I believe
that many of his discoveries are relevant to the problems of reading in a foreign
language.
The purpose of this paper is to define the teaching reading programme in
Greek primary schools. In other words, we will try to clear out who are the
Greek learners, what is the use of the English books and which approachesmethods are used by the English teachers.
I was inspired to approach the above subject, because from my experience as
an EFL teacher and as a school advisor in the area of Thessaly, I found out that
the series of Funway English books may cause difficulties both to the teachers
and to the students learning EFL. In this particular piece of work I will try to
give reasons for some of the difficulties as well as to clarify the parameters
which enter these difficulties.
* The teaching of English in Greek primary schools has been introduced on a
wide scale not more than twelve years ago.
* The purpose the Greek learners have is somehow indefinite.
In a primary school class there are usually four kinds of learners:
a) Those who are already being taught English in frontistirions for one or even
more years, b) those who are beginners at school and simultaneously at
frontistirions, c) those who begin English only at school because they have no
financial means or interest in learning English and d) those who are striving to
learn Greek, let alone English! This teaching situation requires a well- trained
teacher who will be capable of using his/her knowledge to eliminate such
differences among learners and to provide interest for the learners of such age.

As far as the primary English books concerned there is a series of two

coursebooks one double for the two senior classes and one single for the third
class, which is considered to be difficult related to the previous one,
accompanied by 2 work- books. It is provided to students by the state and is
written by Greek authors.

The methodology teachers follow is already predetermined through clear-cut

guidelines written in a separate booklet, the Teacher book. Teachers are
advised to strictly follow the given methodology and the set time limits.
Authors may have expected to achieve unanimity by providing guidelines in
teaching, (the teachers book first published in 1994) but they have not until
now even though the books have been corrected.

In this article we will try to explain the Funway reading programme focusing on the
fourth grade class (students just beginning to be taught English at school) but
before doing so, we should first consider some physical and psychological aspects
of reading; in this way, we will be able to better understand the current approaches
to the teaching of this skill.
What is reading
When you learn to read two main parts of the head take part in the process. In
other words, learning to read has to do with the brain or mind ( Knowing,
Spelling) and language ( saying, pronouncing), or else a link between word
recognition and understanding.( ( The reading book, CLPE,1991).
In a general sense reading is what happens when people look at a text and
assign meaning to the written symbols in that text. ( Jo Ann Aebersold-Mary
Lee Field, 1997, pp.15).
On the other hand, reading is an interactive process-as well as conversation.
To make it clear, when we converse with people, it is obvious that we depend
on one another; each participant relies on certain unspoken rules that the others
will follow. These rules have been formulated as the so-called co- operative
principle. As it applies to reading, this principle might be extended along these
lines:
The reader assumes

that he and the writer are using the same code ( the same language);

that the writer has a message;

that the writer wants the reader to understand the message.

The choice of Input material

According to the choice of input material the authentic texts, for many years an
indispensable tool of the communicative approach to teaching, have long been
considered as a motivating input; learners could best cope with real world texts
when they had experienced them in class. Students, though, should also learn
vocabulary, syntax and grammar. What kind of authentic response might then be
elicited by reading, for example, a poem to learn vocabulary? An adapted or
specially written text, on the other hand, not reflecting the target language
superstructure ( Beaumont, 1996, Unit 2: 44) may cause similar problems. It is
concluded that in reading authenticity does not rely on the text but on the
interaction between reader and text: any text that readers find suitable for their
purpose is authentic to them.
The content role
The questions which should be arisen are: Why do you read ? What do you want to
get from it? Was it only information? When students are confronted with a written
page, a purpose must be provided to stimulate their interest. Content becomes
important.
Johns and Davis (1983) distinguish between a Text as a Lingustic Object, TALO,
and Text as a Vehicle for Information, TAVI ( Beaumont,!996: Unit 2 p.p.33-37),
expands this distinction to include Text as a Stimulus for Production, TASP, and
Text as a source of Enjoyment, TASE. TALO focuses on grammar practice while
TAVI uses information towards authentic (real life) uses of the language.
The text in Funway book is mainly used as a TALO so our students do not benefit
from the merits of a TAVI. The content does not always meet their needs;
it is already chosen by the authors who had in mind a very broad audience of
students when they made the selection; an audience of nine year olds, living in the
same country all sharing the same kind of experience, knowledge and cultural
background, something which is far from realistic.
Apart from this, the discovery of knowledge from the content does not focus on
the processes employed; it is assumed that the students are already aware of them
possibly from mother tongue. On the other hand, much attention is devoted to

activate the learners existing knowledge (schemata), a very influential factor for
the nature of comprehension. Using schemata learners make guesses about what
they hear and can let go of the belief that they have to recognize and understand
every single element of the message. This is called redundancy and it helps
listeners anticipate what is likely to come next, select which elements to pay more
attention to reduce the memory load and set up further predictions during the on
going process of reading. ( Carrell 1983, 1984, 1897 , Rumelhart, 1980).
Teaching Reading
Fun way is a teacher-centered book; teachers are in a status of superiority as
they use the input material and the tasks according to their own perception of
what the students need to learn. Students respond to a kind of teaching which
resembles a testing situation; they need to produce correct answers and satisfy
the teachers demands, not theirs.
Arna Peretz ( 1988: 181-190) marked the transition from the Traditional
Teacher-Student Roles to the restructured Student-Teacher Roles. This
learner-centered approach, the most current of five phases in developing and
refining reading (outlined in Beaumont, 1996, Unit 2: 6-12), holds that students
should assume responsibility for their learning and become aware of what they
need to learn and how to accomplish it. Thus they can develop intellectually
(they develop a critical mind towards what they read) socially (they use
language for real-life communication goals) and linguistically (they learn in a
creative environment). The teacher assumes the demanding role of a
coach/classroom organizer/ trouble-shooter/ consultant/ personal manager/
catalyst (Williams, R: 1986: 44).
Purposes, approaches strategies and skills in reading.

The Fun way

reading process.
According to the Beaumonts theory (1996) reading may fulfill four purposes
for the learner.
a) Reading for pleasure, usually during our free time, (recreational purpose)

b) Reading in everyday life for example reading directions, advertisements, labels

and so on, (functional purpose),
c) Reading that provides an authentic purpose in the classroom (educational
purpose).
The authors of Fun way tried to insert material that will train students to become
competent in all four uses of the language.
But to my opinion all these purposes cannot be achieved at the same time. Reading
for pleasure could be the first step because, children at such age can be motivated
by watching, doing things and enjoying themselves.
Therefore teachers have to organize a basket of Good books in order to make
students gradually get familiar with the books. We know that children need time to
look through a book get familiar with it and feel confident as a reader.
The functional reading purpose could be the second step and reading for
educational purpose plus reading at home could be the third step.
However, Funway authors tried to train students to use all four uses of language
by exposing them to the most important approaches in reading, such as:
a) scanning, which trains students to focus on the main ideas the text wants to get
across, b) skimming that puts the focus on specific details, c) extensive reading
that encourages students to read for gist and d) intensive reading which is used to
stimulate students to pick out specific pieces of information. The practice students
get on the above is not always enough for them to master because they are not
given the opportunity to use them frequently. FunWay is sometimes over
ambitious: many and different strategies, skills and activities appear and both
students and teachers are expected to cope and make good use of them in a very
short limit of time.
Students are also expected to respond to several skills and strategies. One of them
is inferring. The text will never fully reveal itself. The amount of shared knowledge
between writer-reader, activation of relevant schemata and appropriate use of
bottom-up processes (primary emphasis on textual decoding from lower level
processes such as letter and word recognition) will determine interpretation. Topdown processes (primary emphasis on reader interpretation and prior knowledge)
will also prove indispensable. Communication should be, but is not, viewed as a
reasonable interpretation rather than extraction of meaning (Widdowson 1979:
174; Byrne, undated: 4). Goodman psycholinguistic model of teaching, as it has

been referred above, provided the well known definition for reading as a
psycholinguistic guessing game (Goodman 1967: 126, quoted in Williams
1984:3) in which the reader reconstructs, as best as he can, a message encoded
by the writer as a graphic display.
The above model does not seem to have been taken into account in FunWay .
Inferring, which may help students overcome vocabulary problems, is rather
undermined as a skill to be developed. Learners should also be trained to use
redundancy of the easily perceivable words or structures in the text, a strategy
which facilitates reading because we normally read in groups of words and more
attention should be given to the words which convey some kind of meaningcontent words.
Training on the above skills results in putting less load on LTM ( Long Term
Memory) and retrieval of information will be easier. As teachers of the language we
should also consider the opinions of Williams R. (1986: 43) and Alderson (1984: 127) who welcome the recent emphasis on teaching appropriate skills and strategies
but they, rightfully, claim that a minimum language threshold is necessary before
reading skills and strategies can successfully operate. No one, though, proposes
any kind of close linguistic analysis of texts- it is not real life so its outcome will
be abnormal ( C. Wallace 1989:278) as it may consequently develop distorted
reading strategies.

The class of the research

Taking into account the existing theories we will try to come into a Greek primary EFL
class and set the case of a pilot study.
The primary school I visited was chosen accidentally. This is: The 13 th Primary
school of Volos (it is a provincial city of about 100.000 inhabitants in the center part of
Greece).
The students in this particular class are all 9 years old. It is a class of 20 students , boys
and girls. From these students there are 9 sts, who have been learning English in a
frontistirio for one year, 7 sts who started English in a frontistirio last September, 1 is
bilingual, and three sts who do not attend English out of school because of financial
problems (one of them is an Alban ).
They have three English sessions a week which last 45 minutes each.

The EFL teacher is 35 years old, female, with 8 years of experience in this primary
school.
She has designed the following lesson from Funway Book 1. (Part B),Unit 7 .
This reading passage has been introduced by the teacher after about 4 months of
teaching all four skills.

A sample Lesson
The lesson adapted from the studentshandbook
Time: 45 minutes
Aims: Linguistic: give orders, reading for gist.
Other: follow instructions
Description: Students read the instructions that a group of children have to follow in
order to arrive at the treasure. They draw the itinerary on the map.
Preparation: 1. Prepare a handout with the map
2. Make copies of it for all the students in class.
3. Draw the map on the board.
The Procedure
Step 1
Pre-reading activity: a
Teach students new vocabulary:
i)

verbs used to give orders and directions. This can be done with having
students act out the movements in class. The teacher gives the orders and
some students stand up in front of the class and follow them.

T: John, stand up.Come here. Go to the door. Mary, stand up and follow John: go
to the door, too.
The procedure goes on until most (but not all) of the new verbs are taught.
Step 2
Pre-reading activity: b
Introduce the subject.
T: You are going to read about some children who are looking for a treasure. Its a
game called The treasure hunt. I know that you also play it sometimes.
Step 4

Set a purpose for reading.

T: Read and draw a line on the map in the handout to show the way the children
must follow. You dont have to understand everything. Just find the Way. You have
3 minutes.
Step 5
While reading. Students read silently and draw the itinerary on the map.
Step 6
The teacher goes around the class to monitor the activity and sort out any
difficulties.
Step 7
The teacher reads the text and asks one learner to draw the itinerary on the map on
the board, so all the students can check their performance.
Step 8
The teacher can ask several students to read aloud parts of the text.
Step 9
Post-reading activities:
a. Different students can give instructions to their peers who will act them out in
front of the class.
b. The teacher or 1-2 students may pretend that they have hidden the treasure
somewhere else on the map and give their own instructions to the rest of the
class to find the new itineraries.
c. The teacher can divide the class in groups and give them instructions to find a
treasure that the teacher has hidden somewhere in school.
d. They could also fill in passage where words had been left out, words taught
and practiced in this lesson.

Evaluation

After observing this particular reading lesson I had a discussion with the teacher who
explained to me in details the plan of the reading lesson she used the aim of the reading
lesson and the methodology she followed.
She mentioned the following:
The lesson I chose to adapt is from Funway 1. It is not clear either from the
book itself or from the teachers book if this is supposed to be a reading lesson
or just another way to introduce vocabulary and structures only. My main
reservation is that if it were to have been a lesson to practice the skill of
reading, then I would at least require some kind of pre-reading phase or some
post-reading tasks, even a few questions about the text. There are no such
things. The post-reading tasks have no real connection to the reading the
children have done.
Therefore what I did was to keep the text intact and insert tasks that cover all
three stages in reading. I personally believe that because teachers are obliged to
use this handbook they should not reject it as a whole; no book deserves this
kind of treatment. They should keep its main guidelines and input material and
adapt the tasks, at the same time skipping the activities that dont seem to be
purposeful for their students.
What it is important to me is that my student could read for gist by inferring
from the passage without being explained all the unknown words but only a
few.(step 1). When the time came for them to check their performance (step 8)
I was amazed to see that all of them had coped with it. Feedback was
immediate and this was something the students welcomed as it gave them
confidence for their performance and they were not being tested but rather
given the chance to play the game themselves.
From my own point of view, the teacher followed a methodology that made the
reading process acquire authenticity: the students read silently at the beginning to get
the gist, something we normally do when we read instructions and then followed them
to arrive at a purpose. At step 8, just before the post reading phase the teacher have to
read the text aloud so that the students can judge their competence at reading and
correct themselves without feeling embarrassed if this task had occurred in front of all
their mates. Making students feel embarrassed about their performance is something
the teacher should avoid at all costs as it might serve as a constraint in the future.

Finally, at point 9 the students should be feeling confident enough to read the text
aloud.
The post reading activities do not only integrate the different skills but are also
enjoyable for the learners, a kind of welcome reward for their efforts.
Conclusion
From this particular teachers evidence as well as from my own experience, I ended
in some conclusions about the Funway reading programme, which I believe will
help all the primary school EFL teachers to better understand not only the role of
reading but also to develop new teaching methodologies in their classes.

Reading is introduced very soon in Fun Way books; Students learn to spell the words
and read them from the beginning lessons. About a month after this initial stage of
learning words and simple sentences they are introduced to passages written in the
form of dialogues, which are used as the input material for the teaching of all four
skills. Reading passages are introduced later on, after about 4 months of teaching.
According to C.Nuttalls theory (1996) there are three stages in teaching: pre-reading,
while-reading and post-reading.
Pre-reading tasks rarely appear in FunWay and, when they do, they are mostly used
to give a rough account of what students are about to read. They could, however,
serve more complex purposes: activate the learners schemata, provide information
about new schemata to be created or older ones to be modified, inform about the
situation, the characters, activate the process of prediction and, even more importantly,
set a purpose for reading. Brown (1978: 283) believes that the spadework in
teaching comprehension comes before the student is exposed to the text and not after
it.
While-reading activities do not appear in Fun Way. Whatever the activities, they
appear after the reading was done. Reading is not devoted to developing the students
skill of eliciting messages, so too many facts need to be stored in long term
memory( LTM) and burden it. Students are again faced with a testing rather than
teaching situation.

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What is also left to the imagination of the teacher is post-reading tasks. If a teacher
restricts to the instructions of the book then students will not have any chance to
integrate different skills. This should be the major aim of post-reading tasks: provide a
meaningful context for such integration. Speaking could be practiced by reporting
orally about their findings or exchanging information about what they read. Giving a
written account of what was read or writing about something similar could be a
welcome post-reading activity. The numerous post-reading activities that could be used
will form a complete cycle for reading practice and this will reflect the way skills
normally interact.
To sum up, Fun Way is a teacher-centered book. If a teacher is familiar with the new
approach to teaching, not only the reading skill but all the other skills, where
everything revolves around the learners and their needs, he/she will have to work a lot
in order to apply this method in class. It will be necessary to constantly modify the
materials in the handbook and be prompt to improvise.
This is not to duck the issue, however. The teaching of reading in a Greek primary
school still remains neglected and students are mostly taught to read aloud passages
and complete comprehension questions after the reading is done. The processes and
skills that need to be developed in order for students to become active and
autonomous readers are still left to the teachers to foster. It becomes evident that
teachers must be informed about the new teaching methodologies and get trained to
use them effectively in their classes.

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