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Date Posted: 15:07:50 04/15/07 Sun
Author: Antônio Sette Câmara
Subject: Antônio Sette Câmara’s peer editing comments to Marianna Muzzi’s essay, “Learning a skill - Reading“

Antônio Sette Câmara’s peer editing comments to Marianna Muzzi’s essay, “Learning a skill - Reading“:

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
Faculdade de Letras
Disciplina: Produção de Texto – Inglês
Aluna: Marianna Amoroso Lima Muzzi
TASK ONE
Learning a skill - Reading

Many students face the difficulty in reading texts. UNESCO’s 2005 report has acknowledged that over 770 million people in the world encounter difficulties when reading texts. According to UNESCO’s Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura “Literacy is essential for sustainable human development in today’s complex and fast-changing societies.” In today’s world where information has a great value and changes very rapidly, students have to have a well-developed ability to deal with written language. However (P) students face not only problems while reading first-language texts, but they run into even bigger ones when reading second-language ones. What might then be the causes of this learning difficulty? There might be several reasons to it, but three stand out.
One reason is the lack of motivation. Usually teachers choose themselves the books and texts students are assign (Wvf) to read and students have hardly ever the opportunity to take part in the process. It is not give (Wvf) them the chance to make their own choices and to read books of (Ww/e) their own interests. With this lack of motivation students will not feel encourage (Wvf) to read, which will consequently have a great effect on understanding.
Another reason is the student’s lexical knowledge. Some second language students don’t have still enough knowledge of English vocabulary to read texts in English. Therefore, while reading, they feel the need to stop at every single word to check for its meaning. Reading word by word instead of reading the whole text first, will result in problems of global comprehension. Reading should not be a work of simple translation but one of understanding the text’s meaning. One can not be able to comprehend the meaning of every word in the text, but might be completely capable to read and understand the general context.
A further reason is the lack of quality teaching. Some teachers ask students to buy a specific book and assign it to be read at home. After the reading teachers give students a test which would prove understanding and the reading itself. In this case (P) reading has definitely no purpose or social function. Instead (P) teachers should provide students with good instructions and activities. As mentioned in Developing Literacy in a Second Language “To learn literacy with maximum success, students need to have command of the kinds of literacy skills and strategies emphasized in these studies.” Reading in school has to be well planned since it is not only a leisure activity. Because students come across reading difficulties, it is the teacher’s role to plan and organize well the lessons in order to solve this problem.
It is important to find out ways to work out the problems second-language students encounter while dealing with a text in English. Teachers have the important role to motivate their students and to plan well their lessons in order to minimize comprehension problems. I am convinced that with great effort of both sides, students and teachers together, will be able to overcome this matter.

Bibliography
LANGUAGE MAGAZINE Developing Literacy in a Second Language. April 2006. Available at: http://www.languagemagazine.com. Accessed April 04, 2007.
UNESCO Available at: http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=41537&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html. Accessed April 04, 2007.

**************** Critical note: ***********************
Dear Marianna,

Your essay is very well written and convincing, besides being also very cohesive and well structured. I found some improper verb tenses and minor errors, but these small lapses do not in any way detract from the overall quality of the text.
Regards,

Antônio Sette Câmara - Group 1
******************************************************************************

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