Log 008 - Reading Inauthentic and "Meaningless" Texts Motivates Nobody, including Teachers
- Nov 16, 2017
- 1 min read
(SCT Session #9)
I never saw the use of reading some put-together texts by, more often than not, people who haven’t taught kids at schools. Why must we all read the same boring text about some famous Chinese pianist? Why are most of the reading texts some boring and often unrealistic non-fictions? The content I usually find myself remember most vividly are scenes in a story or the personality of a character. Maybe a funny line in another book. Sometimes some factual information that means a lot to me on a personal level.
We never really just learned reading for reading’s sake, but for us to use the information we’ve learned to solve some task — to debate, for instance, if Macbeth is more at fault for the murder of King Duncan than Lady Macbeth, or some drama project or analysis paper, etc. etc. We also read, for instance, to argue with your classmates about which soccer team is stronger - Waterloo, or Manchester United.
In these instances, the reading involved acted as background information for a more meaningful, social and authentic tasks. Even teachers can genuinely contribute to the conversation and everyone in the classroom benefits from the dialogues and tasks.
Task-based learning has been around for a long time ago, at least in the education system that I've studied under; I’m not sure why it’s so slow on the uptake for Hong Kong local schools to pick up.
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