NAKOS

LITERACY FINAL JUNE 2012

Question: How reading and writing are inter-related? In what ways? What are the implications for reading teachers? The relationship between reading and writing is a bit like that of the chicken and egg. They are closely related and, some would say, inseparable. Basically put: reading affects writing and writing affects reading. As such, better writers tend to be better readers, and better readers produce better writing. Research has found that when students read extensively they become better writers. This is due to the fact that reading provides young people with prior knowledge that they can use in their stories. Since writing is the act of transmitting knowledge in print, students must have information to share before they can start writing. Reading a variety of genres, then, helps them learn text structures and language that they can then transfer to their own writing. Reading, therefore, plays a major role in writing. One of the most effective ways to use the relationship between reading and writing to foster literacy development is by immersing students in a specific genre. Teachers should identify a genre that is essential to a grade levels curriculum or is of particular interest to students and study this genre from the reading and writing perspectives. Learners should be given opportunities to write in the identified genre and as they are writing, teachers should assist them to apply what they have learned from reading genre specific texts to guide their composition. Most importantly, this process should be recursive to allow them to repeatedly move between reading and writing in the genre. In the end students will not only have a solid and rich knowledge of the genre, but will also have strengthened their general reading and writing skills. Teachers, however, do not have to engage students in an extensive genre study to foster their reading and writing abilities. Texts can be used on limited basis to help them learn and strengthen specific writing skills. Teachers should first identify writing skills that a particular their students need support in developing. For example, many students in a secondary school might have difficulty writing precise and organised introductions in their essays. By showing them models that successfully demonstrate the skill and discussing the samples, it prompts for building specific writing skills on the students part. Once they have explored effective models of the skill, they should be given opportunities to practice it and exchange their work with peers. Modelling writing skills and sharing writing tasks with students then aims at enhancing students writing skills and allows for learners to read from a readers perspective. Another method to foster literacy development using the relationship between reading and writing to is simply by giving students the choice in their reading and writing experiences. If learners are always told exactly what to read and what to write, they will eventually either come to see reading and writing as impersonal events or will shut down. Often in classrooms, teachers allow students to select their own books to read during independent reading time, but they rarely give them the opportunity to pick their own writing topics.

NAKOS

LITERACY FINAL JUNE 2012

Because students learn best when they are motivated, teachers then, should give them chances to read and write what is interesting and important to them.