Reading is a very complex process that requires active participation on the part of the reader. In the pursuit of meaning, readers interact with texts to make sense of what they read primarily based on their prior knowledge. In their continuous interaction with texts, they constantly predict meaning, ask questions and try to answer them, anticipate what will come next, guess intelligently, draw inferences. In fact, readers have to collaborate to derive meaning from texts which are continually reshaped and reinterpreted. Click here: HERE for more.

Click HERE for a set of slides about the reading process.

Writing plays an essential role in students’ language interactions, both in their daily lives and academic contexts. The day-to-day written demands (short messages, emails, a shopping list) as well as those related to the school setting (abstracts, written exams, final papers, slides) should be addressed if our goal is to help students gain awareness and control of the social purposes, discursive organization and lexico-grammar features of the texts of the various genres they need to write. Some of the key aspects underlying this teaching goal are the interconnections between writing and true-to-life assignments, authentic purposes for writing, real audiences in meaningful contexts, literacy as social practice, and interconnected cycles in the process of improving a text. The ultimate goal is the development of students’ capacity to write different genre types for a variety of purposes. This will empower them for dealing with social uses of language in real-life situations beyond the limits of the classroom.

For more information, click at processwriting.ppt