Introduction
This part is about reading English as a foreign language within a classroom
context. Reading is the skill which is practiced more in the foreign language
classroom. However, the way reading texts are exploited is in most cases
unsatisfactory, if not problematic. This is due to the fact that what materials writers
most often do is to use specially written texts in order to teach specific grammatical or
lexical items. This approach, which considers the text as a linguistic object (TALO)
rather than as a vehicle of information (TAVI), deprives students from appreciating
the communicative message of the text, and is usually referred to as “reading myopia”
as students are deprived of seeing the text as a whole.
Another characteristic of reading is that it has been for many years considered
a receptive skill, due to the fact that the reader has no involvement in the production
of a written text. However, modern theories have challenged the old distinction of
skills into productive and receptive. Texts are not considered any more to have a fixed
meaning, but, as post-modern theories advocate, a text acquires its meaning through
an interaction with the reader. This means that the reader creates meaning according
to her background knowledge, rather than receives the message which the writer has
sent. The text is a communicative artefact which awaits to be explored, rather than a
conduit which transfers a fixed meaning.
This first part of the book consists of two sections. Section 1 is theoretical,
aiming at providing a theoretical basis for the teaching of reading. Section 2 provides
a number of practical examples concerning how to adopt a certain lesson of a course
book, as well as ways to use authentic texts in language teaching.
9