NAES 2016 Symposium: How can we educate future English teachers for developing reading proficiency among students in general and vocational studies (original) (raw)

Based on test results from 10,331 students in Norwegian upper secondary school, I have found that vocational students read significantly poorer than students in general studies. However, a group of 463 outliers read significantly better in English than in Norwegian and the largest group among these are boys in vocational studies (Brevik, 2015a). Interestingly, two related studies showed that while teachers in general and vocational studies taught reading comprehension strategies in English (Brevik, 2014), the students in general studies used the strategies because the teachers asked them to, while the vocational students reported to do so because it helped them comprehend the texts at hand and because they saw a personal purpose for doing so (Brevik, 2015). In a follow-up study, I have interviewed five boys in vocational studies who explain that they consider themselves better readers in English than in Norwegian due to their use of English out of school (Brevik, forthcoming). Based on these findings I argue that teachers need to address their students’ personal purposes for using English in and out of school both in general and vocational study programmes.

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