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Reading is one of the two receptive language skills which might seem to be the easier one to teach. When learning to read in a foreign language, a student doesn’t have to deal with problems associated with accents or pronunciation as it often happens with speaking and listening. What’s more, learning reading skills does not necessarily imply high teacher participation and can generally be done on one’s own. Much as with writing, it might seem tempting to relegate most of reading to homework, especially in one to one teaching. Then again, the easier way isn’t always the best one, and paying enough attention to this aspect of English during one’s lessons offers many benefits. The first benefit is the opportunity to choose reading material that caters to an individual student’s interests and needs. Thus, student and teacher can focus on authentic materials which are generally more interesting and help build confidence in students. Moreover, carefully selected texts serve as great prompts for Engage and Activate lesson stages, and help cover a wide variety of topics. The second benefit is the chance to purposefully train a student’s predictive skills, which can take too much time with groups of students but is quite possible when there’s only one. Good predictive skills help students get a better “feel” of the language and encourage them to remember and use new vocabulary on the go. The third essential benefit has to do with working on students’ pronunciation, which offers a good alternative to drilling (which can be too boring or discouraging if a student makes too many mistakes in a row) or studying phonology (which requires too much time). Reading texts aloud is a simple technique that helps form a habit of speaking correctly as opposed to simply remembering the correct pronunciation for every specific word. While all these benefits speak in favor of paying more heed to reading in one to one lessons, there are several potential issues associated with this approach. To begin with, students tutored in a one to one format generally expect more attention from a teacher and more teacher participation, so focusing on tasks that they could have possibly done by themselves may be confusing. Therefore, the purpose of every task (and the approach in general) shall be clearly explained to them. Secondly, when spending a considerable amount of study time on reading, the choice of materials becomes all the more important. The texts should be carefully selected with regard to not just students’ interests and level of English, but also such aspects as vocabulary and grammar. For one, many classical books use exotic or outdated language, which may confuse the students and inhibit their study of conventional grammar. Finally, reading texts in the classroom does not cancel the importance of home reading. While the above mentioned benefits are quite noteworthy, fostering a habit for reading in English on one’s own is still one of the most efficient teaching methods available, and by no means should be neglected. To sum up, placing a considerable focus on reading during one to one lessons seems to be a viable approach provided that the teacher is ready to address the associated issues. With due preparation and planning, this method can be adjusted to meet the needs of students of various levels and ages, and address many aspects of English including even those that are not generally associated with reading.
