The English Language Reading Programme

Abstract

Three years ago I wrote an article in The English Teacher about the reading programme that we had begun the previous year in Form One at Sekolah Seri Puteri, Jalan Kolam Ayer, Kuala Lumpur, and which was that year being introduced by Schools Division into other residential schools. I started by giving an account of the books written in simplified English that were available on the market and by describing the grading scheme that we had devised for classifying these books. Then I explained how we had arranged the timetable in such a way that all the Form One classes had English at the same time, so we could rearrange the students in sets according to their proficiency in English. Finally I described how we gave each set the books that matched their standard, and used the books as class readers with each student having his own copy of the same title, and as library readers with the students borrowing one book each week from a box containing 50 assorted titles.