Today I filled in the form about the library in our school EOI Ávila. To most questions I could anser with a YES, so it seems that our library is quite well-equipped. I'll write more later.
I'm not sure whether to add things here or to create New Posts...(?)
I think I'm doing both
So for Educalab I filled in this form on how to improve our library. We are in a pretty new building at the EOI Ávila so the library is also brandnew. I'll insert a little pic I took myself just to give you an idea.
Admittedly a few things have changed recently.
There are now a few PCs on the left for people to play audio CDs, or example, that go with the graded readers that we have. For most of the questions in the Questionnaire I was able to respond with a YES, so I guess that's not so bad. Still there's room for improvement, undoubtedly. Last year some of the teachers started a bookclub that students could become a member of and in which they had Reading and Discussion sessions. This year we will continue to do so and see if we can get a greater number of students interested in this activity.
It might be important to stress the fact that this is not a IES and that our students come to study languages. If they take out books it is more for the sake of learning a language than for the sake of Reading itself, though a combination of the 2 motives might well develop in the higher levels. I have the feeling that it is easier to encourage students at the lower levels for whom there is a section of Graded Readers (levels 1-6), usually with a recording of the book on a CD) than for the higher levels such as B2 and C1. For those people there is quite an ample section of unabridged original novels to choose from, but the size of those volumes seem to scare people away. I'm not sure at all if that's the reason or whether the lack of time from which most users seem to suffer could be part of the reason for this poor output.
I myself usually take my students (mainly adults and some older teenagers) at the beginning of the course and show them around in the library. I often use our Aula Virtual for them to publish Reviews like the Jenny's Bear Review in this Blog that I put here as an example some years ago and hadn't looked at since then). The nature of our school makes it more difficult to organize activities in groups because it is not a community like the IES. Students come to class and leave again to go about their business.
We do have a big section of DVDs, mainly from the Speak Up series that go wit booklets, magazines and CDs with lots and lots of extra Material for our students and they are taken out frequently byu the people of the higher levels (B1 and up).
In the past it was obligatory for the students to read at least one book for the exams because part of the Oral Expression (Spealing) Skill of the exam was about the book they had read. Unfortunately, in a sense, this element has been deleted from the requirements.
In this course I'm hoping to learn a few things about how to encourage our students to visit the Library facilities mor often.
Comments
Post a Comment