[ELTWeekly Volume 10, Issue 9 | April 16, 2018 | ISSN 0975-3036]
Graded readers then and now
Using graded readers to help learners to improve their reading, writing, speaking and listening skills is not a recently discovered English teaching technique. In the 1920s, for instance, Dr Michael West edited a series called New Method Supplementary Graded Readers (Longman) with exactly this aim, and these were not the first simplified story books for foreign learners of English. Nowadays, most ELT publishers produce a wide range of readers designed to appeal to different age groups. Oxford University Press, for example, publishes both Bookworms and Dominoes for teenage readers.
21st century skills
The idea of teaching 21st century skills is relatively new. What do we mean by 21st century skills? Although there are different definitions, most people agree the following four skills areas (the four ‘C’s) are at the heart of 21st century learning:
- Collaboration (with students working effectively in teams, groups, or pairs)
- Critical thinking (with students questioning content, and solving problems, rather than just accepting and learning facts by heart).