Ye Ningqing

(Yangzhou High School, Yanzhou Jiangsu, China)

NSEFC is different from other earlier textbooks, for example, the Reading in NSEFC has a Pre-reading section to lead into it and a Comprehending section to deepen the students' understanding. NSEFC attaches considerable importance to reading comprehension. What is reading comprehension? What can teachers do to foster students' understanding?

I The Aim of the Reading Lesson

Understanding a written text means extracting the information required from it as efficiently as possible. It is therefore essential to considerate these aspects.

1. What do we read?

NSEFC provides a wide range of topics. Module 1, for example, provides five topics as are shown in the table below:

Each unit of NSEFC provides at least two reading passages. For those who want to read more, the Teachers’ Book provides some related passages. We can also ask our students to find some other passages from the Internet or other sources.

2. How do we read?

NSEFC suggests the main ways of reading as follows:

·Skimming: quickly running one's eyes over a text to get the gist of it.

·Scanning: quickly going through a text to find a particular piece of information.

·Extensive reading: reading longer texts, usually for one's own pleasure. This is to improve fluency.

·Intensive reading: reading shorter texts, to extract specific information.

These different ways of reading are not mutually exclusive. For instance, students often skim through a passage to see what it is about before deciding whether it is worth scanning for the information they are looking for.

Take Module 1 Unit 1 Friendship for example. The reading text is Anne's Best Friend. Students may skim it to find who Anne’s best friend is. It's not difficult for them to get the answer — her diary, from the last sentence of the first paragraph. This passage is made up of two parts: background information and an entry from Anne's Diary. So when students are asked to do Comprehending Exercise 1, they know where to find these answers.

3. Why do we read?

There are three main reasons for reading:

Reading for pleasure. Take Module 1 Unit 3 Travel journal for example. Teachers can provide some more information about famous places of interest at home and abroad for students to enjoy.

Reading for information (in order to find out something). Most of the Readings in NSEFC are designed for this purpose. For example, after reading Module 1 Unit 4 Earthquakes, students learn basic knowledge about an earthquake and know how to protect themselves and help others in disasters.

Reading for language (in order to learn useful words, expressions and structures). This is also one of the main purposes of the Readings in NSEFC. In Module 1 Unit 2 English around the world

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