INSTRUCTIONAL CHOICES TO HEIGHTEN INDONESIAN STUDENTS' MOTIVATION AND ENGAGEMENT IN READING ENGLISH CANONICAL TEXTS
This paper focuses on how to motivate my struggling students for whom English is a second language when they read canonical texts written in English. Students in English departments are required to read English canonical texts, but most of them find this task very challenging. One strategy teachers can use to motivate students to read is to pair the English canonical texts with young adult texts. Important in these instructional choices are the pre-reading, during-reading, and after-reading activities. Pre-reading activities are intended to prepare readers to enter the story world During-reading activities are important to make students understand the stories better. Some of the duringactivities include using role plays and teaching media to increase students' understanding of the characters and the plots in the books. In the post-reading activities, students can write journals or quotes they find interesting from the book. Giving students more varieties in book choices and activities can, hopefully, make them independent good readers.
Young Adult Literature: From Romance to Realism
Today's young adult literature is every bit as complex as the audience it's written for, unflinchingly addressing such topics as homosexuality, mental illness, AIDS and drug abuse. In this much expanded revision of his 1996 book, veteran author Michael Cart shows how the best of contemporary YA lit has evolved to tackle such daunting subjects without resorting to sensationalism. He brings his historical survey of this category fully up to date, covering its explosive growth in the past decade, and advocating that librarians and teachers look beyond romance and horror when advising young adults. This survey helps YA librarians who want to freshen up their readers' advisory skills, teachers who use novels in the classroom, and adult services librarians who increasingly find themselves addressing the queries of teen patrons by covering the following: Reading habits of today's teens, Influence of new technologies and formats, New YA lit awards, This insightful and often humorous work presents the evolution of YA lit in an appealing way, making it equally useful for students of literary studies. You'll definitely update your recommended "to read" lists after a spin through Cart's advisory.
THE PISA ASSESSMENT OF READING LITERACY
The performance of 15-year olds in Ireland on reading literacy ranked in the top quarter of OECD countries in PISA in 2000 and 2003. In 2000, just over 1 in 10 students (11.0%) scored at or below the lowest proficiency level (Level 1), and just over 4 in 10 (41.3%) at the two highest levels (Levels 4 and 5). In 2003, the same percentage scored at Level 1 or below, while the percentage scoring at Levels 4 and 5 had decreased to 35.5. Ireland was one of three OECD countries in which there was a significant decline in mean achievement since 2000. Students scoring at the 75th, 90th, and 95th percentile ranks also performed significantly less well in 2003. Significant performance differences in favour of female students in 2000 and 2003 are interpreted with reference to differential performance on text type and process subscales. Gender effects are also examined in three multi-level models of reading literacy which provide rather different results. In 2000, engagement of students in Ireland in leisure reading was fourth lowest among OECD countries. In 2003, onefifth of students reported never reading non-fiction texts at school, and 70% said that they never read electronic texts.