Working Papersin Language Education and Researchhttp://eliworkingpapers.org/Reading self: reading communitiesElizabeth LammonsCorresponding author: Lammons@kanda.kuis.ac.jp	  Publication date: August, 2013	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  ISSN 2187-4972	  	  	  To cite this articleLammons, E. (2013). Reading self: reading communities. Working Papersin Language Education and Research, 1 (2), 18-27.

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  1	  No.	  2.	  August	  2013,	  18	  -­‐	  27	  	  READING SELF: READING COMMUNITIESElizabeth LammonsKanda University of International StudiesABSTRACTAt the beginning of their program at Kanda University ofInternational Studies, learners are generally concerned withimproving their speaking and listening skills, as for many it is thefirst time that they have had classes in which they are expected touse only English. As the learners move through the program, theybecome more concerned about developing their reading andwriting skills. In this paper, I will introduce and discuss twoclassroom activities that I used in an elective self-directed readingcourse in which learners were able to choose authentic materialsthat they wanted to read. The activities were writing readinghistories and examining how texts are read. These activities wereimplemented to assist learners in reflecting on their beliefs andexperiences with reading in English. Through activities such asthese, there is evidence that learners were able to establish alearning community to foster and support each other in their selfdirected reading goals.

1. INTRODUCTIONThis paper is a written report of the workshop I presented at the FEELTA Conference in2012. The purpose of the workshop was to demonstrate two activities that I use to build alearning community within an elective self-directed reading course. During the workshop, Ihighlighted two learning activities that I did with the learners at the beginning of the course,to encourage them to share their reading experiences. The first activity was writing theirEnglish and Japanese reading histories. Excerpts from learners’ reading histories were shared	  18	  Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	
  1	  No.	  2.	  August	  2013,	  18	  -­‐	  27	  	  during the workshop. The second activity was a whole class activity in which learners workin groups to discuss and record how one reads different types of texts. The participants in theworkshop were able to complete this activity and then discuss how it might be adapted towork in their own contexts.
2. BACKGROUNDThe elective self-directed reading course was created to provide an opportunity for 3rdand 4th year English majors at Kanda University of International Studies to self-select textsthat they wanted to read, to reflect on how they read those texts in English, and to practicestrategies and skills to cope with reading authentic texts. The primary focus of the course wasto help learners develop their metacognitive awareness of their activities before, during andafter reading by recording and reflecting on their learning processes in a learning journal.
They received feedback from their instructor during the course about their weekly goals,accomplishments and metacognitive strategies. The learners also participated in peer sharesin which they shared their weekly goals and strategies for dealing with the texts that theywere reading with each other.
For this course, constructing a community of learners was important because I assumedthat many of the learners might not know each other. I did not want this to be a hindrance tothe class because an important part of the course was the sharing and discussion of differentstrategies they were using to manage their self-directed reading. Most of all, I believelearners can and do learn from one another. Thus, a level of comfort with one another wasparticularly vital to this course.	  

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  1	  No.	  2.	  August	  2013,	  18	  -­‐	  27	  	  To build a community of learners comfortable with sharing and supporting one another, Ithought it would be a good idea to add reading histories to the curriculum for the course.
Language learning histories have been used in other courses as a way for learners to thinkabout and share their experiences with one another, and I believed the histories would be agood chance to for the learners to reflect on their experiences with reading, both in Englishand in Japanese. I also thought that I could have the learners share these experiences with oneanother so that they could see common themes and situations. Based on my beliefs, Iassigned learners the reading histories.
Setting up the reading histories was simple as I had an outline to follow from anothercolleague who used language learning histories in her classroom. I adapted what she hadpreviously used to the self-directed reading course. Prior to the learners outlining theirreading histories, I added a timeline activity to the reading histories activity. I asked thelearners to think about their English reading history first and then their Japanese readinghistory. I wanted them to start with how and when they were exposed to reading in Englishand Japanese. From there, the learners were able to create a timeline of their readingexperiences, both good and bad. After they did this, they discussed their timelines with twodifferent partners at different times in a single class. This gave them the opportunity to heardifferent experiences and also to organize their thoughts so that they would be prepared toturn their timelines into outlines for their written reading histories. In the next step, Iencouraged learners to think about how their experiences have led to their beliefs about thereading that they do in English and in Japanese. They had to write their outlines keeping inmind that their experiences probably had an effect on what they believe about reading. Afterthey completed their outlines, I reviewed them and asked questions such as, “How does this	  20	  Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	
  1	  No.	  2.	  August	  2013,	  18	  -­‐	  27	  	  experience connect to what you believe about your reading in English or Japanese?” Thefinal step was for the learners to write their reading histories with a minimum of 500 wordsfor each history. The English reading histories were posted on the class blog so that everyonecould read them and comment on each other’s histories. At the end of the term, the learnershad to write a reflection report in which they could refer back to their reading histories todraw conclusions about the beliefs that they had about reading at the end of the course.
Another activity that I believed would help establish community in the classroom, and atthe same time reveal strategies and skills that learners are using for comprehension, was abrainstorm activity in which learners shared how they read a myriad of texts. Because thecourse allowed learners to choose their own reading materials, I wanted to make sure thatthey would have the opportunity to discuss the different skills and strategies that they mightuse to make sense of the texts they chose to read. Perhaps there were other strategies theymight try because their peers had suggested those activities.
The set up for the activity was as follows. First, I placed learners up into groups. At eachgroup table, I put a paper that had nonfiction, comics, newspapers, novels, magazines, ortextbooks written on it. Next to each of them, I placed representative texts from our SelfAccess Learning Centre so that the learners could see a sampling of the texts available fortheir use in the course. Then, I announced that we were going to explore how we readdifferent texts. I gave them a handout that simply said, “How can you read these types oftexts? (Write as many ways as you can think of.).” I told each group to decide who wouldwrite down the ideas and then each group brainstormed. I gave them about 5-8 minutes to dothis. After time was up, they rotated the texts and the handouts to the next group. Next, Iexplained that they needed to read the previous groups’ ideas before they added to the list.	  

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  1	  No.	  2.	  August	  2013,	  18	  -­‐	  27	  	  Again, after 5-8 minutes they switched again until each group had viewed each type of textand had put as many ideas on the papers as possible. At the end, each group had their originalpaper and text. Next, the groups were instructed to read through the list again to make surethat they agreed with everything and to see what other ideas their classmates recorded fortheir respective text. After this, I asked the learners to decide which activities they would dobefore they read the text, both while they were reading the text, and after they had finishedreading the text. They discussed their answers and ideas again in their groups and wereinstructed to write ‘pre’, ‘while’, and ‘after’ next to the ideas on the page that they hadidentified. This activity got the learners discussing different types of texts and sharing thestrategies and skills that they use to read them.
In the next section of this paper, I will explain and discuss passages from learners’reading histories, and the brainstorming activity that illustrate how learners completed theactivities.
3. DISCUSSION3.1 Reading HistoriesAfter learners finished writing their reading histories they posted them to our Edmodosite, and they were required to respond to another person’s reading history. It is through thesecomments that one can see that the learners were beginning to make connections with oneanother through their shared experiences. An excerpt from one of the comments highlightsthis:Hi, Learner A. Nice to meet you. I read your English readinghistory. It was so fun because I have some similar experiences with	  22	  Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	
  1	  No.	  2.	  August	  2013,	  18	  -­‐	  27	  	  you. When I was child, I have read picture book and I also couldn'tunderstand the meaning of sentences, just enjoy characters andpictures. Additionally, I avoided serious reading topics like yousaid in the document so now I try to read them too! Good luck onyour studying :-)From this excerpt, one can see that this learner identifies with Learner A becauseof their shared experiences. One might also presume that the learner might feel motivatedby seeing this history and finding someone else who is also like-minded with a similarexperience. Comments like the one above were prevalent throughout the sharing of thehistories. The following two excerpts are from learners who made a connection with theideas presented by another learner’s reading history (Learner B) and commented on thatconnection.
I didn't think about the importance of imagination that how I wouldfeel if I were the character but I notice that I actually did the sameway like you. When I'm listening my favorite music, I search thelyrics and think of the meanings then imagine the character(singer)'s emotion too.

This learner is responding to Learner B’s reading history in which she expressedthe idea that she likes reading because she can use her imagination. This learner hadnever thought about that aspect of reading before and realized through reading the otherlearner’s reading history that in fact, she followed the same process. This recognitionreinforces the strategy for both the learner who wrote the reading history and the learnerwho is commenting on it, because they are now able to see validity in that strategy. In asense, the learner responding to the reading history did not learn anything new, butthrough Learner B’s reading history, she was able to see herself and a strategy that she	  23	  Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	
  1	  No.	  2.	  August	  2013,	  18	  -­‐	  27	  	  was unaware that she also used. The next excerpt, in response to the same reading history,shows how another learner also identified with the strategies even though they both haddifferent English reading histories.
I have quite a different English history. But I could find somesimilarities like "Predicting what happens next" and "how I feel if Iwas the character". It's good to have different experience and goodto know different history.	  	   	  	  I found that this comment, and the comments of other learners as they sharedand discussed their reading strategies, justified this approach and procedure. Doing thisactivity at the very beginning of the course allowed learners the time to think abouttheir experiences with reading, and to begin to see how others have similar experiences.
I believe that beginning with this type of activity helped the learners honestly sharetheir self-directed reading experiences later on, and they continued to learn from oneanother as a result.

3.2 Reading Different Texts Brainstorm	  	   	  This activity produced interesting strategies and ideas about reading differenttexts. From observing the class during the activity, I can say that all of the learnersinteracted with one another to come up with the ideas for reading. They were especiallyengaged when they were reading the comments that other groups had written about thetexts. Moreover, placing the learners into smaller groups for the discussions helped themhave more interaction about the task. In the following section, I offer a few examples ofthe ideas that the learners have about how to read different texts.	  

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  1	  No.	  2.	  August	  2013,	  18	  -­‐	  27	  	  First, I was surprised by some of the ideas that the learners had about readingtextbooks. Some of the pre-reading activities the learners decided on for this type of textwere: reading contents first, reading the title and imagining the contents, usingbrainstorming, getting information from pictures and researching about a text on awebsite. These ideas showed me what the learners thought were important activities forbeginning to read a textbook. These strategies were not particularly surprising since I amsure that these are strategies they had learned from their academic reading classes.
However, some of the activities that were suggested while reading did surprise me, suchas ‘read aloud’ and ‘read with DVD and CD’ to understand the text. I think that the readaloud came from their experiences in high school and have carried over to college becausemany of the learners in the course described these activities in their reading histories.
Also, as the learners carried out their self-directed reading and reflected on theirexperiences in their learning journals, many of them mentioned using this strategy as theywere trying to understand a complicated text. In regards to the strategy using of a DVD orCD to understand the text, I was not aware that learners were using textbooks with thesemultimedia materials. This type of activity was helpful not only in allowing learners to seethe similarities in their ideas about how to read texts, but also in making me aware of thedifferent strategies that they believe help them to read texts.
Other interesting comments were written on the brainstorming form for how toread novels. For ‘pre-reading’ and ‘while-reading’ activities, ’'imagining the story’ wasmentioned. This is a strategy that learners are aware of using to help make sense of thestory. I was surprised to see the comment, ‘try to get rid of our stereotype to know thestory more closely’. This was marked as a ‘while reading’ or ‘after-reading’ strategy, and	  25	  Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	
  1	  No.	  2.	  August	  2013,	  18	  -­‐	  27	  	  it was heartening to see that the learners were able to think this deeply about what mightbe represented in a novel. I was also surprised to see ‘memorize the information’, but thisis mainly because there was no elaboration for this statement. I can only speculate thatthey thought that memorizing the details of the story was important. They also thoughtabout imagining the society that the character lives in, and reading reviews of the novels.
Again, these are English majors so certainly in their literature classes they have beenexposed to these strategies.

4. CONCLUSIONIn conclusion, these two activities were used to good effect in my classroom topromote shared experiences and to build a learning community of readers who could feelcomfortable sharing their strategies with one another. There is evidence that throughwriting and sharing their reading histories, the learners were able to make connectionswith one another. Through the reading brainstorm activity, I observed the interactionbetween learners and was able to perceive that they were forming a community. Theywere also able to share their strategies for reading different texts and discover new onesthat they might employ in the future.
In this course, I used many other activities to maintain the community atmospherein the classroom, but I presented these specific activities at the FEELTA conferencebecause I wanted to give teachers some activities to help them understand what their ownlearners already know about reading. The benefits of the activities also include the helpthat they provide to build a learning community of readers who are secure with sharing	  26	  Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	  1	  No.	  2.	  August	  2013,	  18	  -­‐	  27	  	  their reading experiences.

This hopefully means that as the course progresses theparticipants are able to continue to learn from one another.

5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSI would like to thank RILS & LE for their support in helping me attend the FEELTAConference for this presentation.	  

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