A few weeks ago at the KOTESOL conference I attended a presentation by Scott Miles promoting a new book teaching Reading titled Essential Reading. I walked away from that presentation interested in the book and determined to trial it with my students. I used the material with two different first year classes.

Teachers in Japan attending next weeks JALT conference will want to watch Mr. Miles’ presentation.  I have spoken with Scott and confirmed that each attendee will recieve a free copy of the level three book.  The entire series is edited by Mr. Miles and the third book was written by him as well. If you do attend please say hi and let Scott know you heard about the book from my blog.

Below is what I wrote about Miles’ presentation:

The next presentation I attended was also done by a friend, Scott Miles. Scott is the author and series editor on a new series of books teaching reading skills. The series is titled Essential Reading and is designed in a unique way. It’s targetting specifically EFL students in an Asian context. The readings were chosen to be engaging and relevant to Asians at the university level, i.e. material that they would be interested in reading on their own. Each of the readings was also written in a way that it would provide information that students were unlikely to know previously despite being familiar wiht some of the topics. Furthermore the readings were selected to elicit an emotional response and as Scott put it, this means that sometimes “they are not entirely safe”. But if they students respond emotionally they are definitely engaged. Finally there is support for ER built in. There are excerpts from graded readers and each book also has 2-3 graded short stories at the back. All attendees came away with a free copy of book 3.

I have the level three book which according to Mr. Miles in his presentation would likely be good for freshmen students in Korea. I chose to do half of unit two (Punishment) and all of unit three (Extensive Reading).Additionally when teaching I did not have access to the teachers book nor did I do anything special to prepare the material. I ran through the material sequentially and alloted time for each section and did not supplement or change anything.

The material was interesting and engaging to the students. I found the pre-reading activities to be good. The Extensive Reading one was better and more engaging for my students than the Punishment one. That may be due to the students having just finished learning about extensive reading and finishing two graded readers. Following the pre-reading comes the reading itself which is rather long; 50 lines (punishment) and 81 lines (extensive reading). The readings have lines numbers every 5 lines which aids students in completely the comprehension questions.

The comprehension questions throughout the book change question type. This is good as it reduces the routineness seen in many other textbooks.Question formats include multiple choice, fill in a table, true or false, underline the mistakes, fill in the blanks and more. My experience was that students found the questions challenging but not impossible. Following the comprehension questions are a set of discussion questions for students to do in groups. In both classes and for both units that I used this with the class became very engaged, animated and incredibly noisy.

Following comprehension comes two vocabulary focus activities and another two grammar sections. As with the comprehension questions each unit is presented in a different manner. My students seemed to enjoy the vocabulary exercises. I however chose to skip the grammar section due to time constraints. The second half of each chapter is titled Essential Skills and includes another reading where students are given opportunity to practice a skill related to learning such as reading speed, dictionary skills, using context, summarizing, inferring and more. The reading is thematically linked to the first one and is equally interesting and engaging.

Additionally every two units there is a review unit with two short readings and several exercises for each. The readings are again thematically linked to the previous units, are engaging and recycle language, grammar and vocabulary covered in the previous two units.

Finally at the back of the text there is a list of Essential Vocabulary that “are very common in academic settings.” There are also two short stories from graded readers by Macmillan. The official web site has many resources for teachers, including mp3s (available now) and worksheets (coming soon).

I do not have a copy of the teachers book, but according to the web site it includes a test generator. Overall I found this book to work well with my students. It was both engaging and challenging. Additionally the units flow well and the book is designed around sound pedegogical principles. If I were to be teaching a reading course I would feel 100% confident in using this series as the basis for my course. In fact I am considering putting in a request to teach a reading course to my administration in order to use this textbook.

Readers may note that Scott Miles is a personal friend of mine and wonder if that has affected my review of his book. I woud say no it has not. If the material I used in my class had bombed I would not have written this review. You may also be asking why I have not included any negative criticisms. On the surface I have not been able to find any. I am sure that if I were to use this book on a more regular basis I would find some issues to discuss, but I have only sampled one and a half chapters. No book is perfect, but at this point I can safely say that Essential Reading should become a best seller and a staple in any reading course.

Don’t forget to watch Scott Miles’ presentation at the JALT conference this coming weekend if you are attending.