Sessions

Students’ perspectives of peer support in reading classes

Do all students like reading classes? If not, what reading activities can teachers do to guide them in reading? It is natural for students who have a certain English competence to read through textbooks or extensive reading books actively, but is not easy for other students who have negative feelings toward reading. To solve this gap, group textbook reading activities are effective to use the power of peer support in classrooms. Especially, some students who are positive, can play significant roles to support other students who lack energy in group activities. In addition, students did extensive reading activities at their home and book-talk in classes regularly, so they gradually got used to read stories by themselves to describe the book contents and characters. Overwhelmingly negative attitudes which some students showed at the beginning disappeared in the classrooms. At the end of the semester, the students stated that they held self-esteem while participating in the reading classes on their self-evaluation sheets as formative assessment. This presentation is practice-oriented and explains the correlation between effective reading activities with peer support and students’ perspectives are taken from questionnaire and interviews.