Show notes #13: Reading aloud to students. An interview with George Jacobs

Reading aloud is often seen as a little more than a resource that can be used when the students’ level is too low for them to do extensive reading by themselves. However, there are those who argue that there is room in every class for reading books aloud, regardless of the age of level of the students. Our guest for this episode, Dr. George Jacobs, is one of them. In this interview you’ll find a most accessible introduction to the best practices and principles for reading aloud to students, and its connections with positive education and with sociocultural theory.

You can find the two articles by Dr. Jacobs that we mention in the interview here:

Jacobs, G. M. (2016). Dialogic reading aloud to promote extensive reading. Extensive Reading in Japan, 9(1), 10-13.

Jacobs, G. M., & Renandya, W. A. (2017). Using positive education to enliven the teaching of reading. RELC Journal, 48(2), 256-263.

2 thoughts on “Show notes #13: Reading aloud to students. An interview with George Jacobs”

Thank you so much for this podcast. This episode was great, as always!

I like to use read-alouds with my adult ESL students. As you mentioned, I was also a little hesitant at first because I was worried that my students would perceive it as a children’s activity. But they seem to enjoy it! Sometimes I use graded readers, and sometimes I use children’s picture books. I wrote a post on my blog about how I use picture books in my class (https://allisonlewis.net/2017/07/17/using-childrens-picture-books-with-adults/), but I would be interested to hear how other people do it. And I’m always looking for suggestions of specific books that have worked well for other people’s classes.

Thanks so much! I’m looking forward to the next episode.

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