Digital Readers

Denise Larangeira

Graduated in Portuguese-English

Post-graduated in English Language and Methodology

Specialist in Teaching English for Students of Other Languages (TESOL)

Coordinator of the English Laboratory of SEAN

Creator of the blog baletslearn.blogspot.com.br

English teacher at CMB

Abstract: This is a bilingual article. It was written in Portuguese and English in order to release also in the English speaking countries, the reading project developed by the teacher Denise Larangeira for her 8th and 9th grade groups of Elementary School at SEAN, the English course, in the Military School of Brasília . The project aims at showing the results obtained by the students, as well as their interest in reading books in English. The work also aims at reflecting briefly on the ways and options for reading in the digital age, as well as the future of the printed book versus the concomitant emergence of new technologies that provide new forms of reading and the formation of new readers.

Keywords: Printed book. Digital book. Readers. Hypertext.

INTRODUCTION

With the advent of the Internet, the computer is no longer just a text editor. It became an inexhaustible source of information and reading which previously could only be performed in libraries or by purchasing books at bookstores. The Internet has facilitated the transmission of knowledge through different reading formats, either in pdf, electronic books (e-books), websites or blogs, among others. The continuing emergence of new technologies is leading to a new type of reader: the digital reader. Reading texts in various formats is now available to everyone with just a simple click on the mouse.

READING IN THE DIGITAL AGE

The restless emergence of new technologies proposes new challenges. We are being bombed every single day by constant substitutions imposed by the new media. Nowadays, the methodological changes in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) are directly associated with the new media in the current context, which play the role of both facilitators and motivators of the learning process in an enjoyable and affordable way.

THE READERS OF THE PAST

For the readers of the "pre-digital" age, the printed book was the only reading tool available and, despite the invasion of new technologies which provide new reading formats, the printed book continues to fascinate readers of different age groups. The pleasure of going to a library or bookstore, handling a book and browsing through its pages is still an undeniable pleasure in our emerging digital culture. The book fairs, the national and international literature festivals which take place annually in various cities in the country, always attract an increasing number of readers. To contradict some apocalyptic prophecies which preach the end of the printed book, the arrival of a new era of communication does not determine the total extinction of the former. The digital book can be considered as a continuation of the printed book into another material support which, besides offering different ways of reading, it also encourages the interactivity among readers and the book itself. Moreover, the advent of the digital culture offers the readers of the past, a practical and efficient resource for the purchase of new printed books: buying on the Internet.

THE DIGITAL READERS

The rapid advancement of media technologies radically changed the way of collecting data and storing knowledge. With regard to reading, new formats are available to all readers whether through electronic books (e-books), texts in pdf, with its numerous hypertext links redirecting to other pages on the same subject, or through networking social sites such as the Facebook and the Twitter.

New readers of the digital age have more autonomy and independence of physical displacement to have access to reading. Digital readers simply download files, manuals and books in the full version to their electronic devices like mobile phone, tablet, notebook or kindle from the comfort of their homes or any other place of their choice.

THE PROJECT

The teacher Denise Larangeira created a blog for her 8th and 9th grade basic level students at SEAN where she publishes grammatical explanations with exercises, tests, texts and videos related to the subjects studied in both the text book and workbook. However, when checking the difficulty and the lack of interest of her students in relation to reading comprehension exercises, the teacher began to think of a way to motivate their interest in reading.

The teacher used as a reading tool the technology of mobile media. The students downloaded the readers in pdf to their mobile phones, tablets or notebooks. Some students even chose to simple insert a link to their list of favorites and read the books online.

The love of reading can and should be encouraged. The habit of reading when motivated from very early age, provides greater and easier understanding and analysis of the facts.

The project goal was (and still is) to enter the daily lives of the 8th and 9th grade students with the primary purpose of enriching the vocabulary, reviewing the grammatical structures and promoting a more frequent contact with the English language in a gradual and consistent way according to the level of the students’ knowledge beyond the classroom walls.

THE MATERIAL SELECTION

The teacher surfed the Internet in search of English Readers available for free in pdf format. The so called "readers" are summarized storybooks with simplified vocabulary and with a degree of difficulty which suits the level of the students’ knowledge. The first book selected was "Blue Fins" by Sarah Axten. The book was selected because besides being easy to understand, it presents a basic level vocabulary, and the grammar verb tenses are in the present simple and present continuous tenses. The book has only sixteen beautifully illustrated pages with short sentences which narrate the adventure of two teenagers on vacation in Australia, who rescue a dolphin caught in a fishing net. The reader "Blue Fins" presents a vocabulary of about three hundred basic words and a glossary with the supposedly more difficult but important words to the understanding of the story. The meanings of some words are also explained through colorful and attractive pictures on each page of the book..

THE METHODOLOGY

In the first quarter of the school year, the teacher provided a link on her blog so that the students could download the book "Blue Fins" in pdf format to their smartphones, tablets or notebooks. She also asked that students to organize themselves into groups of three (or trios). The teacher published two reading comprehension pages (book report) that were shared with students via a link on the blog. Then, each student, after accessing the blog and clicking on the respective link, had at their disposal two pages with exercises of questions and answers, fill-in-the-blank sentences, true or false options and beginnings of sentences from the book that should be completed according to the sentences in the storybook. Each trio had the task of printing the pages and hand in the book report to the teacher within the stipulated time, which was about twenty-two days. During the English lessons, the teacher noticed that some students talked among themselves about the story they were reading, and some could not disguise a certain pride for being able to read a storybook in English for the first time.

THE EVALUATION

Before the deadline given for reading the book, the papers were delivered to the teacher, corrected and given a mark. To the satisfaction of both the teacher and especially the students, the lowest mark was 9,5. The teacher realized that most students felt encouraged to read books in English, and she was not surprised when some students asked her which books would be assigned for the following months. The teacher concluded that the three main factors that contributed to the success of the reading project were:

1) The portability: most students had chosen to download the book "Blue Fins" to their smartphones.

2) The easy comprehension of the story: the book has short texts, richly illustrated pages and a glossary.

3) The possibility of choosing “when” and “where”: the online book report could be done anytime and anywhere, provided that the deadline was respected.

CONCLUSION

The era of digital publishing in which we are living has made the dream of a universal library online come true. So, what will be the fate of the good old paper book? Will it meet its doom in this restless and fickle technological age where all state-of-the-art electronic gadget becomes ephemeral from one day to the other?

It is surprising that even in a globalized world, where gadgets are developed and discarded at a frenetic pace, the printed book remains the same since it was invented, about six hundred years ago.

Reading plays a major role for the improvement of the individual whether in the social context (school, work, entertainment), or in the intellectual universe of this particular individual.

Regardless of the form of reading, virtual reality is another step in the history of writing and not, as some readers of the past had predicted, the passage from one form of reading in detriment of the other. Both for the digital readers and for the fans of the printed book, new reading formats only add to encourage more readers to transit freely in this fascinating universe of reading in its various formats.

To conclude, we should reflect on a quote by Monteiro Lobato, a Brazilian writer who contributed so much to awaken in children the joy and the pleasure of reading, and that even these days enchants us with his storybooks, which says: "A person who can barely read, hardly speaks, barely hears, barely sees."

GLOSSARY

Blog - Virtual space whose structure allows in a simple and direct way, chronological, frequent and immediate registration of opinions.

Download - In a free translation, it is a term that corresponds to the action of transferring data from a remote computer to a local computer.

Hypertext - online text with links to other texts that deal with the same subject.

Kindle - the digital book reader developed by Amazon subsidiary, the Lab126, which enables users to buy, download, search, and especially read digital books, newspapers, magazines, and other digital media via wireless network.

Link - "Address" of a document (or a resource) on the web.

Pdf - File format developed by Adobe Systems in 1993 to represent documents independent of the application, hardware, and operating system used to create them.

Reader - books with summarized and simplified stories, according to the level of the student’s knowledge (basic, intermediate or advanced).

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Readers assigned by Denise Larangeira to her 8th and 9th grade students in 2014.

1st Blue Fins by Sarah Axten (March & April)

2nd The Well by Clare Harris (May & June)

3rd L. A. Detectives by Philip Prowse (July & August)

4th Shooting Stars by Polly Sweetnam (September & October)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BELLEI, Sergio Luiz Prado. O livro, a literatura e o computador. São Paulo: EDUC. Florianópolis: UFSC, 2002.

COSCARELLI, Carla Viana. (Org.). Novas tecnologias, novos textos, novas formas de pensar. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2002.

CHARTIER, Roger. A aventura do livro: do leitor ao navegador. São Paulo: Editora UNESP, Imprensa Oficial do Estado, 1999.

RAMAL, Andrea Cecil a. Educação na cibercultura: hipertextualidade, leitura, escrita e aprendizagem. Porto Alegre: Artmed, 2002.

LARANGEIRA, Denise. baletslearn.blogspot.com.br. Blog developed in 2014 for the 8th and 9th English groups at SEAN in the CMB.