Spiral learning: An introductory course on reading LOTE online

Abstract

In teaching reading, authentic texts with abundant lexical items and complex grammatical structures are typically used (Roche, 1992). Unfortunately, this has been a challenge for students enrolled in reading courses developed for English as a Second Language (ESL) as well as Languages Other Than English (LOTE) students. Students often translate word by word rather than applying learned strategies. To address this, an introductory online course on reading LOTE was developed. Texts and interactive activities in the new course selected words based on frequency lists and applied task-cycling (Levy & Kennedy, 2004) to reading strategies and grammatical structures. The desired outcome was “spiral learning”: while some words, strategies and structures were recycled between chapters, new words and structures were also introduced. The course was taught at the University of Victoria in Canada in 2009. Class observations showed that students responded well and used dictionaries less frequently than in previous courses.