Hey, Rizky...Would You Like To Meet My Students in Kansas?

Hello, everyone....and especially Rizky!

If you have seen this message, it probably means that you have been invited to Pontianak Reads, a blog I started while teaching in Indonesia. The idea behind this blog was that we could share our ideas about stories we were reading in difficult English, and new vocabulary words we had discovered. When I left Indonesia, Rizky and I decided we might want to keep this blog going, but we never did.

I remember teaching Rizky's and his classmates very well. I would go to Mr. Bunau's night-time reading class hoping he would be there with a lesson, but most of the time, he would be absent. So, I signed everybody's attendance cards, and went back to my office to find a good story for us to read together. Difficult English is nothing to be afraid of...you just need to read it with your friends. This makes it so much more interesting.

My students at Kansas State University English Language Program (Program Bahasa Inggeris Universitas Negeri Kansas) now have their independent reading assignments for the semester, and some of them are very long and difficult. Of course, they won't be getting any hard tests on those readings. There are enough hard tests already that come from our blue skills textbook, and these tests are given to us by the department.

But I think I like to give students difficult passages to read in English mainly because I miss Mr. Bunau's class. Struggling through a passage that is difficult to understand is like going on a long adventure together.

If you are a Kansas State ELP student reading this message, I hope that you will share with me and Rizky your thoughts about reading passages from "English Yes!" and short stories like "The Sojourner" and "English as a Second Language."