Improving college students' reading and writing by combining reading and writing

Resumo

As a teacher of EFL at UFSC since 1975, I have observed semester after semester the difficulties that students in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature have in reading and especially inwriting not only at the beginning but at more advanced stages when they are close to graduating. I have also observed that these students have little interest in reading and writing in a foreign language either inside or outside the classroom. Conversations with my fellow teachers confirmed that they had observed the same weaknesses in their students and that they shared my concerns about this problem. Students who are preparing to be teachers of a foreign language should have a reasonable command of the four language skills—speaking, understanding, reading, writing—by the time they graduate. For those who wish to continue their training in English by doing graduate work, competence seems even more important as good reading and writing skills are the sine qua non for engaging in graduate work.