Is knowing how to teach reading in English important? You betch'a!

Hi everybody! I've enjoyed reading the new entries and introductions and surfing the new websites. May I suggest a topic for conversing? What is reading in English all about and how can we help our learners to become proficient speakers and hence, readers? I want to refer you to a website, learn@cdl.org, the site for The Center for Development and Learning in the U.S. There is a great new conference coming up (I know! we can't go) but you can search some of the presenters. . for example, Louisa Moats. She is great -- practical but knowledgeable about spelling and reading in English (No! we NEVER use Italian phonology to help students spell in English as they are completely different). And, we should never forget to teach 'phonics' (the sound/letter correspondences in English -- sounds in English do not have fixed letter patterns as in Italian. . .we know that!) so that students can automatically 'decode' (then, they know what the print sounds like and focus their attention on meaning). The better able students are to access the code of English, the more attention they can pay to building vocabulary, natural rhythm in English and learning grammar because they hear it more clearly. Such a simple thing! And yet, why don't we regularly focus on this. . .especially in elementary school? We are doing it through Inglese Dinamico at the European School of Venice and in our labs -- what a quick uptake on better pronunciation, decoding and vocabulary and yes, even grammar recall -- we store words and 'chunk' our grammar in our 'mental dictionaries' first through sound!

Nancy