THE BRIDGE-HELPFUL READING LITERACY STRATEGIES

Introduction
1. Introduction
Magdalena Bobek, mag.
Helping learners become autonomous in reading is one of the main objectives in education
today. Reading has recently become one of the greater challenges mainly due to all the
technologies such as mobiles, smart phones, ipods, just to mention a few that enable
learners to stay in almost constant contact with social media sites such as Facebook,
Instagram, Twitter, Google and others. They have become frivolous diversions and
sometimes even obstacles in the learning process deviating learners from successful learning
already at a very young age. It seems that young learners and teenagers, have become
addicted to these modern technologies and simply do not know how to approach reading or
anything connected to it, as it all seems so boring compared to their ipods and mobile
phones. Getting learners at this stage in life interested enough for them to do a simple
reading task is a challenge in itself. Since learning also requires reading, it is obvious that
reading literacy plays an important part in this process.
Before looking at possible ways of improving reading literacy, it is first and foremost
important to understand the young learners' perception of the world at this stage in life. At
the age between thirteen and seventeen everything teenagers do, how they live, speak and
breathe revolves around them. In order to get their attention and improve their interest in
the curriculum, it is vital for teachers to find ways of boosting the teenagers' interest in
reading material. Perhaps the most important factor influencing a teenager's interest in
reading is the reading material itself.
Material that offers little or nothing tangible to teenagers or their life experiences, will not
serve as something they will embrace. On the other hand material that deals with common
teenage problems and circumstances or a young person's struggle at achieving their goal in
life, something with which teenagers can associate, is bound to capture their attention. If
the material at hand is not completely connected to their 'schemas' to use Cook's expression
(1997:86) referring to the knowledge of the world that the reader brings to the text, the
teacher will have to use various teaching styles and methods as well as select and evaluate
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