Improving Reading Skills in the Language Classroom with Mini-Sagas

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject English - Pedagogy, Didactics, Literature Studies, grade: 1, University of Innsbruck (ImoF), course: Developing Reading Strategies, language: English, abstract: The new developed genre of Mini-Sagas is, sadly, not really popular outside of the United Kingdom. This realization leads me to introduce Mini-Sagas into a language learning environment like schools for example. The following paper deals with Mini-Sagas as a new and innovative genre for writers and readers. Up till today not many attempts have been made to design tasks which involve Mini-Sagas as a text-stimulus. Outside of the annual competitions which take place in the UK, they seem to have been forgotten in schools outside Great Britain. Firstly, the primary aim of this paper will be to explore the possibilities connected to Mini- Sagas according to their learning and teaching potential with the main focus on improving the learners' reading skills. The tasks were designed by me, based on several teaching handbooks concerning teaching English as a foreign language. As I was given the opportunity to try out the tasks in practice and to improve my original approach by including helpful suggestions concerning the strengths and weaknesses of the tasks, the paper should provide the reader with an evaluation and discussion of the mentioned tasks. Furthermore, it should describe the usage of Mini-Sagas in the language classroom according to their advantages and how the students can benefit concerning reading as well as integrated skills. The first paragraph will give a detailed overview of the basics of the genre Mini-Sagas and describe the main characteristics of the text type, which are needed to understand the genre and the presented tasks.