2014/05/10

Title: How to Write a Graded Reader

Speaker: Alastair Lamond

The first part of Lamond's presentation focused on the mechanics of writing a graded reader. Alistair shared his approach to writing a graded reader version of Natsume Soseki’s Botchan. His goals in this project were to ensure historical accuracy, imagination, and connection with a modern audience. He took attendees through his experience step by step, from the text to the fact pages to the artwork, explaining his errors through inexperience and the tools that saved his project. Lamond then laid out the socio-cultural benefits of low-level graded reader versions of non-Western classic literature. In the currently-available graded reader versions of non-Western classic literature, the vast majority are 1,700 headwords or more, which is beyond most readers in Japan. He explained that he wrote his version of Botchan at the 600-headword level to illustrate how low-level versions of non-Western classics can have not only language benefits but also socio-cultural benefits for students. Lamond finished by offering guidance and help to any attendees who want to take on the difficult, but worthwhile, challenge of writing their own graded reader version of a non-Western classic.

Alastair Lamond has been working in the education field in Japan since 1988. He observed at the 2011 Extensive Reading World Congress in Kyoto that there was a dearth of classic literature in graded reader format for EFL learners at a low level, where most of our students are. Recognizing that even low level readers deserve to read, want to read, and can benefit from reading such literature, he suggested to an Italian publisher that they publish more such literature. Somehow along the way, his message got lost in translation and he ended up writing Botchan at the CEFR A1 600-word level to illustrate his thinking.