Specific learning goals, along with the tasks that help students reach those goals. Choosing suitable texts for a particular group of learners.
WHICH LANGUAGE FOR INITIAL READING?
A great deal of rhetoric has been directed at the first question, but
surprisingly little research has been reported. It should be easier to learn to read in a
language you know well than one you don't. If initial reading means learning the
phoneme-grapheme correspondences (the alphabetic principle), then it would be
helpful if the child knew the sounds of the language to start with. For example, if
he hears no difference between /r/ and /I/ in English—and many Japanese students
don't—then it seems he would have difficulty learning correspondences of letters to
sounds he cannot distinguish. If he hears no difference between /i/ and /I/—a