DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: READING PRACTICE PROPOSAL FOR TEACHING ENGLISH WITH TEXT GENRE

In the beginning of the 21st century several trends have shaped the nature of reading and its practice. The research community started to look at the reading practice in classrooms and at the actual function of this activity in an everyday basis. The present study proposes activities for teaching reading in English using the diary genre. Based on the psycholinguistic perspective of reading (SNOW, 2002; CARRELL, 1983) and on the Brazilian official documents that recommend the use of a variety of textual genres as a means to promote reading as a social practice, the activities hereby proposed aim at stimulating and increasing students’ interest on reading, considering the importance of it in the teaching/learning process of English as an L2. The book utilized to present the proposals is Diary of a Wimpy Kid vol. 1 and the activities contemplate pre-reading, while reading and post-reading stages. In conclusion, the book choice and theme need to be related and connected to the context of the students, once difficulties on learning an L2 and memory constraints can be minimized if pre-reading activities as a scaffolding could be provided beforehand