Improving Reading Skills in the Language Classroom with Mini-Sagas

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Pedagogy 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 UnitedKingdom. This realization leads me to introduce Mini-Sagas into a language learningenvironment like schools for example. The following paper deals with Mini-Sagas as a newand innovative genre for writers and readers. Up till today not many attempts have beenmade to design tasks which involve Mini-Sagas as a text-stimulus. Outside of the annualcompetitions which take place in the UK they seem to have been forgotten in schoolsoutside 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 improvingthe learners' reading skills. The tasks were designed by me based on several teachinghandbooks concerning teaching English as a foreign language. As I was given the opportunityto try out the tasks in practice and to improve my original approach by including helpfulsuggestions concerning the strengths and weaknesses of the tasks the paper should providethe reader with an evaluation and discussion of the mentioned tasks. Furthermore it shoulddescribe the usage of Mini-Sagas in the language classroom according to their advantagesand how the students can benefit concerning reading as well as integrated skills. The firstparagraph will give a detailed overview of the basics of the genre Mini-Sagas and describethe main characteristics of the text type which are needed to understand the genre and thepresented tasks.