Iterative Reading

By: Prem Prasad Sigdel

These days reading is an important task of all as time has been changing rapidly. There isn’t any person, nor society, nor nation or nor government, all of them have focused on reading or education. It has been given credit due to the outcome education has deserved to the world. Everything has depended on education so the prime age children should have given good quality education to make them responsible citizen of tomorrow.

There are different methods of teaching in which I want to focus on iterative method of teaching or reading. Either it may be the practical method of John Dewey or it may be the Montessori method of Maria Montessori or it may be the teacher centered method of ancient time, they need iterative method to make students know the subject matter.

Let’s take an example of practical methods of Dewey which also needs much practice time and again so that the students are used to do the same work again. Similarly, the Montessori methods also need iterative process so that the student can know the subject matter well either by playing or by practicing. Both of the methods need repetition of doing so that the students would get mastery over it and they can use such knowledge independently in the future.

I am also a teacher and I have used iterative method while teaching. Mainly I teach secondary level students. I find several lacks in them even for reading. I ask all the students to do their homework regularly and make them read their homework turnwise in the class. All the students have got the chance to read and share their answers to others. It also aims to involve all the students in the process. If any student hasn’t read fluently I ask him/her to repeat until he or she has clear reading. In course of reading I correct the difficult pronunciations and the students would be helped for other difficulties. They have to repeat it time and again until they are perfect in reading. Sometimes it has gone more than 20 times for a sentence or a paragraph.

When the student is clear in reading, then I remind them the importance of iterative methods. I ask them about the times of repetition and emphasize them to do like that all the time to get mastery over subject matter. The method was first introduced by Jack Derrida who was known as the famous 20^th century philosopher of post-modernism. I have applied it to the students and found some visible improvements within some weeks. The students would have read the sentences so carelessly that I have noted their reading and asked them to repeat the process. When I ask them to repeat the process they would have known that there is mistake in their reading. So they would correct either singular or plural words and so on.

The process of iteration can be applied by the teachers in classroom to make their students competent in 3R; besides that it also helps students to guess the accuracy of their reading. The students wouldn’t react to the teacher since we have found their mistakes. It needs some labour from teacher’s side. Lazy teachers could do nothing with this method unless s/he becomes active to monitor students. So I suggest the teachers to do it once and be gained forever.