Vol. II (LXIV) No. 1/2012 93 - 98 Students’ perception of teaching reading. A pilot study Mihaela Badea* Petroleum-Gas University of Ploiesti, Bucuresti Blvd., 39, Ploiesti, 100680, Romania Abstract The student is both the object and subject of any educational process. On the one hand, it is the teacher who moulds the student’s mind and skills, and on the other hand it is the student who should become responsible for his own learning. In order to develop the intellectual universe and emotional world of his students, the teacher should not only offer knowledge, but also motivation to them. For this reason we consider that reading activities provide a good opportunity for accomplishing such a task, due to an interdisciplinary context and an integrated skills approach. The paper aims at surveying students’ perception of the way in which teaching reading skills should be applied at academic level. Keywords: reading; teaching techniques; traditonal; modern 1. Introduction One of the major aims of the process of teaching reading, irrespective of the students’ level of study, lies in motivating them, that is they ‘need to see a point to reading extended texts’ (Ronald Carter & Michael N. Long, 1992: p.16). This issue is of extreme importance because our higher education system is being under significant changes at the moment, which involve the development and putting into practice of updated teaching strategies. In other words, as Jeremy Harmer (2007: p.176) points out, we can get students to read ‘things they like or things they have experienced. It is known that, there is no motivation without pleasure, as Jim Scrivener shows: ‘The main aim of readers is to provide opportunities for extensive reading for pleasure. (…) As far as possible, let students read, enjoy and move on, rather than read and then have to do lots of exercises afterwards’ (2005:p.189). The last idea expressed by Jim Scrivener is relevant, as it reveals the major difference between two teaching models: traditional and modern. By modern we mean student-centred classes. At academic level, due to extensive reading in the syllabus, most of the foreign language and literature teachers tend to adopt the traditional model, considering that students’ reading skills are already consolidated and the teachers’ task resides in lecturing only. Accordingly, the manner of presentation is monotonous most of the time, perpetuating inefficient teaching methods that result from the following criteria: language is seen as a body of knowledge implying memorization of sets of items, the syllabus contains set lessons to be learned and the teacher is perceived as a provider of correct forms and information. In contrast with the traditional model, student-centred classes allow students many opportunities to express their own feelings about the reading texts, and thus, they do most of the talking. The learners explore the texts by themselves and make their own judgements, constantly developing not only their reading skills, but also other skills involved in learning a foreign language. The big difference here is that language learning becomes creative, focusing on developing sets of skills, the reading texts * Corresponding author: Tel.: +40 728 181 716 E-mail address: mbadea@upg-ploiesti.ro