In this article, English teacher Nicola Linde Ruiz reflects on her experience of running a book club with her learners and provides clear steps for setting up a club of your own.
Why start a book club?
Students are often in need of more reading and speaking practice and yet there’s not always enough time in class. This was the conundrum I faced at the beginning of the 2016-2017 academic year. And then it came to me: why not start a book club? I wanted to give students the opportunity to practice their skills in a real setting whilst still practising the skills they’d need for their exams. And what’s more, I’m a book geek. It seemed like a win-win. That was the grand idea.
It’s now been just over a year since the book club was launched. Surprisingly, it’s been more successful at B1 level than at C1 and unsurprisingly, fluency and literacy levels amongst attendees have increased a fair bit.
The set-up
The idea was simple enough: to have 3 book clubs, one per level (B1, B2 and C1) so that attendees didn’t feel too intimidated. Each month, a date was set (Saturday mornings in our case) and they’d find out what they needed to read. A couple of weeks prior to the meeting, questions related to the book or the section to be read were prepared and handed out. This gave students ample time to read and think about their answers.
At B1 level we started off with the Cambridge Reader A Puzzle for Logan (Level 3) and with C1 we started off with a novel. They read a few chapters each month and the books were completed in 3-4 sessions. However, it became clear that this was not a great way to keep their attention over a period of time and so with the B1 group, I changed tactics and chose the collection of short stories A Fruitcake Special and Other Short Stories (Level 4). This allowed the students to read one story for each session and gave us more meat for our debates.
The sessions
During the meetings themselves, we’d start off with a discussion on anything they hadn’t understood in the passages and reviewed any unknown vocabulary. As the idea was that the teacher be a facilitator rather than an instructor, the students helped each other with vocabulary, meaning I only had to intervene occasionally. Then we’d move onto the prepared questions and finally, once their engines were warmed up, we’d open the discussion up into a wider debate on more cross-cutting issues.
What I learnt during the first year
- Finding the right frequency is key. In our case, once a month proved to not be enough for lower levels but sufficient for more advanced students.
- Due to the nature of people at C1 level, who tend to be either students in higher education or working adults, it was very difficult to pin everyone down to a date.
- One big mistake I made was choosing a novel for the C1 level, thinking their interest in the language and level of knowledge would be up to the challenge. In this academic year, I’m going to use collections of short stories at all levels so as to not turn reading into too much of a chore.
- It ended up being really useful to all attendees, as they got plenty of reading, speaking and listening practice.
Tips for setting up your own book club
- Short stories work best, even at higher levels. So far, I’ve been using Cambridge English Readers (though I’m close to running out of short story titles).
- As soon as you’ve set a date and time, share at least 5 comprehension questions that you plan to discuss in the book club meeting with the students.
- An instant messaging group for your book club is a good idea as you can use this to easily remind attendees when the next meeting is and share the aforementioned comprehension questions.
- It can often be difficult to get people talking at the beginning, so make sure you have a few extra questions up your sleeve in case this happens to you.
- Once the comprehension questions are done, open up the discussion into debate topics. For example, a crime story could lead on to talking about social exclusion. This highlights to the students the link between the content of the book and real-life.
- Meeting once a month is a good way to start, but don’t be surprised if you find you need to up the frequency, especially with the lower levels.
- Try to correct after people have finished talking or note down mistakes to feedback at the end so as not to interrupt the flow of conversation.
Book clubs are a fantastic tool to get in more speaking and reading practice and provide a welcome change from normal class formats. All students get a voice and as it’s almost always people who love reading who join, everyone has fun.
If you’re feeling creative with your book club, why not extend the activities to include creative writing sessions? Here are some ideas for getting started.