Post-Reading Activities

Post-reading activities are activities carried out after while-reading activities are completed.
These activities are important in reading lessons. It helps students to conceptualise what they
read in the texts and make the knowledge their own. Post-reading activities serve the purpose
of recycling what the students have obtained from the texts, going beyond them and enter the
real world, equipped with the new knowledge gained (Arwijati Wahjudi, 2010). Students reuse
not only the new information they get from the content or topic of the texts, constructing
knowledge from it and making it their own. They also recycle the language and linguistics
forms and structures in the texts. Thus, post-reading activities complement the whole reading
lesson by further facilitating the acquirement of the new knowledge including both content and
language.

Arwijati Wahjudi (2010) also suggests that post-reading activities promote language
automaticity, meaningful learning, students autonomy, willingness to communicate, multiple
language skills as well as communicative competence. Post-reading activities help students
to achieve language automaticity because they provide the students with opportunities to
recycle language components in different ways through different language skills. Students are
also encouraged to relate the information they get through reading with their personal
experiences, background knowledge and the world surrounding them which promotes the
learning to be meaningful. In post-reading activities, students are given more control and
autonomy since they are actively responding to the text while the teacher serves as a facilitator
taking a lesser role in the activities. The activities also promote students willingness to
communicate because they have done so much in the pre and while-reading activities that
they are well-prepared, more confident and more willing to take risks in participating actively
in post-activities. Post-reading activities add varieties to the tasks students are engaged in
while using the same text. Thus, they have opportunities to use the language using different
language skills and further develop those skills. Post-reading activities do not emphasise on
the right and wrong answers to comprehension questions anymore. The activities promote
communicative competence because rather than testing students vocabulary or grammar of
the text only they are more interested in students fluency of communicating their responds to
the texts.

Arwijati Wahjudi (2010) indicates that good post-reading activities possess a few
criteria. They should be able to get the students to recycle some aspects from their while-
reading activities. It should not be totally different and alienated from the activities carried out
before so that students have more opportunities to practice the language aspect which the
lesson focuses on as well as gaining better understanding and deeper knowledge of the topic.
Instead of limiting the students to the texts, good post reading activities should get the students
to go beyond them. Students can bring in their values, experiences and prior knowledge in
discussing the text and making the connection between the texts and the world around them.
Post-reading activities should facilitate and encourage students to share their opinions, ideas
and feelings and give them reasons to communicate too.

The article written by Arwijati Wahjudi (2010), also lists a few post- reading activities
which are interactive and proven to be working from his experiences with his own students.
One of the activities that focuses on listening skill is Identifying Differences. In this activity,
students listen to the teacher reading a similar text but with some changes. Students need to
identify the differences between the text they read and the text read to them by the teacher.
This activity can start as an individual activity and move to pair work in which students discuss
the differences with a friend. To get the activity more interesting, students can be divided into
groups and each group competes in writing the changes on the board with a time limit.

One of the activities suggested by Arwijati Wahjudi (2010) that focuses on speaking
skill is TV Reporter. This activity requires students to work in groups. Their roles are to be
like television reporters, summing up the highlights of the text in two minutes. They present
their work by reading the news just like on the television, using a laptop or a large piece of
paper put on a stand to write the news prompt.

Arwijati Wahjudi (2010) also suggests Story Innovation as a post-reading activity that
focuses on writing skill. This is more appropriate and suitable for fictional texts. Students can
create, modify or make changes to any part of the story, be it middle or the ending. The article
gives two examples of students work which are based on the story The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
One example shows a story created on the part where the villagers were tricked for the first
time and the other was the changes a student made to the storys ending. Both show stunning
creativity and allow an excellent and exciting practice for writing.

Another interesting interactive post-reading activity suggested by Arwijati Wahjudi

(2010) is Interactive Cross-Word Puzzle. This activity provides the students with opportunities
to recycle some of the vocabulary from the texts. It works like an information gap activity.
Students work in pairs. Each member has a different set of partially completed crossword
puzzle with missing clues. Student with the answers need to construct the clues to be guessed
by the other students in the pair. This activity requires active communication between students
and provides purposeful listening and speaking practice.
Conclusion

In making English Language reading lessons communicative, just like any other
methodologies and principles of language teaching, good planning is a must. It should be
based on the teaching and learning objectives, students profile as well as the condition of the
students and the setting in which the lessons are taking place. Varying the activities in the
lessons can create a more positive, creative, innovative, effective and fun learning
environment. It encourages students communicative development as well since ample
opportunities are given where students are engaged in meaningful and purposeful
communications.

References

Arwijati Wahjudi. (2010). Interactive Post-Reading Activities That Work. Bahasa dan
Seni, 38(1), 84-92.