Teaching English Through Bible

To sum up, the above paragraphs suggest that dealing with stories in English lessons is a good idea. The question is whether to use them paraphrased or in their original version?

Can other subjects benefit from the English Bible-based lessons?

Over the years we can trail an enormous increase of content based teaching or learning English through content. Susan Halliwell describes content based teaching as integrating other subjects such as maths, sience or history into the English lessons with the focus on either language development or producing issues for teaching in other lessons (Halliwell 1992: 133). Gordon Lewis claims that this approach enables students to see that there is no barrier between English  and other  school  subjects.  Morever, this integration  carries the footprints of mutual dependence, reciprocal effect and enrichment (Lewis 2007: 11-12).

Jim Scrivener suggest that some school matters and topics can be elaborated and treated from various points of view in different subjects (Scrivener 2010: 329). Civics is a compulsory subject at the Czech Secondary Schools. Apart from other things, the main world religions are discussed. Czech lessons deal with the Bible stories from the literary point of view. Morever, the Biblical matter is also thoroughly discussed in the Czech optional subject called Religious Studies or Education that I used to teach myself. The students are faced with challenging questions about the ultimate meaning and purpose of life, beliefs, the self, issues of right and wrong. Moreover, they are taught how to develop respect for others, including people with different faiths and beliefs and how to develop their sense of identity and belonging (Muronova, Muchova 2004: 6-10).

As the interpretation of the Bible stories and parables can be very difficult and often requires reading between lines and abstract thinking that very young children are not familiar with I suggest presenting them to teenagers.

Why should we improve our students'reading skills and strategies?

Catherine Wallace claims that "the most important resource that any potential reader possesses, whether reading in a first or any other language, is an awareness of the way in which we use language". Furthermore, she states "we use the language for a purpose and it only makes sense in context, that is as part of a larger text or in a situation (Wallace 1992: Introduction)". 

Catherine Walter is persuaded that students'reading skills can be enhanced by getting involved in each exercise personally and by working in groups or pairs as students can be more motivated and more willing to communicate rather with a schoolmate than the teacher (Walter 1982: 3).

Apart from making students work in groups it is important to develop students'reading strategies as many students when reading texts tend to look up in a dictionary every single word they do not understand and therefore read very slowly. However, this is not what we usually do in real life reading, most of the time we are exposed to general understanding.