Педагогические науки/5. Современные методы преподавания

Ст. викладач Смущенко І.А.

Чернігівський державний інститут економіки і управління

How to make teaching of reading interesting and productive with the help of different reading techniques

Reading is one of the four main skills in language learning and also one of the hardest for a foreign language learner. Getting students to read English texts is an important part of the teacher’s job. Many students want to be able to read texts in English for their careers, for study purposes or simply for pleasure.

Reading texts also provides opportunities to study language: vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, and the way we construct sentences, paragraphs and texts. Moreover, good reading texts can introduce interesting topics, stimulate discussion, excite imaginative responses and be the springboard for well-rounded, fascinating lessons.

Among the many definitions of reading that have arisen in recent decades, three prominent ideas emerge as most critical for understanding what "learning to read" means:

· Reading is a process undertaken to reduce uncertainty about meanings a text conveys.

· The process results from a negotiation of meaning between the text and its reader.

· The knowledge, expectations, and strategies a reader uses to uncover textual meaning all play decisive roles way the reader negotiates with the text's meaning.

Reading does not draw on one kind of cognitive skill, nor does it have a straightforward outcome—most texts are understood in different ways by different readers.

For foreign language learners to read, they have to be prepared to use various abilities and strategies they already possess from their reading experiences in their native language. They will need the knowledge they possess to help orient themselves in the many dimensions of language implicated in any text. Researchers have established that the act of reading is a non-linear process that is recursive and context-dependent. Readers tend to jump ahead or go back to different segments of the text, depending on what they are reading to find out.

Asking a learner to "read" a text requires that teachers specify a reading goal. One minimal goal is to ask the learner to find particular grammatical constructions or to identify words that relate to particular features or topics of the reading.  But such goals are always only partial. For example, a text also reveals a lot about the readers for which it is written and a lot about subject matter that foreign language learners may or may not know or anticipate.

One of the greatest problems of successful teaching reading is students’ boredom. Thence, there is great need for surprise and variety within a lesson. If, for example, students spend all of that time reading and translating the text, they will probably get bored. Nevertheless, if there are a number of different tasks with a selection of different topics, the students are much more likely to remain interested.

There are a lot of reading techniques, which can be used in the classroom to verify the process of learning reading. The four main types of reading techniques are the following: skimming, scanning, intensive, and extensive. They are much spoken about by the methodologists. However, we would like to draw attention to some supporting techniques, which can help teachers to send a ripple through the class. That ripple is a mixture of surprise and curiosity and it is a perfect starting point for students’ involvement.

Reading techniques and their purposes.

1. Skimming: reading a passage quickly to grasp the main idea (or gist).

2. Scanning: reading a passage quickly to find specific information.

3. Contextual guessing: making guesses about the meaning of words by looking at the surrounding words or situation.

4. Cloze exercise: fill-in-the-blank exercise, in which some words are omitted, designed to measure how well the reader understands how a text is linked together.

5. Outlining: note-taking technique designed to help the reader to see the overall organization of a text.

6. Paraphrasing: the ability to say or write ideas in other words; measures the reader’s understanding of the main ideas of a text.

7. Scrambled stories: also known as “jigsaw reading”; the reader re-orders the mixed up pieces of a text to show he understands how a text fits together.

8. Information transfer: exercise which requires readers to transfer information from the text into another form of related text or drawing (e.g. filling in a chart, tracing a route on a map); designed to measure comprehension.

9. Making inferences: “reading between the lines”; the reader understands what is meant but not stated in a passage.

10. Intensive reading: reading carefully for complete, detailed comprehension (e.g. main ideas, details, vocabulary).

11. Extensive reading: reading widely in order to improve reading comprehension, reading speed and vocabulary.

12. Passage completion: finishing a reading passage (orally or in writing); involves predicting a logical or suitable conclusion based on a thorough understanding of the text.

All these techniques provide surprise and variety within an hour class. Doing a number of different tasks with a selection of different topics, the students are much more likely to remain interested. This can be seen most clearly with students at primary and secondary levels, but even adults need a varied diet to keep them stimulated.