Филология/1

Ann Mudrenko, Oksana Reutskova

Dnipropetrovsk National University

The Fundamental Principles of the Teaching of Reading

There are many reasons why getting students to read English texts is an important part of the teacher’s job. Reading is important for a number of purposes. Students want to be able to read texts in English either for their career, for study purposes or simply for pleasure. Reading texts also provide good models for English writing. When we teach the skill of writing, we will need to show students models of what we are encouraging them to do. Reading texts also provide opportunities to study language: vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, and the way we construct sentences, paragraphs and texts. Lastly, good reading texts can responses and be the springboard for well-rounded, fascinating lessons.

Reading is an incredibly active occupation. To do it successfully, we have to understand what the words mean, see the pictures the words are painting, understand the arguments, and work out if we agree with them. If we do not do these things – and if students do not do these things – then we only just scratch the surface of the text and we quickly forget it. In the given abstract we would like to look at three different stages of reading tasks.

1. Pre-Reading Stage: At this stage of the reading process, a teacher should prepare the students to read the text. The teacher can ask them some questions, e.g. “What do you already know about …? What do you think you’ll learn about?” The students can predict what the text will be about from the title, or by reading the first line of the text.

The teacher should define any new vocabulary that he thinks the students should know before reading the text. Then he can give the students a list of events of the text out of order. They must order the events in the text correctly. Some events may not be in the text at all.

2. While- Reading Stage: At this stage of the reading process, the students should read and work with the text and new vocabulary. The teacher can ask a few questions about the main ideas of the text. The students must look quickly through the text to find the answers to particular information. There are a lot of different kinds of questions the students can be asked.

After reading the text, the students can fill in a chart with information from the text. They can do a true or false activity. It can be done orally, or the teacher may write true or false statements on pieces of paper and hand them out to the students. The students must then decide if their statements are true or false. The students can create their own true\ false statements and read them to the class.

A jigsaw activity: The teacher should divide the text into parts. He assigns the parts to different groups of students, for a home reading task or inclass assignment. The students who read the same piece must complete a task together.

A prediction activity: Cut the text into different pieces. Give the students the first piece. Once they have read it, they must predict what will happen in the next part. Then give them the next part. Repeat the process.

Story Scrambles: Cut the text into different pieces. Give a set to each pair of students. They put the story in the correct order. Variant: Each student receives only one sentence or part of the story. The students must form a line by standing in the order of their sentence in the story. Then they read the story together.

Working with Vocabulary: Some vocabulary you may not want to define for the students. Let them read the text and try to guess the meaning of new words by themselves. The students can re-write sentences and replace words with new vocabulary from the text that has the same meaning.

3. Post-Reading Stage: These are activities for the students to complete after working with the text and vocabulary.

The next stage is discussion. There are various activities that ask the students critical thinking questions that may start a discussion in the class. These questions should make them think and make connections to their life experience. Let them argue their opinion. Afterwards, the students can retell the text using new vocabulary and the main ideas.

Thus, anything we can do to make reading easier, more amusing and involving for students must be a good idea.