Филологические науки/1.Методика  преподавания языка и литературы.

Issayev Serzhan Izdashuly, Nazymkyzy Zhainar

Issayev2015@yandex.ru, 1996198@mail.ru

L.N.Gumilyev Eurasian National University, speciality “Foreign languages: two foreign languages”, Astana, Kazakhstan

EFFECTIVE WAYS OF WORKING ON TEXTS

IN TEACHING ENGLISH

In modern society the role of foreign languages increases rapidly. Nowadays, there are a lot of various methods for teaching a foreign language. The most useful strategy to encourage learning a foreign language is working on texts in teaching English. Work with the text is presented as the most important thing in organizing language sphere, this is the most simple and, at the same time, an effective activity in the classroom of English. Giving information through the text is the main and basic motivation in learning foreign languages in higher education of academically specialties. The first texts are appeared after learning some lexical words and phrases. It is clear that from this time we can speak about the early learning of language.
Texts are necessary for teaching reading rules. Textual reliance dumbs down to the way we have always learned things in school; via worksheets and books and it is the single biggest reason why people struggle in listening and speaking a foreign language. [1 ] Our trust and dependence on text gets a foothold early on. The need to use text grows with and facilitates our intellectual and linguistic development. But the problem is that we do not process text in the visual receptors of the brain. Rather, text is a code which has to be deciphered and translated into an internal monologue. As a result, the use of text distracts from developing strength in listening – the primary requirement for fluent, accurate and complex understanding. Of course, you need to use texts sometimes but I think they are most useful at the very lowest and the very highest levels. A text with a clear aim in mind: it contains some high-priority language that you want to present and teach, or it will act as a springboard for discussion, or it will give useful listening practice, or it will serve some other clearly-defined purpose. Text-work is an awfully convenient way of filling up a language lesson, and teachers often feel that any text-based activity is bound to be beneficial. This is not necessarily the case. One approach to ‘going through’ is the traditional pseudo-intensive lesson where the teacher uses a text as the basis for a kind of free-association fireworks display. He or she comments on one word, expression or structure after another, elicits synonyms and antonyms, pursues ideas sparked off by the text, perhaps gets the students to read aloud or translate bits, and so on and so on. Meanwhile the students write down hundreds of pieces of information in those overfilled notebooks that someone once memorably called ‘word cemeteries’. When the end of the 'lesson' is approaching, students may answer some so-called ‘comprehension questions’. Students then go away to write a homework on a topic distantly related (or even not at all related) to that of the text. This kind of activity tends to fall between two stools: the text is too short to contribute much to learners' extensive experience of language, but the work done on it is not really intensive either. At the end of the cycle the students have been given much too much input, have engaged with it too superficially to assimilate much of it, and have used (and therefore consolidated) little or none of it. They have been taught – inefficiently – one lot of language, and then asked to produce a substantially different lot. [2] Another approach which has been fashionable in recent decades is to use a written text to teach 'reading skills'. The text is typically accompanied by a battery of exercises which require students to predict, skim, scan, identify main ideas, match topics to paragraphs, sort out shuffled texts, and so on. There is an implicit assumption that even perfectly competent mother-tongue readers actually need to learn to process text all over again in a new language. For a critique of this view, see Walter and Swan 2008. Students may spend substantial time working through a text without any very identifiable payoff in terms of increased language knowledge or genuine skills development. [3] The most creative ways to work with reading texts was kindly shared by Andrei Zakhareuski. There are: -expand the text; With short, simple texts, get students to add an adjective in front of every noun / an adverb to every verb etc. 
- reduce the text; Get students to reduce the text to exactly (100) words or reduce the total number of sentences by (50%). - reconstruct the text; Before class, write a list of key words from the text in jumbled order on a sheet of paper. Make one copy for each group of students. 
In class, give out the text to all the students. Get them to read it through. Now ask them to turn over the text. Hand out the jumbled keywords. Ask students to put the keywords back into the correct order without looking a text . -matching; Before class, get a heavy black pen and cross out the first sentence of each paragraph. -transform the text; Students must transform the text in some way, for example: Retell a story in the first person not the third person. Present a news story as a TV news item instead of a newspaper item. -deduction; Copy the text onto a piece of A4 paper. Tear off a column (say 4cm wide) down the left hand side of the copy and a similar sized column off the right hand side. -text quiz; Hand out the chosen text to the class. Give them time to read it, check new words etc.  -word partnerships; Before class, find useful words partnerships in your chosen text. Write the first word of each partnership down the left-hand side of a piece of paper. 
-reactions; In class, allow students time to read the text and check out any problems. -talk about the text. One of the things we often do in real life is tell someone else about a story / news item / magazine article etc that we read. 
To do this in class, all you need is a text and a group of students. - Task: ‘Work in pairs and underline unknown vocabulary. Try to contextualise it and guess the meaning.’ Follow-up: after the students have exchanged information and have short-listed the unknown words the teacher writes on the board the final list of unknown words/phrases eliciting these items from the pairs. The students then offer some definitions/example of usage (not all of these items are unknown to all of them) so they learn from each other while the teacher confirms or draws their attention to the text to give the exact definition (elicitation or demonstration) Another activity to exploit new vocabulary is to extract 5/6 words from the text to associate them with their verb/noun/adjective they already know. A useful task is to work in pairs, choose 5 words from the text that they find interesting and write meaningful sentences which are then read out in class and are accepted or corrected by the other students. [4] Research shows that the information contained in the scientific - popular texts, calls the students' interest in secondary schools, high schools, colleges, universities with advanced study of foreign languages - irrespective of the profile of the school / class. Given this interest, and based on it increase the level of motivation to mastering a foreign language, it is advisable to use the scientific - popular texts in the practice of foreign language teaching. To work with the text includes all the possibilities for learning the language: For learning the vocabulary, for understanding grammar, for speaking fluently keeping pronunciation intonation, for widening knowledge and outlook. [5] Summing up this article, we want to say that reading is a very important language learning skill. It helps you improve all parts of the English language – vocabulary, spelling, grammar, and writing. Improve and use your reading skills and you will improve all your English skills. The Texts in teaching English materials are also useful in that they provide examples teachers can use to model examination approaches. Language change questions follow a clear pattern asking students to comment on facsimile texts from the same time or from different times, to show understanding of temporal and situational variation and how these interact.

References:

1. Gorchilina EE Assessment of quality of preparation of graduates of secondary (full) school in a foreign language. M. Bustard 2001 2. Content-area reading strategies for language arts, Walch publishing, 2003 3. Walter, C. & Swan, M. 2008. 'Teaching reading skills: mostly a waste of time?' in IATEFL 2008: Exeter Conference Selections. 4. Starks, AP English teaching in high school / A.P.Starkov - Moscow, 2008. 5.https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/using-texts-constructively-what-are-texts