Педагогические науки/ 2. Проблемы подготовки специалиста

Ніколаєнко О.В.,

Ушата Т.О.,

Чернігівській державний інститут економіки і управління

SOME APPROACHES TO TEACHING READING AT NON-LINGUISTIC HIGHER EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENTS

On Bologna convention evidence, forms and methods of teaching reading professional literature require purposeful research to create an optimal teaching system. The pedagogical literature of some recent years contains various researches as for improving the system of teaching foreign languages at higher educational establishments, teaching reading as one of the most important means of speech activity, in particular. But there is one common thing for them all; it’s the necessity to work out such training process management, which is based on considering patterns, concepts of teaching, modern forms and methods of teaching in order to make training process the most efficient. To intensify the process of study some methodologists suggest to make the objectives more intense and to increase the motivation of study. In order to specify forms and methods of optimal methods of teaching reading at higher educational establishments nowadays, let’s consider reading as a kind of speech activity in general and the approaches of solving the problem which were observed in the methods of previous years.

Teaching reading is one of the most examined problems in the foreign and domestic methodology of teaching foreign languages. However, the considerable amount of the developed methods we can’t accept nowadays without alteration or correction. Some issues require certain specification and additional researches. The existing curriculum considers reading as a main task of the course “Foreign language at non-linguistic faculties”, and also as a source of information, but not a method of teaching, which provides only mastering certain language material. It is one of the most important means of speech communication. The main task is to make a student acquire habits and skills of “perfect” reading while studying; meanwhile his attention should be paid to the general content of the text. We should strive to make reading natural, fluent, and to make it approach the pace of the one in your mother tongue. As it’s very difficult to achieve such level of skills having very limited amount of foreign language classes at higher educational establishments, we should get working on it from the very first ones. We should teach students to get over the difficulties while reading, paying attention to the content of the text, but not to its form. Meanwhile it’s reasonable to systematically practice such kinds of activity as reading separate sentences, paragraphs or the whole text with the detailed comprehension of the information read, using dictionaries and necessary manuals.

These tasks were also set in the previous years. But their ratio was different. Main attention was paid to reading using a dictionary. The object of reading was a rich text, full of great amount of the unknown words. Reading without a dictionary (or with a minimum use of it) was not properly attended. It was believed that this skill will be acquired automatically in the process of study. This point of view was disproved by the practice of study. Because of a very poor school-leavers’ vocabulary, the process of reading turns into titanic efforts and reduces to slow deciphering of each line. Such reading makes it impossible to understand text content completely, and to get satisfaction from reading. Students, who were taught only to analyze and translate the text didn’t acquire the skill of global orientation in the text, didn’t learn to use common knowledge as a basis for understanding its more complicated fragments.

We think that specification of the teaching objective, which should meet the requirements of time, is greatly important. It should be approximated to the real demands of the present time, basing on forming abilities and skills, which are used while reading professional literature. Thus, a future specialist should learn to select from the huge amount of foreign literature just that very one, that he is going to make a careful study of (skimming). The selected literature should be examined as for its importance for the problem researched (reading for general understanding). And, finally, a future specialist should learn to understand the selected materials completely, using dictionaries and manuals at first (scanning). Unfortunately, such complex system of teaching reading professional literature is not so popular in the general system of education. Most urgent it is first of all in the groups of future masters and postgraduate students, and also senior students.

All this includes communicative reading. It’s mostly silent reading. It’s performed with the minimum use of the dictionary or without it. Forming abilities and skills of informative reading is worth paying attention, spending on it not less than 50% of time, given for teaching reading at higher educational establishments. The other part of this time can be spent on developing abilities and skills of detailed reading with the dictionary and also the skills of reviewing and annotation, which are especially important while reading professional literature.

Reading as a speech activity is the process of getting information from the text. This activity is differentiated by various features, which are implemented in different kinds of reading. According to the target orientation methodology differentiates: searching, skimming and scanning informative reading. According to the form there are silent reading, reading aloud, individual reading, reading in chorus. According to the revealing of content there are analytical and synthetic, translated and not translated reading; and according to the type of activity arranging there are prepared, unprepared, training, control reading. Let’s briefly consider some kinds of reading, which are of great importance while communicative reading formation.

According to the psychological set concerning the way of content revealing methodology distinguishes analytical and synthetic reading. While analytical reading, the students’ attention is paid to the detailed perception of the text, with the analysis of language form. While the synthetic reading – on integral perception of content. Analytical reading is used in higher education methodology only as a means of teaching a foreign language. It is mostly performed under teacher’s control, who directs the students’ attention to the object of analysis, forms the ability to independently detect the fragments of the text, which are difficult to understand, to get over the difficulties, using the dictionaries and other manuals. Analytical reading is performed differently on different stages of study: the content and lexical and grammatical filling of the text is gradually complicated, the amount of the analyzed phenomena increases, the texts’ size and the level of independency in its analysis are expanded. Analytical reading performs an auxiliary function, gets ready for a synthetic reading. It means that with the help of separate familiar elements we should determine the integrity of the information read, understand the general content, without paying attention to its form. So, while analytical reading the main task was to penetrate into the profoundness of the text; and while synthetic one we are interested in the wide content first of all.

Communicative reading is analytical and synthetic reading. That’s why some guidelines and exercises which were worked out for their formation can be successfully used while developing the methods of communicative reading, especially while teaching to read fiction, popular science literature and, to a certain content, professional literature.

The goals of communicative reading are:

- to obtain new information,

- to enlarge students’ language experience.

Of course, communicative reading skills may be formed spontaneously, transferring certain skills from the native tongue. Anticipation or prediction of content and language form which represents it, is an important component of communicative reading. That’s why the methods of teaching communicative reading at higher educational establishments are to include exercises, directed at the development of language anticipation of different levels: language form and the content of the information read. Communicative reading is based on the ability to recognize the meaning of the unknown words on the basis of contextual anticipation and formal signs, on the basis of semantics of word building elements and word function in a sentence, the ability to make a total from the separately understood parts. Methods of communicative reading are not the same at different stages of study: at the primary stage the skills are formed mostly at classes, then in classes and in independent work. It would be reasonable, if a teacher’s talk preceded communicative reading, in order to make a psychological guideline for content understanding and promotes the interest to reading. Texts for communicative reading must be easy to understand. The effect of teaching methods depends on the simplicity of the texts. Facilitation of comprehension while reading is promoted by:

- preceding processing of text language material;

- reading the texts which contain a bigger amount of lexical and grammatical material, familiar to students (usually, they are professional texts connected with the general specialization of the faculty);

- mastering a more difficult material while first reading of the text (in this case, it’s advisable to read the analyzed text once again);

- singling out the expected lexical and grammatical difficulties by the teacher, and their elimination before reading the text, by doing certain before reading exercises.

According to the above mentioned issues, there are some recommendations for the teachers:

- In order to form communicative abilities and skills, it’s necessary to have considerable practice; that’s why the process of study should be started as early as possible, using the sequence of secondary and higher school courses as much as possible.

- In order to form this kind of reading, it’s worth using class and independent work of students.

- The preceding oral work on the text in order to eliminate lexical and grammatical difficulties, should not disclose its content, as the text will lose its communicative value and will stop arousing students’ interest.

- The object of control should always be content comprehension, but not language material.

- The first reading of the text should be silent. It will create the necessary prerequisites for independent text comprehension.

- Multiple reading of the same text is not reasonable. If the content is understandable for the students, reading will lose communicative value. If the text is not understood completely, and there is the necessity to read it once more, then the communicative task should be altered, i.e. every repeated reading must be followed by a new directive of the teacher.

- In order to form the students’ communicative reading skills, it’s necessary to use as preparatory training exercises, so the exercises of a higher level, i.e. semantic and creative ones, which are a logical completion of training exercises and get the students ready for the independent work on professional texts.

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