TEACHING READING

PLAN

1. The role and place of reading in teaching a foreign language at school.

2. The psychological mechanisms of reading. Interrelation of rea­ding with other language activities.

3. Modes of reading.

4. The selection and requirements to texts for different modes of reading.

5. Teaching the technique of reading.

practical stimulating cognitive educational

The psychological mechanisms of reading are:

Ø the starting mechanisms (perception of graphic images);

Ø the identification of graphic information;

Ø anticipation;

Ø inner articulation;

Ø aural control (reading aloud).

A mode of reading depends on the criteria it is based on:

Synthetical reading is a mode of reading which centers a reader's attention on the whole speed produce (work, written piece) not on any particular information. Tempo of synthetical reading in English is 180 syll/ min.

Synthetic reading is aimed at reading without a dictionary and getting as much information as possible.

It presupposes:

Ø generalizing the facts;

Ø extracting key points and ideas;

Ø drawing a conclusion;

Ø interpreting the texts and their meaning.

Synthetic reading requires the skills of:

a) extracting the notional landmarks from the text (key words, facts);

b) relating separate parts of a text with each other; determining the succession and interrelation of events;

c) generalizing the acquired facts;

d) drawing a conclusion and evaluating the facts stated, interpreting their meaning.

The general requirements to the texts for reading:

educational; cultural; methodological; linguistic.

The Requirements to texts for synthetical reading:

1) A certain minimum of unfamiliar words the meaning of which can be guessed from a context;

2) Understandable for this or that particular age group of pupils;

3) Logical and clear-cut composition; simple, laconic style of literary speech.

The techniques of teaching synthetical reading:

Stage One: Aim - assimilation of all the language material (vocabulary and grammar) in oral speech and creation of necessary prerequisites for the understanding of what has been read.

Anticipation

Prediction

Stage Two. Reading of a text for the 1st time. It is preceded by special before-you-read activities (tasks ), e.g.

1) answer the teacher's questions;

2) find the parts of the text according to the plan suggested;

3) choose from the text the characters' consideration on the follo­wing questions;

4) say how the title reflects the main content of a text;

5) mark out a part of a text which can be entitled as “ ”;

6) choose phrases on the topic “ Seasons and weather, My future plans, my family“;

7) place the events in the chronological succession;

8) underline, write out...

Stage Three – checking up of understanding what is being read. Aim - to clear up the results of primary reading and understanding of the content of a text by pupils .e.g.;

1) find the material which tells us about...

2) find the material where the character is described as...

3) complete (finish) the text, having chosen one of 3-4 variants;

4) agree or disagree...

5) say whether the characters' sayings correspond to their doings;

6) say what episode can be illustrated by this picture;

7) choose a picture among the suggested ones which can be applied to the text;

8) place the pictures in the same order with the doings of the character.

Stage four – final reading (or R for the 2d time). Aim: formation of the skills con­nected with the content of a text. Ex. to be done here:

1) Define the main idea;

2) Prove that...

3) Think of another title...

4) Illustrate and decide whether the following words have any reference to the main character.

Stage five – follow up activities.

The requirements to texts for home-reading:

· -an interesting plot;

· -emotionally-colored and expressive narration;

· -correspondence of the text to pupils' life experience and interest;

· -possibility for giving controversial stand-points which can give rise to a discussion;

· -possibility for various transformations of the content of the text.

Analytical reading is aimed at full and accurate comprehending of all the information present in the text. It implies a purpose­ful analysis of the content of what is being read.

Analytical reading presupposes:

- analysis of the sentences;

- building up a word family;

- semantic mapping;

- grouping the words;

- suggesting lexical analogies;

- finding the initial forms of the words;

- skimming reading is aimed at the gist of reading material;

- scanning reading is aimed at finding out a particular piece of information about concrete things.

Checking up understanding in analytical reading is done in the form of written translation.

Checking up understanding in analytical reading is done with the help of grammar analysis aimed at the dif­ferentiation of various forms according to their formal characte­ristics and at defining their function in a particular sentence.

Skimming reading. It is important for reading big texts the amount of which is not great.

Skimming reading is aimed at getting a general idea of the subject of an article, a book, at looking through the titles, some passages.

Synthetical reading is aimed at getting an idea of the content of a book, concentrating attention on the main facts.

Analytical reading is aimed at understanding fully and completely all the information and to think it over.

How to work at a text with the aim of grasping its general content.

Step one: Work at the title. (Setting a task, arousing interest)

Step two: Grasping the main information out of the text (work in pre-questions and pre-text tasks).

Step three: Cutting the main information:

a) dividing the text into logical parts,

b) making up a plan,

c) work with key-words and phrases (distribution of key­words among, the items of the plan, searching and rea­ding out sentences with key-words, cutting, them snort).

d) brief retelling of the content of the text according to the items of the plan,

Step four: interpreting the content of what has been read (defining the main ideas, stating one's own attitude, transfer motion of the text in the person of one of the characters).

Before-you-read activities:

Several techniques that can be used to encourage reader-initiated questions:

1. The first-sentence stimulus. The 1st sentence of a text is put on the board and pupils are asked to write 10 questions about the sentences,

2. The thematic stimulus. Pupils are asked to generate questions that have to do with the general theme of the reading.

3. The picture stimulus. Pictures are used to motivate students to ask questions related to the general theme of the read up.

4. The reading stimulus. Students are asked to formulate questions at various points in the text or at the end of the passage.

Exercises extending from the text.

1)Paragraph structure. In this type of ex. the pupils can appreciate the way paragraphs are organized in discourse terms. "A prescription and narration".

2)Prediction Exercises. With longer readings certain parts of the text can be withheld and the pupil is asked to predict orally or in writing how the paragraph might develop.

3)"Jigsaw" exercise. The text is divided up; the pupils, in groups or individually, are then required to fit "the pieces" together in their correct order.

4)The function of sentences. Work at paragraph level needs to be integrated with work focusing on the functions of individual sen­tences. Pupils need especially to be clear about the functional value of markers like However, for example, etc.

5)Vocabulary follow-up. In this activity new words encountered in the text are reinforced with a game where the letters of each word are

How to evaluate the pupils’ utterances:

The school syllabus contains qualitative and quantitative indices of monologue which should be produced by pupils of each form.

Quantitative requirements - how many sentences a pupil is to produce for an "11-12", "8-10", "5-7".

Qualitative requirements - what sentences a pupil is to produce: logical? interesting?, whether a pupil has used different models correctly.

The teacher should correct only those mistakes which interfere with understanding. In the regime T - CL semantic mistakes should also be cor­rected, as well as the teacher is supposed to have pupils work at typical mistakes.

Rule for the teacher:

It is advisable that the teacher should not correct mistakes in the process of a pupil's connected speech. Other important criteria of evaluation of monological skills are as follows:

1) adequateness of the requirements to the ex. aimed at development of these skills to the character of a communicative task (to inform or to influence);

2) the volume of an utterance – number of sentence;

3) the degree of combination, i.e. speech activity;

4) the character of props in this or that ex.

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 1790