NPM : A1B007019 AN EFFECTIVE WAY TO TEACHING READING AT SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL Background Reading is the fundamental skill upon which all formal education depends. Research now shows that a child who doesnt learn the reading basics early is unlikely to learn them at all. Any child who doesnt learn to read early and well will not easily master other skills and knowledge, and is unlikely to ever flourish in school or in life. Low reading achievement, more than any other factor, is the root cause of chronically low-performing schools, which harm students and contribute to the loss of public confidence in our school system. When many children dont learn to read, the public schools cannot and will not be regarded as successfuland efforts to dismantle them will proceed. Like many other fields of knowledge, reading has undergone a tremendous change during the last three decades. !his change is the fruit of innovative theories of reading, which have come as a reaction against the views that claimed that reading is a passive skill wherein readers do no more than assigning sounds to letters and reinforcing grammatical structures. !he innovative theories say that reading is an interactive process of communication between the writers represented by the te"t and the reader with his prior knowledge. #n fact, the writer encodes his message in the te"t$ the reader decodes this same te"t to get that. %ur role, as teachers, is to provide the learners with the strategies that would allow them to become efficient readers, to use &oodman's words, (readers who rely on strategies that yield the most reliable predictions with minimum use of the available information). #t is worth mentioning that the innovative models of reading aim at making reading in the classroom similar to reading in real life. When reading in the native language or in a second or foreign language in real FINAL ASSIGNMENT ELT METHODOLOGY life, we have a certain reason why we do so. We read things that interest us, not for practicing a given structural item. %ur aims in reading usually go beyond mere understanding. We may wish to understand something in order to learn from it *studying+, find out how to act *instructions, directions+, or for many other purposes. The purpoe o! "h# ar"#c$e !he purposes of this article were to provide the teacher about the aspects of reading skill and strategies should be noticed by them before they are being teaching reading skills to their students in the classroom. E$e%en" o! Co%prehen#on Reading means reading and understanding. !he purpose of reading is to connect the ideas on the page to what you already know. #f you don't know anything about a sub,ect, then pouring words of te"t into your mind is like pouring water into your hand. -ou don't retain much. .lements of understanding/ Analysis/ the result of this process is the perception of the meaning of a sentence. #nference-making/ it is the process of making best guess about what the speaker meant, apart from what he said e"plicitly. .vent-connection/ we attempt to find out if the new input we have received fits with any beliefs, contradictory facts, or other information that will help to e"plain or connect together the new event of which we have ,ust been informed. 0rediction and generation/ to postulate a set of possible plan. &oal tracking/ to try to figure out, why someone wants to do something. !hematic relationships/ to know about the te"t topic before hand. FINAL ASSIGNMENT ELT METHODOLOGY 1eliefs/ these beliefs are very much a part of how we understand and thus of how we read. Accessing and utili2ing raw facts/ simple facts about the world, without that it would be hard to understand a te"t or story. Read#ng Sk#$$ A teacher should select activities suitable for promoting reading as a skill in its own right, and which involve various different sub- skills. We need to isolate them and understand each one. !he following are some of the main reading skills re3uired by the pupil/ Word recognition 4peed-reading 4kimming 4canning 0rediction and generation 4ummari2ing Anticipation #nference Analysis Fac"or H#nder#ng Read#ng Co%prehen#on Reading comprehension fails for a number of reasons. 4tudents should attempt to identify the causes of lack of comprehension and then identify appropriate reading strategies to compensate for the deficits. !he following are the main factors that reduce the reading rate/ Limited perceptual span 4low perceptual reaction time 5ocali2ation 6aulty eye movement Regression * habitual 7 habits of concentration + 6aulty attention and concentration habits 4uppressing reading rate Lack of practice Lack of interest FINAL ASSIGNMENT ELT METHODOLOGY 0oor evaluation of important and less important parts reasonable Wholesome remembering rather than selective remembering 4ome factors are related to the readers habits while others are te"t related. !he following tables show which factors are te"t-related and which are reader-related. &' Reader(re$a"ed !ac"or &ood or mature readers 1ad or immature readers 1efore reading activate prior knowledge understand task and set purpose choose appropriate strategies start reading without preparation read without knowing why read without considering how to approach the material 8uring reading focus attention anticipate and predict use fi"-up strategies when lack of understanding occurs use conte"tual analysis to understand new terns use te"t structure to assist comprehension organi2e and integrate new information easily distracted read to get done does not know what to do when lack of understanding occurs do not recogni2e important le"ical items do not see any FINAL ASSIGNMENT ELT METHODOLOGY organi2ation do not reali2e they do not understand After reading reflect on what was read feel success is a result of effort summari2e ma,or ideas seek additional information from other 4ources stop reading and thinking feel success is a result of luck )' Te*"(re$a"ed !ac"or .fficient #nefficient language 9omprehensible to the learners. !oo difficult for learners' level. 9ontent Accessible, learners know enough about it to apply prior knowledge !oo difficult, too far removed from the learners' knowledge and e"perience. #ncomprehensible vocabulary !he reader takes it in his stride, guessing from conte"t, ignores and manages without, uses dictionary only when these strategies are insufficient. 9annot tolerate them, looks up everyone in a dictionary, discouraged from trying to understand the te"t as a whole. T+pe o! Read#ng Learners should be e"posed to the different types of reading. %ur aim is to create readers so as to enable them to read in real life. We should provide our learners with a variety of different te"ts and reading tasks and encourage them e"plicitly to use different strategies. 4ituation !e"t !ype Reading !ype #nstructions #nstruction 6ocus on main verbs FINAL ASSIGNMENT ELT METHODOLOGY Letter :arrative - informative 4emi-close reading Advertisement 8escriptive Reading for gist :ewspaper :arrative - e"position 4kim-scan !imetable table !arget info- scan ;enu list 4kim- scan #nvitation 4emi-table 4can Report ."position 4can- evaluate <eadlines Label #nterpret !5 guide 4emi-table 4kim - scan :otice #nstruction 4can - identify main points Road names signs 4kim to check !he most helpful thing we can do to improve learners' reading comprehension and speed is to provide them with the opportunities to do as much *successful+ reading as possible, including a varied diet of types of reading and 3uestions$ slow, fast, skimming, scanning, inference, generation, analysis, and evaluation. !he aim is to encourage automati2ation of recognition of common words or word-combinations, this being in general the crucial contributory factor to reading comprehension and speed. In"ruc"#ona$ Techn#,ue &etting learners to understand a simple te"t is only the beginning. Reading skills need to be fostered so that learners can cope with more and more sophisticated te"ts and tasks, and deal with them efficiently, 3uickly, appropriately and skillfully. #t is our duty as teachers to provide appropriate teaching techni3ues, which may enable our learners to gain these skills and use them efficiently as re3uired. #n this part, we will tackle some of innovative teaching techni3ues that would be helpful in teaching reading elements to our learners in schools. &enerally, teachers introduce the topic of the te"t before hand and ask some general 3uestions to arouse learners' interest. Learners read the 3uestions and then the te"t to answer them. =nknown vocabulary is pre-taught before reading takes place. Reading comprehension is not concerned only with teaching vocabulary items in isolation or answering 3uestions for the sake of answering. Learners should learn FINAL ASSIGNMENT ELT METHODOLOGY vocabulary, add to their background knowledge of the topic tackled and learn to think, to infer, to predict and to analy2e. 8ifferent techni3ues should be used by teachers to deal with reading te"ts, to ensure the element of interest and motivation, and encourage learners to use different strategies and skills, is webbing. !his techni3ue involves learners own perspectives in creating interactions that gradually clarify targeted vocabulary may be a way to combine direct teaching and incidental learning in one e"ercise. !eachers can use learners personal e"periences to develop vocabulary through informal activities such as brainstorming a list of words associated with a familiar word, pooling their knowledge of a pertinent vocabulary item, etc. !his could be done at the beginning of a reading lesson, where the teacher shows learners the title and asks them to give the words that might appear in the te"t. !he title should help them guess what the te"t will be about. After the words are written on the board, learners split the words into groups, according to their connotation$ i.e. funny or sad, associated with kindness or violence etc... After that they are re3uested to compose their own stories based on the title given by the teacher and the vocabulary list from the board. Later the te"t is read. Conc$u#on 6rom a teacher's point of view the issue in the classroom usually revolves around how to improve the learner's reading comprehension, whether it is in content area or in the language arts. #t appears that different tasks should be used in a reading class to enhance the skills and sub-skills which learners need ac3uire to be able to understand. !he lack of motivation in learners during a reading lesson may be due, to a reasonable e"tent, to the monotonous way in which teachers deal with reading te"ts. !his generally consists of reading and carrying out the workbook tasks or answering Wh- and true of false 3uestions. !hese tasks may neither develop the reading ability of the learners nor prepare them to become independent readers. %n the contrary, they may make them believe that the ultimate ob,ective of reading is answering 3uestions and getting good marks in tests. All these things re3uire more preparation on the part FINAL ASSIGNMENT ELT METHODOLOGY of the teacher. We should stop hiding behind the unwillingness and the weakness of the pupils because we are responsible to a certain degree for the reluctance of our learners and their being at loss. !aking all the material that has been presented in this workshop into consideration$ we would come to an agreement that there is a ceiling below which language deficiencies hinder understanding. We would also agree that a reader whose general knowledge repertoire is too low, or whose culture is very different from that underlying the te"t would face great problems in understanding them. !his implies that we should aim at making our learners gain a good linguistic repertoire. We should encourage them to seek general information if we really want to form efficient readers. References ;c>eachie, W. ?. *@AAA+ Teaching tips: Strategies, research and theory for college and ni!ersity teachers, 1oston/ <oughton ;ifflin. Wilhite, 4. *@ABC+. 0repassage 3uestions/ !he influence of structural importance. "ornal of Edcational Psychology, DE*F+, FCG-FGG. &raves, ;. 6., ?uel, 9., H &raves 1. 1. *@AAD+. Teaching reading in the t#enty$first centry% 1oston/ Allyn H 1acon. 9arver, R. 0., H Leibert, R. .. *@AAE+. !he effect of reading library books at different levels of difficulty upon gain in reading ability. &eading &esearch 'arterly, CI, FJ-GB. &ersten, R., 6uchs, L. 4., Williams, ?. 0., H 1aker, 4. *FII@+. !eaching reading comprehension strategies to students with learning disabilities/ A review of research. &e!ie# of Edcational &esearch, 71*F+, FDA-CFI. FINAL ASSIGNMENT ELT METHODOLOGY