Tashkent state pedagogical university named after nizami foreign languages faculty

1.2 Developing reading skills and strategies

Students who are literate in their own language sometimes are left to their own devices when it comes to teaching them reading skills. They will simply learn good reading by absorption. In reality, there is much to be gained by focusing on reading skills. It is generally recognized that the efficient reader versed in ways of interacting with various types of texts, is flexible, and chooses appropriate reading strategies depending on a particular text in question. The reader has to match reading skill to reading purpose.can differ between reading aloud and silent reading. Reading aloud is not appropriate for advanced students. We can use it when we have control reading. At the advanced level the most suitable is silent reading. Sustained silent reading allows students to develop a sense of fluency. Also silent reading can help the students to increase the speed of their reading. Reading speed is usually not much of an issue for all but the most advanced students.is now generally accepted that reading is not the careful recognation and comprehension of each word on the page in sequence. A good reader use a minimum of clues from the text to reconstruct the writer 's message. It is not difficult for the fluent reader to read the text with missing words. Experiments have shown that sometimes readers are not even aware of these things. Their successful reading depends upon their ability to predict what comes next. We read, in sense, what we expect to read, using our knowledge of language and our knowledge of the topic to predict to a large degree what comes next and so move on quickly [15, p.144].advanced readers possess many different skills which they actively apply to the reading of the text: - they predict from syntactic and semantic clues the words; - they read in phrases, not in single words and actually skip over words if these are not needed for general understanding; - they learn to read between the lines and working on the meaning of the text at different levels, understanding information, making inferences and critically evaluating ideas; - they guess the meaning of new words from contextual clues or by applying knowledge of how words can be formed from others; - they follow meaning through the paragraph by recognizing signals like however and on the other hand and by understanding how words and phrases like it , this , the latter and these matters refer back to something earlier in the text [17, p.128].
Successful reading depends on the interaction of reading strategies for processing the text, background knowledge and linguistic competence (Wallace 1992:57). Silent reading may be subcategorized into intensive and extensive reading.reading is usually a classroom-oriented activity in which students focus on the linguistic or semantic details of a passage. Intensive reading calls students attention to grammatical forms, discourse markers, and other surface structure details, for the purpose of understanding literal meaning, implication, rhetorical relationships. Intensive reading practiced in class needs to be complemented by extensive reading in or out of class. It is important to be sure that students have ample time for extensive reading. Only then students are given the opportunity to operate strategies like prediction or guessing word meaning and to develop the ability to follow the lines of argument. It is carried out to achieve a general understanding of a text². All pleasure reading is extensive. Technical, scientific, and professional reading can also be extensive.idea that some words in the text may be skipped or ignored will certainly seem strange to students accustomed to plodding word by word; but the techniques of skimming and scanning require this [19, p.34].
These terms are sometimes used indiscriminatly, but we will distinguish them below.consists of quickly running one's eyes across the whole text to get the gist. It gives the learners the advantage of being able to predict the purpose of the passage, the main topic or message, and possibly some of developing or supporting ideas. This gives them a head start as they embark on more focused reading.- is quickly searching for some particular piece or pieces of information in a text. Scanning exercises may ask students to look for names or dates, to find the definition of some concept. The purpose of scanning is to extract certain specific information without reading through the whole text. Skimming and scanning are useful skills.
They do not remove the need for careful reading, but they enable a reader to select the texts, or the portions of the text, that are worth spending time on.strategy of semantic mapping or grouping the ideas into meaningful cluster, helps the reader to provide some order to the chaos.
Making such semantis maps can be done individually, but they make for the productive group work technique as students collectively induce order and hierarchy to the passage [1, p.76].strategy is very broad on meaning. The students may guess the meaning of a word, the grammatical or discourse relationships, cultural references. Students should utilize all their skills and put forth as much effort as possible to be on target with their hypothesis(Brown 1994:295). The key to the successful guessing is to make it reasonably accurate. We can help them to become accurate guessers by encouraging them to use effective comprehension strategies in which they fill gaps in their competence by intelligent attempts to use whatever clues are available to them.
Language based clues included word analysis, word associations, and textual structure. 3. Stages of conducting reading and reading activities can be subdivided into three stages: pre-reading, while reading and after-reading. As was admitted by Hedge T. People reading in foreign language often need to be given support before they begin reading, an introduction which motivates reading by creating interest in the topic and which facilitates reading by developing background understanding and linguistic knowledge ( Hedge 1998:96 ).
1 Before-reading are various things we can do before reading a text which will make it easier for students to understand the text and help them focus attention to it as they read.include: - presenting some of the new words which will appear in the text; - giving a brief introduction to the text; - giving one or two guiding question (orally or on the board) for students to think about as they read; - suggest them to read the title of the text and try to guess what it is about.do not need to present all the new words in the text before the students read it; they may guess the meaning of the words from the context. An important part of reading is being able to guess the meaning of unknown words, and we can help students to develop their reading by giving them practice in this. It is important to introduce the theme of the text before we ask them to read it.
This serves two purposes: to help students in their reading, by giving them some idea what to expect; to increase their interest and so make them want to read the text [2, p. 69].way to introduce the text is just to give the simple sentence. For example: We are going to read about fossils. The text tells us how animals and plants become fossils. Another more interesting way of discussion, to start students thinking out of the topic: Do you know how the fossils are formed? Where do they come from? Have you ever seen the fossils? What was it like? . It is important to mention that the teacher should not say too much when introducing the text, because it may kill the students interest instead of arousing it [6, p.60-61].reading the text the teacher may give the students some guiding questions.
Guiding questions should be concerned with the general meaning or with the most important points of a text, and not focus on minor details; they should be fairly easy to answer and not too long (Doff 1988:61). For example: - Very few animals become fossils. Why? - What kind of fossils are found in caves? - How do animals become fossils?[6, p.61]types of activities can be applied to prepare the student to reading the suggested text:.
1) Read the text and try to understand the general meaning of the story. (All the words which are highlighted are nonsense words).country girl was walking along the snerd with a roggle of milk on her head. She began saying to herself, The money for which I will sell this milk will make me enough money to increase my trund of eggs to three hundred. These eggs will produce the same number of chickens, and I will be able to sell the chickens and for a large wunk of money. [6, p.60] ) Now look at the highlighted words again and try to guess what they might mean? (The actual words are: road, can, stock, sum)³..
1) Discuss in small groups or in pairs the picture of earthquake from the text or the title. Where it might be, what seems to have happened? ) Do the tasks below before reading the text: Write down at least five questions, which you hope the text will answer. Try to imagine what text will tell you about: buildings, people, hills around the city, the land and the sea...
Here are some words and phrases from the text. Can you guess how they are used in the text? (the sea-bed, the Richter scale, a huge wave, tremors, massive shock) ) Now read the text [6, p.173].. Before you read the text, read the questions below and try to answer them. After reading the text read once more the questions and try to correct the mistakes which you have done before the reading.. Read the second or the third paragraph and try to predict what you are going to read in the first and last paragraph.