2.

5 Teaching Reading: Some Difficulties Faced by Teachers in Teaching

Reading in English. How to Teach Reading. Reading Aloud and to Oneself.

Reading is an independent type of speech activity, which provides a written

form of communication. It occupies one of the main places in terms of use,
importance, and accessibility. Reading is a type of receptive activity because it
involves perception (reception) and understanding of information encoded by
graphical signs. Reading involves both a content plan, about what the text is, and a
procedural plan, about how to read and vocalize the text. Reading is closely related
to other types of speech activity, primarily writing, as both reading and writing use
the same graphical language system. In teaching foreign languages, this should be
taken into account, and these types of speech activity should be developed in
relation to one another. This especially applies to the initial stage.
Reading is related to listening, as both activities involve the perception,
analysis, and synthesis of information. In listening, the listener perceives spoken
speech, while in reading, the reader perceives written speech.
Reading is also related to speaking; loud reading or reading aloud represents
controlled reading. Silent reading involves internal listening and internal speech at
the same time. Our task is to teach students to read silently.

2.5.1 Some difficulties that students encounter when learning reading in

the English language reading in English.

One of the biggest challenges for students, especially for those whose native
language is Russian, is the English alphabet, which consists of 26 letters and 146
graphemes (letter combinations) that represent 44 phonemes. The English alphabet
poses many difficulties for native Russian speakers due to the differences between
the alphabets of the two languages.
Of the 26 pairs of English letters (uppercase and lowercase), only 4 can be
considered similar to the corresponding Russian alphabet letters in form and value.
These are К, к, М, Т.
For students, 31 letters are entirely new: F, G, h. J, j, R, S, W, Z, b, I, g.
The remaining letters: A, a, C, c, H, O, P, Y, X, and others, are common to
both languages but are pronounced differently.
Therefore, the last ones are the most difficult. When teaching English word
reading at the initial stage of education, it is necessary to highlight the peculiarities
of the new letter, the sound or sounds it represents in English, and its
correspondence or non-correspondence in the Russian language. But it is not
enough to simply know the English letters. It is necessary for students to know the
graphemes: how a particular vowel, a combination of vowels, a consonant, or a
combination of consonants is pronounced in different positions in a word such as
"window" or "down". A teacher cannot teach children all the existing rules and
exceptions for reading English words. And it's not necessary. When learning
English, students should internalize the following reading rules: how to read
stressed vowels in open and closed syllables and before "r"; how to read "au",
"oo", "ou", "OW"; how to read "с", "s", "k", "g"; how to read "ch", "sh", "th", "ng",
"ck", "tion", "ssion", "ous". There are not many of THESE rules, but they are
important for developing reading skills. Students should learn to read some one-
syllable words. For example: Son- sun, too – two, eye – I, tail – tale, write – right,
etc. (They are monosyllabic but have different meanings).
First, students are asked to look at each printed letter separately to make sure
of its spelling. They often see words, not meaningful units. For example, he reads:
“The book is on the desk”, not, “The book is/on the desk”. The most difficult part
of reading instruction is extracting information from a sentence or paragraph based
on knowledge of structural signals, not just word meanings. Students often ignore
grammar and try to understand what they are reading based on their knowledge of
individual words. And of course, they often fail, for example, the sentence “He was
asked to help the old woman” is understood as he was asked to help the old
woman, in which the word “He” becomes the subject rather than the object.
Sometimes students have difficulty identifying key sentences in the text that
express the main idea.
To facilitate the reading process, new words, phrases, and speech patterns
should be learned orally before students are asked to read them. When students
start reading, they know how to pronounce words, phrases, and sentences and are
familiar with their meaning. Therefore, in order to find the most effective reading
paths, the teacher must be aware of the difficulties students will face.
2.5.2. How to Teach Reading?
Reading aloud instruction begins with presenting students with a letter, word
letter combinations, and graphemes. The use of cards is obligatory here. They help
the teacher to: a) Introduce a new letter. b) Make students form words (p, e, n =
pen). c) Check the students' understanding of letters and graphemes. d) Make
students select words beginning with the shown letter (p – pen, pencil, pupil). e)
Make students indicate the letter that represents a sound: [ou] [a:] [θ]. In teaching
reading, the teacher needs a series of letters. If the board is used instead of cards,
the teacher can write printed letters on it, and students can choose words already
orally studied, with a certain letter, and so on. These same methods can be used to
teach students to read words. For example: a) Choose words that don't follow the
rules: lake, plane, have, Mike, give nine. b) Read a pair of words when reading
which students often make mistakes:
yet – let, cold – could
form – from, called – cold
come – some, wood - would
does – goes, walk – work
c) Look at the words and name the letters by which they differ:
though – thought; since – science; through – though; with – which; hear –
near; content – context; hear – hare; country – county.
g) Select words with graphemes: oo, ow, ea, th, and so on. In reading
instruction, a special role belongs to transcription. It helps the reader to read a
word in cases when the same grapheme is represented by different sounds: build –
suit, or words that do not follow the rules: aunt, could.
 Reading to oneself. In teaching reading to oneself, students can see more
than a word, phrase, or sentence. The eye can move faster than the reader can
pronounce what he sees. Thus, reading aloud becomes an obstacle to
comprehension. Therefore, it is necessary for the student to read silently.
Reading to oneself is the primary means of obtaining information. In reading
to oneself, students apply formed pronunciation, lexical, and grammatical skills to
extract information from the text as a whole. At the initial stage, on those texts that
allow it, students should be trained to work with the text, that is, to carefully read
the text title and anticipate what will be discussed in it. The title may not always
help them with this. Then attention should be paid to the first paragraph of the text.
It is important to teach children to extract the main ideas from each paragraph of
the text, that is, to form in children the ability to extract the main ideas from what
they read. The next important skill is summarizing the text, that is, the ability to
convey the meaning of a paragraph or text as a whole with a limited number of
sentences, and finally the ability to interpret what has been read.
Control over silent reading is carried out by means of textual tasks that allow
to identify the correctness of the understanding of the text. For example: to answer
questions; to find in the text and read aloud the answers to the questions; to find in
the text and read aloud 2-3 sentences containing some description (indicating what
or who); to select from the text sentences that speak about...; to select from the text
sentences that illustrate pictures, to read the sentence and arrange them in the order
of the events, to select from the text 4-5 sentences that convey the main events, and
so on.
Questions
1. Which approach to teaching reading do you consider the most
justified?
2. Prove that reading is closely related to other types of speech activity.
3. Reading as a type of speech activity is intended to teach students to
overcome difficulties with the help of a dictionary. Why is it so important to teach
students to use a dictionary?
4. Texts that students read are varied in form and content. Does this
affect the technique used when working with the text?
Assignment
1. Using the student's book, select words and make flashcards for
reading aloud instruction.
2. Analyze how reading instruction is conducted for one of the lessons
from the textbook.
3. Prepare a text and tasks for it to develop reading to oneself.