Chapter I. Approaches to teaching reading skills chapter II. Methods of teaching reading to learners

Introduction states the topicality of the issue, the purpose and objectives of the research, defines the object and the subject of the course paper, enumerates methods applied in the process of research, expounds its practical and theoretical value and lays out the structure of the work.
Chapter I outlines approaches towards teaching reading skills.
Chapter II analyzes peculiarities of teaching reading at the elementary level and suggests several approaches towards correcting mistakes.
Conclusion generalizes the results of the research and summarizes all the information provided in the course paper.
List of references comprises bibliography of literature used during the research.
Appendix I enumerates possible reading skills that students may master in the course of learning.
Appendix II suggests games for teaching alphabet to young elementary language learners.

Chapter I. Approaches to Teaching Reading Skills

Reading skills are the cognitive processes that a reader uses in making sense of a text. For fluent readers, most of the reading skills are employed unconsciously and automatically. When confronted with a challenging text, fluent readers apply these skills consciously and strategically in order to comprehend [4; 4].are numerous reading skills that students need to master to become proficient readers: extracting main ideas, reading for specific information, understanding text organization, predicting, checking comprehension, inferring, dealing with unfamiliar words, linking ideas, understanding complex sentences, understanding writer’s style and writing summaries (see Addendum 1for the complete list) [22; 2]. But if adult learners are psychologically prepared for reading and the matter is only in acquiring basic reading skills, enriching vocabulary stock and mastering at least few grammar rules, then the situation with young elementary readers is quite different.read effectively only when they are ready. The reader’s preparedness to read is called ‘reading readiness’. According to Thorndike’s law of learning, the first requisite for beginning reading is an interest in reading. Reading stories, allowing children to draw and read charts, displaying readable messages, providing picture books and labeling the objects will stimulate their interests [22; 5].any level, the following skills are necessary for a student to become a proficient reader:
– automatic, rapid letter recognition
– automatic, rapid word recognition
– the ability to use context as an aid to comprehension
– the ability to use context when necessary as a conscious aid to word recognition [11; 2-3].

speaking and listing skill; visual discrimination; knowing the alphabet;

thinking skills; word meaning skills; auditory discrimination;

moving left to right; sight vocabulary; identification skill

A good readiness program develops proficiency in the following area:

For visual discrimination a teacher may use exercises of identification of the same picture in a row, for visual and auditory discrimination one may find useful exercises of identification of same letters in a row, finding the odd one, picking out word pairs (yes-yes, tit-tit), circling the odd word pair in a group. To train word identification and word recognition tasks like ‘complete the letters or words with the help of pictures in a sentence’ may be appropriate [22; 5-6].teaching reading the following approaches should not be neglected:

. Focus on one skill at a time. Explain the purpose of working on this skill, and convince the students of its importance in reading effectively.3. Work on an example of using the skill with the whole class. Explain your thinking aloud as you do the exercise.4. Assign students to work in pairs on an exercise where they practice using the same skill. Require them to explain their thinking to each other as they work.5. Discuss students’ answers with the whole class. Ask them to explain how they got their answers. Encourage polite disagreement, and require explanations of any differences in their answers.6. In the same class, and also in the next few classes, assign individuals to work on more exercises that focus on the same skill with increasing complexity. Instruct students to work in pairs whenever feasible.7. Ask individual students to complete an exercise using the skill to check their own ability and confidence in using it.8. In future lessons, lead the students to apply the skill, as well as previously mastered skills, to a variety of texts [4; 4].becomes effective when teacher starts with words that are familiar to students, uses simple structures, blackboard and flashcards, and gives emphasis to recognizing and understanding the meaning of a word simultaneously. As far as young elementary learners are concerned teaching reading should be started when a child can learn his/her own mother-tongue [22; 9]. Also, it is suggested to use some kind of reading repetition or practice and progress monitoring [13; 151]. Moreover, teachers should always keep in mind the various problems of reading a foreign language [22; 9].is useful to know if a student can read nonsense words such as ‘flep, tridding and pertollic’ as the ability to read nonsense words depends on rapid and accurate association of sounds with symbols. Good readers do this easily so they can decipher new words and attend to the meaning of the passage. Poor readers usually are slower and make more mistakes in sounding out words. Their comprehension suffers as a consequence. Poor readers improve if they are taught in an organized, systematic manner how to decipher the spelling code and sound words out [20; 19].are also several principles behind the teaching of reading:1: Reading is not a passive skill. Reading is an incredibly active occupation. To do it successfully, we have to understand what the words mean, see the pictures the words are painting, understand the arguments, and work out if we agree with them. If we do not do these things - and if students do not do these things - then we only just scratch the surface of the text and we quickly forget it.2: Students need to be engaged with what they are reading. As with everything else in lessons, students who are not engaged with the reading text - not actively interested in what they are doing - are less likely to benefit from it. When they are really fired up by the topic or the task, they get much more from what is in front of them.3: Students should be encouraged to respond to the content of a reading text not just to the language. Of course, it is important to study reading texts for the way they use language, the number of paragraphs they contain and how many times they use relative clauses. But the meaning, the message of the text, is just as important and we must give students a chance to respond to that message in some way. It is especially important that they should be allowed to express their feelings about the topic - thus provoking personal engagement with it and the language.4: Prediction is a major factor in reading.we read texts in our own language, we frequently have a good idea of the content before we actually read. Book covers give us a hint of what's in the book, photographs and headlines hint at what articles are about and reports look like reports before we read a single word. The moment we get this hint - the book cover, the headline, the word-processed page - our brain starts predicting what we are going to read. Expectations are set up and the active process of reading is ready to begin. Teachers should give students 'hints' so that they can predict what's coming too. It will make them better and more engaged readers.5: Match the task to the topic. We could give students Hamlet's famous soliloquy 'To be or not to be' and ask them to say how many times the infinitive is used. We could give them a restaurant menu and ask them to list the ingredients alphabetically. There might be reasons for both tasks, but, on the face of it, they look a bit silly. We will probably be more interested in what Hamlet means and what the menu foods actually are. Once a decision has been taken about what reading text the students are going to read, we need to choose good reading tasks - the right kind of questions, engaging and useful puzzles etc. The most interesting text can be undermined by asking boring and inappropriate questions; the most commonplace passage can be made really exciting with imaginative and challenging tasks.6: Good teachers exploit reading texts to the full. Any reading text is full of sentences, words, ideas, descriptions etc. It doesn't make sense just to get students to read it and then drop it to move on to something else. Good teachers integrate the reading text into interesting class sequences, using the topic for discussion and further tasks, using the language for Study and later Activation [9; 70].things considered, reading is far from being a passive skill. Students need to be engaged with what they are reading. Teachers should match tasks to the topic, choose activities up to the students’ abilities and develop teaching programs in such a way so that to develop all the reading skills.

Chapter II. Methods of Teaching Reading to Learners

an early stage of teaching reading the teacher should read a sentence or a passage to the class himself/herself. When s/he is sure the students understand the passage, s/he can set individuals and the class to repeat the sentences after him/her, reading again himself/herself if the pupils' reading is poor. The pupils look into the textbook. In symbols it can be expressed like this: T - C - T - P₁ - T - P₂ - T - P₃ - T - C (T - teacher; C - class; P - pupil).kind of elementary reading practice should be carried on for a limited number of lessons only. When a class has advanced far enough to be ready for more independent reading, reading in chorus might be decreased, but not eliminated: T - C - P₁ P₂ P_3.
When the pupils have learned to associate written symbols with the sounds they stand for they should read a sentence or a passage by themselves. In this way they get a chance to make use of their knowledge of the rules of reading. It gives the teacher an opportunity to see whether each of his pupils can read. Symbolically it looks like this: P₁ P₂ P_n T (S) C (S - speaker, if a tape recorder is used) [17; 184].in all, there are six important methods of teaching reading. They are as follows:
 The alphabetic method or ABC method or spelling method.
 The phonic method.
 The word method.
 The phrase method.
 The sentence method.
 The story method [22; 6].
Let us consider them in details:

2.1.1 The Alphabetic Method

The teacher teaches the students the names of letters in their alphabetic order. S/he also may combine two or more letters to form a word: e. g. i_n=in, o_n=on, o_n_e=one. From ‘words’ it moves to ‘phrases’ and finally ‘sentences’. Thus, the procedure begins from letters and ends in sentences [22; 6].are many ways to teach the alphabet and all teachers develop their own style over time. One of the common instructions to introduce a new letter is the following one:
. Hold up an alphabet letter flashcard so all students can see it.2. Chorus the letter 3 to 5 times. Then ask each student individually to say the letter.3. Teach the sound of the letter (e. g. "A is for 'ah'. ah - ah - ah"). Chorus again and check individually.4. Provide an example of an object that begins with the letter. Double-sided flashcards with the letter on one side and a picture on the other are great for this. (e. g. "What's this?" (elicit "A"). "And A is for.?" (elicit "ah"). "And 'ah' is for. (turning the card over)"apple!". Chorus the word and check individually.5. Do a final check (T: "What's this?", Ss: "A", T: "And 'A' is for.?", Ss: "ah", T: "And 'ah' is for.?" Ss: "Apple!"). These steps can be followed by 'magic finger', 'pass it', 'find it', 'slow motion' or any other alphabet game (see Addendum 2). Also, the ABC song is a nice way to start and finish the alphabet segment of your lesson [21].pros of alphabetic method are that it gives the students sufficient opportunity to see words and helps them to build up the essential visual image. However, as it is a dull and monotonous process it appears to be a difficult and lengthy method that does not expand the eye-span [22; 6].letters that occur in both languages, but they are read differently, are the most difficult letters for students to retain. Obviously in teaching a student to read English words, much more attention should be given to those letters which occur in both languages but symbolize entirely different sounds. For example, H, p. (Pupils often read How as [nau]. Therefore, in presenting a new letter to students a teacher should stress its peculiarity not only from the standpoint of the English language (what sound or sounds it symbolizes) but from the point of view of the native language as well [17; 180]the 1960s, solid research has shown that the ability to recognize and name the letters of the alphabet upon entry to school is the best single predictor of reading achievement at the end of the first year of literacy instruction. However, it also shows that simply teaching children the alphabet does not guarantee that they will rapidly develop literacy skills. [11; 3]

2.1.2 The Phonic Method

Beginning students do not understand that letters represent the sounds in words, although they do know that print represents spoken messages [20; 19].awareness is the strongest predictor of future reading success for children. No research exists that describes the affects of phonological awareness on reading for adults. However, it is believed that teaching phonological awareness to beginning-reading adults improves their reading accuracy and spelling, especially for reading and spelling words with blends [8; 2]. The skill of matching sounds and letter symbols is called phonics [13; 65]., involves learning that the graphic letter symbols in our alphabet correspond to speech sounds, and that these symbols and sounds can be blended together to form real words. Word analysis strategies enable students to "sound out" words they are unable to recognize by sight. Explicit, direct instruction in phonics has been proven to support beginning reading and spelling growth better than opportunistic attention to phonics while reading, especially for students with suspected reading disabilities. Beginning readers should be encouraged to decode unfamiliar words as opposed to reading them by sight, because it requires attention to every letter in sequence from left to right. This helps to fix the letter patterns in the word in a reader's memory. Eventually, these patterns are recognized instantaneously and words appear to be recognized holistically [8; 2]first operating at an alphabetic stage, during which elementary learners recognize words using letters or letter groups but not sound-symbol connections, students develop their ability to connect the sounds in part of a word with the letter or letters which go with that sound. They become able to use this knowledge in a new context by analogy. Analogical reasoning is very important in this process. It works initially with two phonological units:first phoneme in a word (often referred to as the ‘onset’);remainder of the word, the part that rhymes (often referred to as the ‘rime’). [11; 6].phonic method is based on teaching the sounds that match letters and groups of letters of the English alphabet. What is important here is that the sounds NOT the names of the letters that are taught. As the sounds that match alphabet letters, the letters are written and illustrated with “key” words to represent the sound [23]. The word is broken into speech sounds. The alphabet may be introduced afterwards. The teacher teaches English through phonetic script, e. g.: Cup-/k/ /^/ /p/ [22; 7].phonic method gives the good knowledge of sounds to the learners. It is also linked with speech training and helps to avoid spelling defects. The drawback of the method lies in the facts that meaning is not given priority in this method, words with similar sounds but different spelling confuse the learners. In addition may delay the development of reading words as a whole [22; 7].

2.1.3 The Word Method

The word method is otherwise known as “Look and say" Method [22; 7]. The look and say teaching method, also known as the whole word method, was invented in the 1830s and soon became a popular method for teaching reading. By the 1930s and 1940s there was a very strong focus on teaching children to read by this method. In the 1950s, however, it was fiercely criticized in favor of phonics-based teaching. The debate still continues today [7].look and say method teaches children to read words as whole units, rather than breaking the word down into individual letters or groups of letters. Elementary learners are repeatedly told the word name while being shown the printed word, perhaps accompanied by a picture or within a meaningful context [7]. By pointing at each word as a teacher reads sentences, children will start to learn each word [16].teaching principles of the discussed method are as follows:
 New words are systematically introduced to a student by letting him/her see the word, hear the word and see a picture or a sentence referring to the word.
 Flashcards are often used with individual words written on them, sometimes with an accompanying picture. They are shown repetitively to a child until he memorizes the pattern of the word.
 Progressive texts are used with strictly controlled vocabularies containing just those words which have been learned.
 Initially an elementary learner may concentrate on learning a few hundred words. Once these are mastered new words are systematically added to the repertoire. Typically a child would learn to recognize 1,500 to 3,000 words in his first three or four years of school [7].
Students should also learn the reading of some monosyllabic words which are homophones. For example: son - sun; tail - tale; too - two; write - right; eye-I, etc. It is advised to use flashcards to encourage young elementary learners to read, such techniques may be suggested:
(1) students choose words which are not read according to the rule, for example: lake, plane, have, Mike, give, nine;
(2) students are invited to read the words which they usually misread:

yet _ let cold - could

form - from come - some

called - cold wood - would

does - goes walk - work

(3) students are invited to look at the words and name the letter (letters) which makes the words different:

though - thought through - though

since - science with - which

hear - near content - context

hear - hare country - county

(4) students in turn read a column of words following the key word (see: A. P. Starkov, R. R. Dixon, Fifth Form Eng lish, Pupil's Book);

(5) students are invited to pick out the words with the graph emes oo, ow, ea, th,.
At the very beginning, a student is compelled to look at each printed letter separately in order to be sure of its shape. S/He often sees words and not sense units. For instance, s/he reads: The book is on the desk and not (The book is) (on the desk) [17; 181].
Of particular interest here is the question ‘how do fluent readers recognize words? ’ It is now known that fluent readers do not process words as ‘wholes’. In normal reading, they process individual letters during each fixation. They make use of knowledge of spelling patterns, word patterns and the constraints of syntax and semantics to produce a phonetic version of the text (though this is usually produced after, rather than before, words have been recognized) [11; 3]. Some scholars also suggest six word recognition strategies: