Jizzakh branch of the national university of uzbekistan named after mirzo ulugbek foreign languages d

Reading texts can be graded flexibly to your learners 
Of course, not all texts are suitable for all learners. Many agree that an understanding 
of 90-95% of the vocabulary in a text is necessary to achieve effective comprehension. 
But there are many techniques teachers can employ to support learners with unfamiliar 
vocabulary which you can employ with your learners: 
•
Glossing unfamiliar terms involves providing a short list of definitions and 
examples for students 
•
Simplifying complex vocabulary items and complex sentences into simpler ones 
•
Using increased redundancy by adding additional adjectival, descriptive clauses 
(using which/who/where/that) and using less pronouns and lexical range 
•
Shortening texts so that they contain less irrelevant information, and more 
information that is central to the task you give the learners. 
1.2.
 
Current methods and approaches in teaching reading. 
As reading is challenging for all, a number of language specialists work continually 
on the methods of teaching reading. The Reading Method, sometimes known as the 
Reading Approach, is an outdated way of teaching English, mainly as an additional 
language. The theory behind the method was that students could pick up the basics of 
English simply by learning to understand words and grammatical patterns from written 
text. After it was first devised in the 1920s, the Reading Method was widely used to 
teach English as an additional language. It was also advocated in the UK for children 
who were struggling with their language skills. However, due to its many shortcomings, 
the Reading Method has fallen out of popularity as a way of teaching English. 
Here we explore what is the Reading Method of teaching English, how it was 
devised, and why it ceased to be used, as well as the background of the man who 
invented it. We’ll also take a look at some of the modern methods which have replaced 

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the Reading Method in English teaching, helping to give today’s children the best start 
with spoken and written language. 
The Reading Method, also known as the New Method or the Reading Approach, was 
devised by Dr Michael Philip West (1888-1973). During the 1920s, he was working as a 
Professor of English in India. Dr West believed that everyone around the world should 
learn English. As English was an international language, he argued that it could make it 
easier for people from different countries to communicate with each other. He thought 
this would have a number of important advantages for people everywhere: 
•
To broaden people’s outlooks; 
•
To create a feeling of connection between people no matter which country they 
came from; 
•
To help everybody access and understand the widest possible range of reading 
materials, as the majority of both factual and fictional books at that time were 
written in English. 
Because he was a respected educator, his beliefs found a following. The Reading 
Method became widely used to teach English in India, and also to teach French and 
German to American children. “The Reading Method also gained some traction in the 
UK as a way of teaching children who were struggling with their linguistic development. 
At the time when Dr West was working, the most popular method of teaching English to 
students in other countries was the Direct Method, also known as the Natural Method”
6
. 
This method focused heavily on spoken words, through students actively participating in 
class. They were encouraged to learn English words directly without translating them 
into their first language. Dr West thought this method was too time-consuming, as a lot 
6
Strickland, Dorothy S. and Morrow, Lesley M. (2000). 
Beginning Reading and Writing
. Teachers 
College Columbia University. NY: New York 

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of class time was taken up with the teacher talking, so each student didn’t get much time 
to practise their speaking skills. He also believed that learning to read English was more 
important than learning to speak or write it - he thought the skills of speaking and 
writing English would naturally come later if students learned how to read it first. 
This belief was at the very core of the Reading Method in English teaching, as the 
approach focuses on the “passive” work of reading, rather than the “active” work of 
actually speaking English. This is because Dr West believed that you can’t express 
yourself until you know enough words, and reading was, in his opinion, the best way to 
learn them. The whole point of the Reading Method was to teach students just enough 
words to express themselves, as well as basic sentence structure patterns, which Dr West 
believed they could pick up through reading. He stated that people needed a minimum of 
1158 words to be able to express their ideas in a normal conversation, and he categorised 
these words into two different types: 
1.
Form words - these are the grammatical words which connect ideas and form 
the building blocks of English. 
2.
Content words - these are the words we use to talk and express ourselves. 
When it came to reading, Dr West believed that the minimum number of words you 
needed to be able to read and understand was 2280. Again, he divided these words 
into different categories: 
1.
Essential words (“a”, “is”, “it”, “that” etc.) 
2.
Common environmental words (“house”, “car”, “table”, “cup” etc.) 
3.
General words (“good”, “bad” etc.) 
4.
Specific environmental words (“tree”, “flower”, “sea”, “mountain” etc.) 

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Using the Reading Method, these 2280 words would be introduced gradually to students 
and learned via a lot of repetition. Students would also be shown pictures to consolidate 
their understanding of the new words. The words they were taught tended to be as 
phonetically easy as possible, so they wouldn’t have much trouble pronouncing them 
when they eventually got to speak English. 
Dr West produced a series of graded reading books on a wide variety of different topics. 
Each grade of reader would introduce some new words. The reading materials were 
designed to be as interesting as possible by covering a wide variety of topics, and 
including both factual and fictional texts. However, the vocabulary was strictly limited 
to the words that Dr West thought people needed to learn. 
Teachers were given handbooks which contained very definite procedures and 
guidelines for them to follow. These handbooks also contained practice exercises which 
teachers could give the students to complete.