TEACHING READING SKILLS

READING COMPREHENSION

Abstract:

Teaching reading comprehension must be challenging in a literate society. Reading may be both a passive and active skill. Reading comprehension can be affected by factors that can be overcame; as a result, students may be able to be more effective at reading improving their vocabulary, correct their grammar and develop the cognitive skills required to understand a text through meaningful exercises.

Keywords: literate, meaningful tasks, effective reading, cognitive skills.

READING COMPREHENSION

Frequently, teachers face the problem of not knowing how to teach reading comprehension. Students normally read texts without comprehending them. Many learners have the customs to translate in their minds every single word and indeed get frustrated when they do not have a clear meaning of the text.

Some teachers prefer to avoid exploring this skill, or they assign non meaningful exercises to learners provoking their dislike towards reading.

Gretel (1996) Reading comprehension means to extract the required information from a written text as efficiently as possible.

‘’In the real word, effective reading means flexible and appropriate response to the material in hand, and this is always guided by the reader’s purpose’’ (Wallace 1993)

We always have a purpose to read; our purposes vary from readings for pleasure such as stories, novels, essays, poems letters, and readings for information such as newspapers, magazines, articles, reports, textbooks, recipes, instructions, menus, tickets and many more.

According to Wallace, the purposes of reading are several. They include satisfying immediate needs, to learn from, or to give us pleasure in language for its own sake.

The main ways of reading are: skimming, scanning, extensive reading and intensive reading. I would recommend extensive reading to be made outside the classroom, it would serve for learners to enjoy their readings and increase their motivation towards this important skill of the language. The fact that they can understand longer texts does not mean that they will understand every little item of vocabulary. ‘’The ability of inferring meaning from the context is required to not be dependent of the meaning of words’’. (Gretel 1996).

Krashen’s (1993) refers to extensive reading as the free voluntary reading being the key to gain reading ability, linguistic competence, vocabulary, spelling and writing.

It is important to understand first the whole idea to later understand the text more detailed.

Besides, learners will develop the reading sub skills, e.g. understanding the scrip of language, deducing meaning and the use of unfamiliar lexical items, understanding the cohesion devices, interpreting text and distinguishing the main idea.

In my personal experience as an English teacher, I have struggled teaching reading comprehension, first of all because a great quantity of my learners have not developed the skill in their native language. Despite this, I have used extensive reading for all proficiency levels; using graded books that I widely recommend, they are the collection of ‘’Penguin Readers” graded according to the number of new vocabulary they can manage, being from easy starters to advanced.

I have noticed that when they really engaged in the stories of the books, they are better in tasks based on intensive reading. Some examples are: reading a short paragraph to later answer comprehensive questions, reading a story to later represent it in a role-play, reading instructions to follow a recipe or to draw something, reading paragraphs to later underline specific structures or vocabulary being studied previously, reading and writing in an imaginative chat room.

Another procedure is a discussion after reading to compare different points of view. (Grellet 1996).

I consider that what makes a text difficult to read is its level of complexity, formality and the culture and time when it was written, that may be different and it is necessary to have some knowledge of the culture.

According to my opinion, the most important skills to develop are the process writing rate to suit the purpose and to infer meaning and context that is not explicit. The one that I teach more is predicting and inferring meaning.

As a conclusion, reading comprehension leads to a more proficient level in the language by acquiring vocabulary and grammar structures, this skill is should be linked to other skills in the activities carried. Reading for pleasure or for necessity must be the motivation to practice it and improve it. Teachers must facilitate learners to develop this skill by choosing the correct exercised according to their age, abilities, interests, level and purpose of the activity.

REFERENCES:

• Christine Nutall. Teaching Reading skills in a Foreign Language. 2000. Heinle & Heinle Pgs. 1-19.

• Franҫoise Grellet. Developing Reading Skills. Cambridge Language Teaching Library. 1996. pgs. 3-12.


• Wallace. Language Teaching. A scheme for teacher education. Oxford. 1992. pgs. 3-6, 14-18.

• Farrel, Thomas. Teaching Reading to English Language Learners. A reflective guide. Corwin. 2009. pgs. 13-33.


• H. Douglas Brown. Teaching by Principles. An interactive approach to Language Pedagogy. 2nd Edition. Longman. 2001. pgs. 298-316.