INTEGRATING READING WITH SPEAKING SKILLS

Abstract

Capacitatea de a citi mult si variat, va face elevul să obțină un vocabular bogat care să îi
permită să fie precis și articulat. Cunoașterea modului în care noile cuvinte se conectează la alte
cuvinte poate fi realizată prin citire. "Cu cât veți citi mai mult, cu atât veți crește mai mult
expunerea dvs. la un vocabular, care de obicei nu intră în limba vorbită" (Cunningham, A. E., and
Stanovich, K. E, What Reading does for the Mind, American Educator, 1998) . O gamă largă de cuvinte va ajuta
elevii să-și dezvolte abilitățile de vorbire, ceea ce ne conduce la concluzia că, fără vocabular, nu se
poate conversa.
Pentru dobândirea vocabularului necesar conversației, elevii trebuie să fie inițiați în
lectură, prin cursurile de lectură. Pentru aceasta, un profesor nu are nevoie doar de un student atent
și supus, ci de un student motivat. Elevii au nevoie de motivație pentru citit așa cum au nevoie de
motivație pentru ascultat, scris si vorbit; aceasta se poate dobândi în clasă prin alegerea unor
activități motivante.

“Where there is little reading there will be little language learning. ... the student who wants
to learn English will have to read himself into a knowledge of it unless he can move into an English
environment”1
Without reading it is very difficult to learn a language. Reading is a good way of
comprehension. A student who is a good reader will be able to understand and make connections, to
recognize and use structures of a written text. As highlighted by Bright and McGregor I also believe
that reading is "the most pleasant route to command of the language" because only in and with the
help of texts " the student is most likely to find words used memorably with force and point." 2 This
being said we can see that reading is a key factor in language learning as well as in communication.
In a reading process six component skills have been suggested. Among these knowledge
fields' vocabulary and structural knowledge which are acquired through reading, influence learner’s
speaking achievement:
1) Automatic recognition skills
2) Vocabulary and structural knowledge
3) Formal discourse structure knowledge
4) Content/world background knowledge
5) Synthesis and evaluation skills/strategies
6) Meta-cognitive knowledge and skills monitoring (Grabe, 1991, p.379)3.
How do these component skills contribute to speaking skills? Anne Lazaraton (2001, p.104) 4
suggests that oral communication is based on four dimensions or competences: grammatical
competence (phonology, vocabulary, word and sentence formation...); sociolinguistic competence
1
Bright, J A and McGregor, G P, Teaching English as a Second Language, Longman Group Ltd, London (1973), p52
2
Bright, J A and McGregor, G P, Teaching English as a Second Language, Theory and Techniques for the Secondary
Stage, Longman, London (1970), p53
3
Grabe, W., Current developments in second language reading research. TESOL Quarterly, 1991, 375-406,
http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3586977
4
Lazaraton, A. Teaching Oral Skills. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second foreign language.
Boston: Heinle and Heinle, 2001
(rules for interaction, social meanings); discourse competence (cohesion and how sentences are
linked together) and strategic competence (compensatory strategies to use in difficult strategies).
Vocabulary knowledge and grammar are two essential factors of foreign language learning,
and they both influence learner’s speaking performance. Since the advent of the communicative
approach to learning teaching, the definition of grammar in foreign language teaching, has taken on
broader dimensions. In traditional language teaching, grammar referred mainly to rules, syntax and
prescriptive rules on correct forms. Functional or communicative grammar is concerned with
accuracy of form but also correct and appropriate use. Therefore, more recent approaches to
language teaching suggest that in grammar lessons we place an emphasis on the language function,
that is, what the learners will use the language item for. For example, "making a polite request" is a
language function. An elementary student can use this function by using the imperative and
"please" ("Please, give me that book!"), an intermediate student can use it with the help of "Can/
Could...?"("Could you give me that book, please?"), the advanced student can be thought a more
formal register by using a different form ("Would you mind giving me that book, please?")
Krashen is on the opinion that a learner should be encouraged to reading because it is a great
factor in foreign language improvement and believes that learners who are able to read a lot are also
good at writing and have a good vocabulary and grammar knowledge. When reading a learner can
become aware of the structure of a sentence and this will enable them to build their own sentences
during conversations. "Reading may contribute significantly to competence in a second language.
There is good reason, in fact, to hypothesize that reading makes a contribution to overall
competence, to all four skills."5
Being able to read a lot will make a student acquire a broad vocabulary range that will allow
him to be precise and articulate. The knowledge of how the new words connect to other words can
be realized through reading. “The more reading you will do, the more you will increase your
exposure to vocabulary that doesn’t usually make its way into the spoken language” 6. A wide range
of vocabulary will help learners develop their speaking skills which lead us to that conclusion that
without vocabulary one cannot converse.
Acquiring the vocabulary needed to converse, a student needs to be introduced to reading
through the reading classes. For this a teacher does not need only an attentive and submissive
student but a motivated one.
The reading lesson should be motivating by exposing the students to the so called "real
English". The "real English" can be "authentic texts" such as an article from a newspaper or a
magazine, an extract from a novel a text which was not originally written to be used for teaching
purposes. Although such texts have many advantages they can also have disadvantages: they can be
time consuming for a teacher to prepare (writing the appropriate questions, cutting the text into
pieces for the students to reorganize it, etc.), they can date quickly and the level of complexity,
especially regarding the vocabulary, can make such texts difficult to process for lower level
students.
Teachers can also use texts that have been written for the purpose of teaching mostly
because such texts meet the needs of all students regardless the level and therefore allow for easier
processing and understanding.
Some texts can be modified but based on authentic texts in order to be easily used with the
target students' level.
No matter the source of text used, it should be an interesting and motivating one as well as
challenging for the students giving them a good chance to learn new vocabulary while recycling the
old one.

5
Krashen, Stephen D. and Tracy D. Terrell. 1983. The natural approach: Language acquisition in the classroom.
Hayward, CA: Alemany Press, p. 131
6
Cunningham, A. E., and Stanovich, K. E, What Reading does for the Mind, American Educator, 1998
 Students should be reassured that there is no need for understanding each and every word
from the text, because it is unlikely for this to happen in real life situations, but to understand the
text as a whole.
Students should be thought how to develop a set of reading strategies in order to adjust their
reading behaviour to deal with a variety of situations. Such strategies are: the reason for reading
(the reader reads for a reason), the skim reading or the gist reading (the reader is trying to get a
general impression of the text as fast as possible), the scan reading (the reader is searching for a
particular word or piece of information) and intensive reading (the reader needs a detailed
understanding of the text).
Learners need to develop similarly flexible reading skills, in other words, they need to be
able to read quickly to understand the gist of a text, or to find some very specific information, and
they also need to be able to read for a more detailed understanding.
As I have mentioned before, students need a motivation for reading just like they need it for
listening, writing and speaking, and this can be achieved in the classroom by setting meaningful
tasks. Setting questions is a way of focusing learners on the most important parts of the text and
therefore helping them to understand it. The students also need to have a chance to think of what
they already know about the subject because this may help them with decoding it.
Some sample of integrated reading and speaking activities7:
 role play
 debates
 changing the beginning or the ending of the text
 summarize
 guessing from context
 predicting from the title or from pictures

BIBLIOGRAFIE
1. Bright, J A and McGregor, G P, Teaching English as a Second Language, Longman Group
Ltd, London (1973)
2. Bright, J A and McGregor, G P, Teaching English as a Second Language, Theory and
Techniques for the Secondary Stage, Longman, London (1970)
3. Grabe, W., Current developments in second language reading research. TESOL Quarterly,
1991, http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3586977
4. Lazaraton, A. Teaching Oral Skills. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second
foreign language. Boston: Heinle and Heinle, 2001
5. Krashen, Stephen D. and Tracy D. Terrell. 1983. The natural approach: Language
acquisition in the classroom. Hayward, CA: Alemany Press
6. Cunningham, A. E., and Stanovich, K. E, What Reading does for the Mind, American
Educator, 1998