Helping students develop reading skill

S GIO DC - O TO BC GIANG
Trng pt dn tc ni tr bc giang

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Helping students Develop reading skill

H v tn: Nguyn Th Thu Hin. Trng: Ph thng dn tc- ni tr Bc Giang.

Nm hc : 2007 - 2008

Helping students develop reading skill

Part I: INTRODUCTION

I. Rationale Of all the languages spoken in the world, English is the most widely used language. Nowadays, together with the development of science and technology, English has also become more and more popular in Vietnam. Many people learn and use it in all spheres of public activities everyday. However, there also many problems facing the English language learners. They still cannot avoid making common errors. So do the students at higher secondary school. Since I worked with the students at higher secondary school, I recognise when the students face the long texts, the often feel bored and worried and when they finish reading, they easily forget almost everything they have just read. Therefore, I always try my best to help them to feel interesting when they read both a short text and a long text as well as make reading- teaching lessons more enjoyable to them. Besides, as a teacher, I want to show my pupils how important part reading a passage play in language learning and in communication. From the passages, they widen their vocabulary and structures as well. They also know how to use their vocabulary and structures in different contexts. Helping my students to develop reading skill is, therefore, of special interest to me. II. The scope of study. The scope of teaching reading skill is extremely broad, my studying paper cannot cover all the aspects concerning the subject. What I am going to discuss in the paper only concern helping develop reading skill to the students in the 12th grade at higher secondary school where I teach. III. The aims of the study. The aims of my paper are to identify some common causes that students do not like reading passages and give some solutions to help them to develop reading skill and read more effectively.

Helping students develop reading skill

Part II: Contents

I. the problems that students face at a text. 1. students are not interested in the text, they don't understand what to read the text for. When teaching English at a higher secondary school, I realize that students prefer writing to reading. At first I don't know the reason, but after a long time I found that students are likely to make more errors while speaking than they do while writing. Sometimes making spoken errors shows that students are not interested in reading and they do not know what they have to read for. For some other, they lack in ability or they aren't real tried students. In old method, in the way to help students to understand the lesson, most teachers often tell the content of the comprehension before reading. But I don't think that way is the good way to help students to pay more attention to the text, it might be spoilt the students' interest, because when knowing the text of the comprehension, students don't want to find out anything from the text, and there is not anything new so they only read but they do not think much about the content and they can't understand the meaning of each sentence. 2. Having problems with new vocabulary. When students face the long texts, they feel tired of reading it because there are lots of new words, so as a teacher I always try to find out the solution to this problem, and " How to help students guess the meaning of new words in each text ?" is a difficult question that I think myself to overcome. Students often give up reading or thinking about the comprehension if there are some new words, they only wait until their teacher gives the meaning of these words, this can't develop the students' deducing skill. 3. students can't understand the content of the text. Some teachers say that:"I always let my students look up all the words of the text at home and they have to translate the text bofore going to class. Students can learn easily and they have much time to practise reading skill". But I think there are some reasons that we can't afford students to look up all the new words and translate the comprehension at home.

Helping students develop reading skill

+ When looking up new words at home, they have to read all the text and find out which words are new, this method makes students not practice guessing skill, one of the most imprortant skills to develop reading skill. + Translating the text at home makes students not pay attention to the text at class because they have already understood the content of the text before.It is easy to feel bored and inactive. + To the bad students, they are very lazy and they don't try to learn anymore, so they always borrow books from good students and they only copy the content. At class, they are very talkative but they don't understand anything. 4. Having problems in remembering the content of the text. What is the aim of reading comprehension? That is to get students to practice speaking skill, and at the end, they understand the content of the comprehension, so they can retell the content again in accurate speaking.But in fact, all the students can't retell anything without their books because they forget everything only in a short time. In order to overcome these problems, teachers have some techniques, of course these techniques sometimes are not good for all students. In these techniques, students only understand the lesson in controlled practice. They don't have opportunity to practice reading, speaking skill... with their classmates. II. The teachers' usual methods. 1. Teachers tell the situation or the content of the comprehension. In order to interest student, some students often tell the context, the situation of the text. But in my opinion, it isn't good because in this method, students can only understand the content in a passive way, it doesn't help them to remember anything after finishing. And specially for bad students, they can't develop their reading and they even don't develop translating skill as well as deducing skill. E.g : English 12- lesson 3 Reading practice. At pre-reading part most teachers can often introduce that the are many famous parks in London, such as St Jamess Park, Hyde Park, Regents Parkand Kensington Gardens. Then teachers tell something special of each park. For me, we can transfer this way to Answering questions For example, we can give some questios and ask students to discuss in groups to answer about four famous parks in London. - Are St Jamess Park, Hyde Park , Regents Park and Kensington Gardens the most famous parks in London? - What do you know about them? - Is there Speakers Conner where you can get up and say anything in Hyde Park?

Helping students develop reading skill

- What is Regents Park famous for? - Can you sail every kind of model yacht in Kensingto Gardens? - Are there many wild ducks in St Jamess Park ? By this way students can not only imagine the situation of the text and what they are going to read but also develop speaking skill.In other word, their speaking is more and more accuracy. 2. Direct correction. Some teachers have said that:"I never let my students make mistakes. If they say anything wrong, I stop them immediately and make them say it correctly. I don't want them to learn bad English from others". But for me, we can't stop students whenever they make a mistake, because when students are involved in free activities, such as discussion, role play, we want them to develop fluency, so it is better not to interrupt by correcting too often, but to remember commom errors and deal with them afterwards. What is the aim of stopping students to correct their mistakes? That is to get students to think about the mistake they have made, to help them give out accurate speaking. When teachers don't isolate the mistake to correct, students will be confused with their errors and they can't remember the right words after that, therefore students can't read accurately and fluently. 3. Translasion method. Students often have difficulties in translating long comprehension, so if their teachers help them to translate the whole text, they will understand it well, but sometimes it isn't good because some students only copy into their notebooks, so it doesn't develop their comprehension skill. III. The new methods given. As a teacher, I always think about the solutions to help students to read better and they do not feel bored with the passages. So I have thought about the ways to make all the students more enjoyable and interested as well as to help students widen their knowledge and vocabulary about the social maters. First of all, a reading lesson is divided into three parts: + Pre-reading. + While- reading. + Post-reading. 1. Pre-reading.

Helping students develop reading skill

To help students understand what they are going to do before they do it. I will have to set up a pre-task. In this part, teachers give out the topic or the solution and students have to think about them before reading, listening, speaking or writing about that. For example, teachers can give a table writing some ideas, students work in groups and discuss to collect the best ideas for the topic, this is a discussion task. E.g: In English 12- Lesson 4- Reading practice, before reading about the use of the English language in the world, I give a table writing some information related to the topic. Then ask students to discuss and find out the information to complete it. English used as First language The countries speak English as The people speak English as

350 milion

Second language

Foreign language

Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, China

After doing this exercise students can imagine about the passage. *Preparing task: In this task, teachers have to pre-teach some vocabularies to aid the comprehension: When teaching reading skill, the first thing that the teacher should do is to make some decisions about which words students should actively learn, which words they should guess from the context and which words they should ignore. What to do with the new words depend on two things: how essential the words is (is it a key word?) for understanding the passage and how difficult the word is. If the new word is essential for understanding the passege and at the students' level, it should be taught actively, if the word is essential but above the students' level it should be taught passively, the teacher should explain or translate it as quickly as possible. If the word is not essential for understanding the passage but too difficult, students should guess the meaning.

Helping students develop reading skill

E.g: Guessing some easy words but essential for understanding the passage, such as in English 12- lesson 6- reading practice. Unknown words -give talks -have great influence - death - famous - success - works Noun Verb x Adjective Meaning c nh hng ln ci cht x th nh cng x

* Prediction task: Students predict or guess what they are about to learn so that they can understand a little about the comprehension. But when giving the definition, teacher must give clearly and easily to understand. 2. While-reading. In order to reduce students' errors and make students to interest to the lesson, there are three tasks in "while-reading" stage. a. Comprehensive task: * After reading the comprehension, students answer some questions given by the teacher, so that they can read and understanding the text easily. E.g: English 12 Review lesson two- exercise2 When students have already read the text, teacher gives some questions and students have to answer them. - Who was Marconi ? - When and where was he born? - Why did people think that he was not intelligent when he was small ? - What did he like best ? - Where was he taught when he was small ? * Besides, teachers can give some more other kinds of exercises, such as True or False, Gaps Filling

Helping students develop reading skill

b. Ordering task: Teachers give some pictures or some sentences. But they aren't in order, and therefore, students show that they have understood by putting the pictures or the sentences into the same sequence as the text. E.g: In English 12- Lesson 9- Reading practice (part 1). 1. Mercury is sometimes called the morning or evening star. 2. Mercury keeps one side towards the sun. 3. We only see the lighted side. 4. Mercury is the smallest member of the suns family. 5. It takes Mercury 88 days to go around the sun. * In this exercise, students have to work in pairs to arrange these sentences in order, after some minutes teacher checks their results and compare with the content of the comprehension. * Key: 4- 5- 2- 3- 1. c. Transformation task: Teachers give another comprehension, but change some information. Students read and write the similar text. Using this method will help students pay more attention to the comprehension and develop the students writing skill as well. E.g: English 12 - Lesson one -Reading practice. In this text teachers can ask students to read and change some information by filling in the gaps with their own words. Bills sister is Linda. She is at the age of . .. She left school .ago . And she is work now. She gets some . Benefit but it is not much, and she is fed up with for it . she dislikes her parents for .. Although her mum sometimes gives her ..for tights, she cant stand .her all day at home.But she is bored with ..a job.She is tired of ..the Situations Vacant column because there are .for every job. She was interested in being a ..but now shed take any job at all. 3. Post-reading. a. Aims + Checking comprehension of main ideas: The true/false questions usually paraphrases the topic sentence of each paragraph. + Checking comprehension of facts and details.

Helping students develop reading skill

+ Checking underlying meanings. + Guessing the meaning of vocabulary. b. Some exercises * Matching: In English 12- Lesson2- Situation and Practice 1 Students do the matching then talk about the topic" someones hobby". * E.g: I bored with go to the cinema My father fond of listen to music in the free time My sister love watch football My best friend enjoy do the gardening * Find someone who... In the method, students have to work in groups to ask and answer about one topic to fill in the grid. E.g: In English 12 Lesson one- Situation And Practice 2 Find someone who.... Name .....enjoy going out for a walk ..... like eating fruit ...... fed up with doing the housework .....not mind doing the homework The model: Student 1: Do you enjoy going out for a walk ? Student 2: Yes, I do / No, I dont * Recall: In this method, students have to retell the content of the story that they have already learned in English. So that teachers can also check both students reading and students' speaking. IV. The results. After using these methods to teach I have realized that: + Students are more interested in the comprehension than the last time. + Students can remember the content of each passage longer and accuracy. + Students can avoid making mistakes when reading a long passage.

Helping students develop reading skill

Part III:Conclusion.
In conclusion, reading is one skill that is especially difficult for the learners of English at higher secondary school. It is clear that within the scope of my paper, only a small of the field was covered. I can only mention some possiple ways of teaching a comprehension, some errors that students and teachers often meet. What I have written are most of what I have done in my teaching at high school .That is my little experience and that helped my pupils much in their reading the passages in English 12. In fact, there are a lot of problems arising during the process of teaching and learning English. That must be dealt with by teachers nearly every day. Therefore, both teachers and students must always think hard and be creative to be able to master English, especially reading skill. In addition, I hope that what I have written will be useful to other teachers.