Improving reading skills by means of foreign literature at the English classes.
занимательные факты по английскому языку (5 класс)

МБОУ СОШ «Школа Будущего»

Improving reading skills by means of foreign literature at the English classes.

Выполнила: учитель английского языка

Камалова З.Р.

There is no friend so faithful as a good book.

What is reading?

To my mind, together with speaking process reading is of the two chief aims at teaching the foreign languages. On completing the course, the graduates from secondary schools must be able to read and understand easy original texts in the foreign language without using the dictionary. Reading is of great educational importance. People get information they need from books, journals, newspapers and so on. Through reading a foreign language the pupil enriches his knowledge of the world around him. He gets acquainted with countries where the target language is spoken. Besides, reading foreign texts is of great educative and general cultural value to the pupils. It widens their horizon, the texts acquaint them with the life and achievements of people from different countries, with the literature, history, geography, culture, manners and customs of the people and the countries of the language studied. It means reading process helps pupils to develop intelligence, memory, will, imagination, logical thinking and so on. Mastering reading skills gives the reader an opportunity not only to get information but also to master his speaking and writing skills. But unfortunately, nowadays, reading process became the most boring process for pupils at the English lessons. I’ve noticed that pupils don’t like to read and the greater part of the lass is usually not prepared for the lessons of home reading.  Every text could be found in the internet and translated with the help of huge variety of internet dictionaries. So, there is no any difficulties for pupils to find Russian translation of this or that texts. But when the teacher asks class the questions about the text pupils cannot answer because they were not translating the text themselves. Sometimes, they don’t remember the gist of the story. This is a great problem for English teachers now. But we have to find the way out. But I am sure: If there is a problem there is a solution.

How we can read?

The teachers can use different types of reading. We know”: oral and silent, individual and choral, unprepared and prepared, class and home, controlled and independent reading. One linguist –Adrian Doff suggested two mote types of reading. There are: intensive and extensive reading. Intensive reading means reading the short texts to extract specific information. This type of activity involves reading for details. And extensive reading: reading longer texts, usually for ones own pleasure, mainly involving global understanding. But the purpose of any teacher of foreign language to make any type of reading interesting, to gain the pupil’s attention, to learn them to understand what do they read.

So, in this work I want to show some of my ways of making this process more interesting and enjoyable.

At the very beginning I want to present some reading activities which can help to make reading process more interesting thus motivating students for learning English.

The following poem “I remember, I remember” relates to the learner’s personal experience outside the classroom and focuses on memory.

I Remember, I Remember

By Thomas Hood  

I remember, I remember,

The house where I was born,

The little window where the sun

Came peeping in at morn;

He never came a wink too soon,

Nor brought too long a day,

But now, I often wish the night

Had borne my breath away!

I remember, I remember,

The roses, red and white,

The vi ‘lets, and the lily-cups,

Those flowers made of light!

The lilacs where the robin built,

And where my brother set

The laburnum on his birthday, —

The tree is living yet!

I remember, I remember,

Where I was used to swing,

And thought the air must rush as fresh

To swallows on the wing;

My spirit flew in feathers then,

That is so heavy now,

And summer pools could hardly cool

The fever on my brow!

I remember, I remember,

The fir trees dark and high;

I used to think their slender tops

Were close against the sky:

It was a childish ignorance,

But now 'tis little joy

To know I'm farther off from heav'n

Than when I was a boy.

Here are some exercises which can be used with this poem.

1. The aim of this exercise is to draw attention to the way, the writer connects the ideas. Give your students the copies of this poem where the last phrases are not written.

I remember, I remember…

I used to think…

It was a childish ignorance but now….

 Ask them to fill the gaps in the way that would be true for a past experience of their own. Allow 10 to 15 minutes to complete the poem. As they finish, students form small groups and share their work. They also can choose the best work in a group.

2. In this exercise student are asked to supply items that have been removed from the text. This sort of exercise can be related to the grammatical ones. The students learn smth grammatical (for example- where adverbs are placed). Write out single- word adjectives or single word adverbs or adverb phrases. Without single-word adverbs, the poem will look like this:

I remember, I remember,

The house where I was born,

The little window where the sun

Came peeping in at morn;

He …   came a wink too soon,

Nor brought too long a day,

But …, I … wish the night

Had borne my breath…!

The class  should be divided into groups. Tell the students what category of word has been omitted. Each group is given different part of this poem. When the work is ready connect the poem. And the class will decide which suggestions are the most acceptable

3. This exercise is called ‘contrasting’. The class is also can be divided into groups or student can work individually. Everything depends on student’s level. The have to circle as many words in the text as they can provide opposite for and write the antonyms.

I remember, I remember(forget)

The house where I was born(died),

4. This exercise is called “Completing” as the student must complete the last line of each verse

I remember, I remember,

The house where I was born,

The little window where the sun

C P I A M

etc

5. This exercise is called reducing. Students are given any poem without the end in each line. They have to complete the poem. Ex

I remember, ___________

The house where I _________

Etc

6. This exercise I love best of all. It’s very suitable for work with high school students as they have already some life experience, they study literature and they know the rules of

word formation. This work improves students’ imagination and enlarges their vocabulary.

Besides it allows them to find parallels between two languages. So, the task is to give students any English poem and let them to make their own poem based on the moral of English version. In case it’s difficult to imagine your own poem, students allows to make a translation without losing the main meaning of an English version.

Recently my students were given a poem “Who loves the trees best”.

 Who loves the trees best?

 “I,” said the Spring;

 “Their leaves so beautiful

 To them I bring.”

Who loves the trees best?

 “I,” Summer said;

 “I give them blossoms,

 White, yellow, red.”

Who loves the trees best?

 “I,” said the Fall;

 “I give luscious fruits,

 Bright tints to all.”

Who loves the trees best?

 “I love them best,”

 Harsh Winter answered;

 “I give them rest.”

Students can work in groups or separately. It depends on the situation and numbers of students in the class. Here are some Russian versions of above mentioned poem.

….

Besides there are a lot of exercises which can be done with texts, stories and can be used by any teacher to make reading lessons enjoyable and make students love this process. Firstly, a teacher can read half of the story to the class and ask students to imagine the end of the story, secondly you can give the students some minutes to read the story and give the title. But I love “jigsaw reading” exercise. Teacher divides class into 2-3 groups and divide the story into several parts. One sentence in each part. Mix the sentences. Students have to read every sentence very carefully to understand it. Then understand the jist of the story and after that put the sentences in order to make a clear story. Here is one example of the story.

“The truth”

Once there was a boy called Ali. His father was a fisherman and his family was very poor.

One day when he was going home he saw an old man lying on the side of the road…

As soon as students are ready with the task the groups can read the story orally to compare the results. After that the teacher can make class to think about the moral of the story. Then, the teacher can ask about Russian proverb which can suits this story. And the end of this work a teacher can give English equivalents of a Russian proverb or vice versa that’s to say Russia

equivalents of an English proverb. Here are some examples:

Truth will come to light. (W. Shakespeare) – Все тайное становится явным. От правды не уйдешь

Better speak truth rudely, than lie correctly. Truth pays best. The truth is better than a lie- лучше горькая правда, чем сладкая ложь

After this part of such kind of work students can be given a home work – to make a situation of their own about the truth.

Of course any story can be taken for this exercise. It also can be historical text about kings of England or about great fire in London etc. Any story enlarges student outlook, enlarges his vocabulary, develops way of thinking (especially the last part of this work).

Another exercise which I like is “summarizing the summary”

the main purpose of this exercise to learn students find the gist of the story- the main idea, to learn to read the text fluently and to extract specific information – information which is the most important. It improves student’s retelling skills (that’s to say -speaking skills).  If a student can retell the text it means smth remains in his mind and his memory was developed.

So, class is divided into 3 groups. The first group has to shorten the text up to 10 sentences, the second group has to make 6 sentences and the third group must make 3 sentences.

Making a conclusion I may say while trying to improve my students reading skills I was

satisfied to know my student like the process of reading if it doesn’t coincide the reading activity suggested in ordinary English books.  Of course a teacher mustn’t forget that reading involves a variety of skills. The main ones are:

• Recognizing the script of a language
• Deducing the meaning and use of unfamiliar lexical items
• Explicit understanding of given information
• Understanding relations within the sentence
• Understanding relations between the parts of a text through lexical cohesion devices.

Finally, I want to say it’s up to the teacher to make reading process interesting, to capture pupil’s attention and arise pupils’ desire to read. What texts should be used while teaching reading, what techniques and activities can make this process interesting and effective depends on teacher’s desire and imagination.