4. Teaching techniques of reading

Explanation of the relations between sounds and letters: in reading learners are decoding ideas by establishing sound-letter correspondences. The skills of reading in the native language ate transferred into reading in a foreign language.

To develop the techniques of reading the following methods can be used:

• Alphabet reading (by learning the names of letters), however, it does not often work

• Whole words method (recognizing words on paper), leads to learners memorizing a lot of words, however, does not work with unfamiliar words

• Sound analysis and synthesis method (worked by Ushinsky for teaching reading in the native language), combines analysis of the material and its imitation.

• Applying reading rules and key words. Often saves time and helps to read unfamiliar words. Teacher should draw attention to some peculiar cases which are exclusions of the rule.

Nowadays teachers try to combine several methods whenever it’s more cost-effective.

When forming the techniques of reading the teacher should take into consideration some objective difficulties of the spelling system:

• The number of sounds (44) and the number of letters (26) do not coincide; and if we count graphemes, there are 104 of them (nice – light);

• The number of sounds and letters in a word may differ as well (daughter – 4 sounds), nephew (5 sounds);

• The same letters or the same combinations of letters can denote different sounds (snow, sugar, vision, his);

• The same sound can be denoted by different letters (cat, kitchen, school, question);

• The existence of the so called “silent” letters (kite, through, Wednesday).

The school curriculum demands that by the end of the 1^st form learners should name all the letters of the alphabet and read the words and phrases they learnt in oral speech. By the end of the 2^nd form learners should read aloud and silently words, phrases and short texts (up to 100 letters) that contain the language material they learnt orally. In the 3d form this work continues but gradually more attention is paid to developing reading skills. Later the demands to the techniques of reading are not included into the curriculum.

Activities that are aimed at developing techniques of reading include two main phases:

1. Grapheme recognition and differentiation:

• Read the letters

• Read the letter in different positions

• Choose the letter from the row of letters

• Count letters and sounds in words

• Match capital letters with corresponding small ones

• Show/write the letter that denotes the sound pronounced by the teacher

• Choose the words that begin with the letter …

2. Establishing grapheme-phoneme correspondences

• Name the type of the syllable (pin, kite, girl, form, park, bag, pine)

• Match the pictures to words

• Group words according to the types of syllables

• Make up new words by changing the first letter

• Make pairs of words that rhyme

• Read the new words according to the rules

• Find the hidden words and read tem

• Find the odd one out

Assessment of the techniques of reading is done through reading aloud according to the following criteria:

1. Tempo of reading;

2. Observing grapheme-phoneme correspondences;

3. Keeping to stress norms;

4. Keeping to the norms of pausing;

5. Using appropriate intonation patterns;

6. Understanding of the text (language material) read.