Vocabulary and sentence structure

It is possible to have a pretty good idea of a writer's message without understanding the signification of every sentence, but it is not possible to be absolutely certain of it, nor to give the fullest response. This entails, first, understanding all the vocabulary and the sentence structure.

Cohesive devices

A further problem arises from the use of the various cohesive devices, i.e. the ways of tying sentences together to create a cohesive text. Pronoun reference, elliptical sentences and so on are often so straightforward that their potential difficulty is overlooked, and it is only when he encounters a problem that the student will think them worth attending to. The problems that arise concern the signification of sentences: the reader who does not know what a pronoun refers to, or who cannot supply the full version of an elliptical sentence, will not be able to establish its signification.

Discourse markers

A particular kind of cohesive device is the discourse marker, words such as however, although, furthermore, namely. These words serve to make the functional value of a sentence; they tell you what the writer intends by it (If he uses although, he is conceding something; if he uses namely he is specifying something; and so on.) They are extremely useful signals to the reader. They do not themselves contribute to the signification of a sentence (except in the case of those which indicate time), but they can help a careful reader to establish the signification.

Problems beyond the plain sense

Even when the plain sense of each sentence has been understood, the reader may still be unable to make sense of the text as a whole. [C.Nuttall, p.401

According to J.Harmer there are six principles behind the teaching of reading.

Principle 1: Reading is not a passive skill.

Reading is an incredibly active occupation. To do it successfully, we have to understand what the words mean, see the pictures the words are painting, understand the arguments, and work out if we agree with them. If we do not do these things - and if students do not do these things - then we only just scratch the surface of the text and we quickly forget it.

Principle 2: Students need to be engaged with what they are reading.

As with everything else in lessons, students who are not engaged with the reading text - not actively interested in what they are doing - are less likely to benefit from it. When they are really fired up by the topic or the task, they get much more from what is in front of them.

Principle 3: Students should be encouraged to respond to the content of a reading text, not just to the language.

Of course, it is important to study reading texts for the way they use language, the number of paragraphs they contain and how many times they use relative clauses. But the meaning, the message of the text, is just as important and we must give students a chance to respond to that message in some way. It is especially important that they should be allowed to express their feelings about the topic - thus provoking personal engagement with it and the language.

Principle 4: Prediction is a major factor in reading.

When we read texts in our own language, we frequently have a good idea of the content before we actually read. Book covers give us a hint of what is in the book, photographs and headlines hint at what articles are about and reports look like reports before we read a single word.

The moment we get this hint - the book cover, the headline, the word-processed page - our brain starts predicting what we are going to read. Expectations are set up and the active process of reading is ready to begin. Teachers should give students 'hints' so that they can predict what is coming too. It will make them better and more engaged readers.

Russian methodologists D.Malyavin and M.Latushkina agree with this principle. They are convinced that the seventh form students have a new fundamental function of thinking developed - prediction. The students may guess a lot of linguistic units and they are fond of prediction activities. [D.Malyavin, M.Latushkina, p.64]

Principle 5: Match the task to the topic.

Once a decision has been taken about what reading text the students are going to read, we need to choose good reading tasks — the right kind of questions, engaging and useful puzzles, etc. The most interesting text can be undermined by asking boring and inappropriate questions; the most commonplace passage can be made really exciting with imaginative and challenging tasks.

Principle 6: Good teachers exploit reading texts to the full. Any reading text is full of sentences, words, ideas, descriptions, etc. It does not make sense just to get students to read it and then drop it to move on to something else. Good teachers integrate the reading text into interesting class sequences, using the topic for discussion and further tasks, using the language for Study and Activation.

It is therefore essential to take the following elements into consideration.

The main text-types one usually comes across are:

• Novels, short stories, tales; other literary texts and passages (e.g. essays, diaries, anecdotes, biographies);

• Plays;

• Poems, limericks, nursery rhymes;

• Letters, postcards, telegrams, notes;

• Newspapers and magazines (headlines, articles, editorials, tetters to the editor, stop press, classified ads, weather forecast, radio/TV/theatre programmes);

• Specialized articles, reports, reviews, essays, business letters, summaries, precis, accounts, pamphlets (political and other);

• Handbooks, textbooks, guidebooks;.

• Recipes;

• Advertisements, travel brochures, catalogues;

• Puzzles, problems, rules for games;

• instructions (e.g. warnings), directions (e.g. How to use ...), notices, rules and regulations, posters, signs (e.g. road signs), forms (e.g. application forms, landing cards), graffiti, menus, price lists, tickets;

• Comic strips, cartoons and caricatures, legends (of maps, pictures);

• Statistics, diagrams, flow / pie charts, time-tables, maps;

• Telephone directories, dictionaries, phrasebooks. [F.Grellet, p.4]

The topics and types of reading text are worth considering too. Should our students always read factual encyclopedia-type texts or should we expose them to novels and short stories? Should they only read timetables and manus or can we offer them business letters and newspaper articles?

A lot will depend on who the students are. If they are all business people, the teacher may well want to concentrate on business texts. If they are science students, reading scientific texts may be a priority. But if, as is often the case, they are a mixed group with differing interest and careers, a more varied diet is appropriate. [J.Harmer, 1998, p.69]

The scope of the diploma paper does not allow to dwell upon all these text-types. The aim of this diploma paper is to reveal the peculiarities of the newspaper style and show how to work with newspaper articles.