10.6.2. Preventive Work Preceding Teaching Reading for Meaning

Before teaching reading for meaning it is necessary to conduct some pre­ventive work with students in order not to experience language difficulties which can arise while reading the language material suggested to learners.

The items which can cause difficulties while reading texts are as follows:

• pronouncing place names and proper names, whose pronunciation often doesn't coincide with rules of reading;

• understanding some realia of the country (e.g.: Military Tattoo—вшськовий парад) and abbreviations (e.g.: GBH —grievous bodily harm);

• comprehending international words (e. g.: fixed limits — встановлет обмеження);

• understanding a derived word with a complicated structure (e. g.: fartherlessness) or dim derivation (e. g.: They formed a connection, however infatuationless [78] — Вони вступили у зв'язок, але палкоТ закоханосп мЬк ними не було);

• inability to understand a word on the basis of the semantic structure of a word in the native language (e.g.: two crowned heads of the state; to form a connection);

• understanding complicated grammatical structures (e.g.: When questioned, Annie had implied vaguely that she was anxious about her brother-in-law 114, 168]).

The problematic items are to be italicized in the text, and the teacher should give assignments to the students to clear up the difficulties without his/her help, only with the help of a dictionary. Checking up the assignment students exchange their views, and the teacher helps them to clear up all the problematic cases.

Besides clearing up language difficulties, the teacher should develop in students the inner state of meaningful readiness to accept the text which he/ she is going to give them for reading. Before reading a text some pre-text questions connected with its topic can be discussed and talked over, c. g.: if the text is about music: What music do you prefer, ? Which musical styles are the most popular now?, Do you often go to the philharmonics to listen to music? If the text is a piece of prose: Do you know such a writer as O'Henry ?, What country did he live in ?, Why do people like O'Henry's stories?

10.6.3. Teaching Skimming Reading

The goal of skimming reading is defining the main topic of the text, i.e. what the text is about. Fluent selective preview of the whole text is undertaken [2, 268]. To find the main topic of a text it is necessary that readers be able to extricate all possible information from the title of the text, from the titles of different parts and subdivisions of the text, the pictures, figures, drawings, tables, diagrams and inscriptions to them. The following task in skimmimg reading: " You are given a minute. Looking through the title of the text, figures and inscriptions to them, try to deduce which branch of knowledge the text refers to." is to be given to students before reading the text.

Another skimmimg reading task which can be suggested to students is as fol lows: "Find correlations between the title, subtitles of the text and the pictures/ figures given in it. Prove your ideas. Your reading time is 2 minutes."

The teacher can ask students to think over which parts of the text, in the opin­ion of each of them, and why might contain the most important information.

So, carrying out tasks in skimming reading learners move from defining the general idea of the text to finding out such parts in it which require shift­ing to some other type of reading activity, because they might contain the most important information of the text. This is an important and substantial feature of natural reading.

The tempo of skimming reading is 500 words per minute otherwise its goals are not achieved [49].

Methodological conditions for teaching skimming reading:

1. rapid tempo of reading,

2. insufficient comprehension of the text,

3. using the titles, subtitles, pictures, figures etc. as the main sources of information of the text,

4. limitation of the time of reading,

5. reading in class.