Как улучшить навыки чтения у учащихся?

HOW TO IMPROVE READING SKILLS

or HOW TO PREPARE FOR READING IN USE

(NO GOLDEN RULE)

• To make your students read you should improve their reading interest.

• Students should love reading (but not read with a great interest in USE).

• You should encourage their reading (certificates, competition).

• Giving them interesting material (from magazines, internet sites). If it’s boring, they won’t read it.

• Giving them an authentic material (story books, adapted material).

• Reading resources should be also thought-provoking, inspiring (inspirational stories).

• To understand the text your students should enlarge their vocabulary.

• We can divide READING into 2 groups of activity: basic and critical reading.

• Students should read the material critically (think about what they are reading, consider the sources of information, speculation and opinion, underline the words which show criticism). (Mike Boyle, Macmillan webinars)

• Students should use their logic even when they read the simple text as they can come up with the decision that the facts might not be true.

• Students should clarify the keywords in the text.

• Needed information in the text can vary from 10 to 30 %, the rest of it is to enrich the text gradually. (E.Solovova).

• Students should be familiar with the tasks before the exam.

• No practice makes no result (students should “solve” reading tasks).

• Students should be motivated to succeed (their goal is to learn language, not to pass USE).

• Reading tasks also provide good models for English writing.

• Through the text we study language: vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, the way we construct the sentences, paragraphs.

• Students should improve their skills in:

  1. SCANNING (searching for particular information - B2)

Note: give them different texts, ads, word search papers, some dates, numbers, even computer manuals that are written in small fonts to improve their attention.

1. SKIMMING (to get the general idea of the text by quick reading (looking) – B3).

2. READING FOR DETAILED COMPREHENSION (looking for detailed information more concentrated – A8-A14).

• No need to waste time by reading the whole text if it’s clear about the answer (the main idea of the text can be seen at the very beginning or last sentence).

• Students should be strictly limited in time for doing reading tasks, because sometimes they spend a lot of time reading the same text losing concentration.

• AT THE EXAM YOUR STUDENTS ARE LIKE RACE HORSES WHICH ARE NOT ALLOWED TO STOP FOR 2-3 HOURS.