How to Improve Reading Skill (For Non Native Speaker)

Reading can bring exacting dimensions into classes where English is taught as a foreign language or second language. 1. It gives students access to information written in English. 2. It combines with and reinforces other English language learning activities, providing fruitful practice of these activities.

It is a fact that when a student can associate a simple English utterance that he had learned in oral practice-session with its written counterpart, he is beginning to read English. This decoding process involves identifying the letters and knowing and how they are pronounced individually and in combination with other letters.

In doing so the reader attaches meaning to the grouping of letters and extract information from them and the student accomplish the entire process in his own individual time frame. And it determines the speed of his reading.

We isolate three major elements in the decoding of written English; recognition of alphabetical symbols, interpretation of these symbols and the speed with which these actions are accomplished. If the students are familiar with the English Alphabets or the direction they are read the teacher will guide them adopting left-to-right horizontal eye movement.

1. Immediately introduce the idea that English materials are to be observed and perceived in a left to right sequence.

2. Have the students traced English letters to become familiar with shapes? Later on call out a letter and ask the students to reproduce the letter on the page with the help of the memory.

3. Make English alphabet-sets and call out combination of letters and have the students recognize these by choosing the correct letter and placing them in the proper sequence.

4. Test recognition of similar letters by showing students three letters two of which are the same as in c e c. Ask the students to indentify the letters from the either two in the class.

5. Show students five words and ask them to study the shape of the letters carefully in the first word and then find the word with the same general configuration among the remaining four words. See the example: Pet Car Bee Jam God

6. Have students identified the same beginning, middle and ending by underling these words?

In the early stage the students learn English vocabulary orally by associating the English words with the concepts he is already familiar with in his native language. If the students learn through symbols its meaning, it means that they have good comprehension.

 

Vocabulary, Syntax and Comprehension

The vocabulary, syntax and comprehension these are focal points in the interpretation of alphabetical symbols.

Vocabulary is crucial to success in reading the average educated native speaker. English has a passive vocabulary set of 80,000, basic and derivative words. It is the vocabulary that enables the students to comprehend the all types of technical materials. It is most important to have a large number of vocabularies in the memory as the native speaker has by birth. Here are given some tips to improve English vocabulary.

 

Vocabulary Improving Techniques

1. Make the meaning of a new vocabulary, define it through definition, synonyms, and tell its prefix, suffix and stem.
2. After teaching a new word, briefly describe related vocabulary words as Envy=jealousy, Envy=melancholy.
3. Have the students memorize up to ten words a day.
4. Choose the words from the lesson and use them in the class before the students.
5. Write sentences leaving blank spaces in place of some words and say them to fill in the blank.
6. And on the advanced level, use a good dictionary at home to look up the new word meaning.
7. Give vocabulary quiz to check the students how much progressed they have made.

In teaching English skill, grammar (syntax) is essential. Initially most of the students learn English grammar by memorizing the rules, phrases and sentences in oral and written practice and structural drill. Later on the students must give brief explanation of grammar to help the students to internalize the syntactical designs of English in the classroom.

As we see that written English is characterized by1. Complex noun phrases, 2. Complex verb phrases, 3. Free modifiers and miscellaneous set of structural written grammar; apply these techniques in teaching reading skill;

1. At the elementary stage pull important grammar pattern out reading section and create suitable drill for the pattern.
2. On the intermediate level choose sentences from the students; reading materials for written and spoken language.
3. At the advanced level, focus on the complex structural forms that characterized written English.

After this comes comprehension in teaching reading skill to the students. If they have difficulty in comprehension, do not worry, sooner or later they will have to deal with materials whose vocabulary and syntax is beyond the spoken language forms they know unless they can derive correct meaning through inference but this reading comprehension will be limited.

 

While teaching comprehension apply these two steps;

1. The simple questions answerable byes or no.
2. Tag questions answerable byes or no.
3. Question listing several alternatives and answerable by a, b, c… and mark the correct sentence.
4. Question-word-question.
5. Two questions-word-questions and join by and.
6. Give a variety of objective tasks that how the students will understand reading passages
7. Multi-choice tests and fill in the blanks test are also useful in this drill.

It has been determined that reading stimulates other activities in the class room. It can into pronunciation, conversation and writing exercises. It can promote cultural understanding and appreciation of the artistic use of English in novel, stories and poetry. In this regard reading aloud in any foreign language is an excellent way for a student to improve his pronunciation.

If the reading selection is short story involving a lot of characters and dialogues, assign rules to the students and note errors in the pronunciation.

Reading and Conversational Practice are almost endless. Once the students complete a given reading assignment they have a few fund of information which serve a students’ departure points for all kinds of discussion. Here are given a few tops to improve reading comprehension.

1. As a question that requires the students to infer information from the reading passage.
2. How do you suppose..?

Reading and Writing

At the elementary level, give students a short reading selection with one or two passages only. After this dictate them at normal conversational speed and repeat the materials once.

After this mark the paper test sitting or standing in the classroom.

 

Reading and Cultural Understanding

Reading is not complete without mention of how reading can help the students understanding the culture …be it American, Canadian or British or any other English world, underline the words in written language that provide information to the students by the writer.

To sum up, reading skill is also important in learning English, especially reading literature in original form improves reading skill in a better way. But for those students who are fluent in English enjoy the beauty of English words while reading English literature. The teacher can do much to help them in discovering the less obvious aspect of the writer’s style and message. Thus reading skill may be taught in the class room that stimulates the students’ interest in the class and out of class, or at home or out of home.

The concept of task plays an important role in the teaching methodology developed under the functional approach and the nature of task must be made clear to the students in the class room.

Task Characteristics

Tasks have four characteristics. Tasks have;

1. A product is an end result
2. A specific audience towards which the product is directed
3. A function
4. A linguistic focus

For this purpose the students are motivated to give attention to the new structures modeled by the teacher. The tasks provide an immediate opportunity to use this structure.

1. The Products

The products must be put in the context of all possible reading and writing process and productions. We must provide the knowledge of English alphabets to the students so that they can spell how to read.

2. The Knowledge of Phoneme

We must provide the students the knowledge of phonemes to decode and encode the sequence of letters.

3. The Knowledge of Daily Language
4. The students must know the basis knowledge of functional grammar so that they could know how to use daily usage words in routine language. It is most important for the beginners those who are learning English.