Sáng kiến kinh nghiệm Kỹ năng đọc

Part A. Introduction
 Traditionally, the purpose of learning to read in a language has been to have access to the literature written in that language. In language instruction, reading materials have traditionally been chosen from literary texts that represent "higher" forms of culture. 
 This approach assumes that students learn to read a language by studying its vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure, not by actually reading it. In this approach, lower level learners read only sentences and paragraphs generated by textbook writers and instructors. The reading of authentic materials is limited to the works of great authors and reserved for upper level students who have developed the language skills needed to read them. 
 The communicative approach to language teaching has given instructors a different understanding of the role of reading in the language classroom and the types of texts that can be used in instruction. When the goal of instruction is communicative competence, everyday materials such as train schedules, newspaper articles, and travel and tourism Web sites become appropriate classroom materials, because reading them is one way communicative competence is developed. Instruction in reading and reading practice thus become essential parts of language teaching at every level. 
 Therefore, teacher must have the most effective method of teaching reading skill to get more students' attention. This seminar aims at three main points:
- First: to show teachers several principles of teaching reading skill.
- Second: to show teachers a range of steps for presenting a reading text.
- Third: to show teachers some reading exercises and activities.
 It is hoped to bring about all of you here some good hints. 
 Part B. Contents:
 I. What makes a good reader?
 II. Principles of teaching reading skill.
 III. Steps for presenting a reading text.
 IV. Reading exercises and activities.
What makes a good reader?
 Language learners can learn to uses different reading styles. Some read and understand a text very quickly while others read slowly and fail to understand what they read. What makes a good readers? Karl Krahnke, in his book: Principles of language introduction, offers an explanation to this question. First, good readers do not read every word in a text. This similar to a good listeners, who does not hear every word, but instead, focuses on the important words. Good readers take small samples from a text and try to understand from those samples. For instance, in the following paragraph, a good reader may only focus on underlined words:
 The dolphin is a sea mammal which lives in groups of 10-20. These groups are called schools. Schools of dolphin have often been seen following fishing boats in the coastal waters of North American. Fishermen report that the dolphins are curious and friendly, often waiting to play by chasing their boats. 
 As you can see with the other words taken out, most of the meaning is kept in less than half of the words.
 Good readers learn to focus on the important words. By only reading certain words, a good reader can understand most of a passage and still read at a faster pace.
Second, good readers read silently, not whispering the words while they read.
Reading aloud like this slows a reader down and forces him or her to read every words when it actually distract from understanding a passage.
 Third, a good reader will try to predict what comes next to the text. And if the reader does not to understand what he or she has just read, he or she will quickly go back and read again. 
 Also good readers will use their own knowledge to help understand what they are reading. In order to understand a text , good readers skillfully recall what they already know about the topic. Thinking about the topic help the readers to understand more thoroughly.
 Finally, good readers learn to guess at the meaning of the new words. They look at the context of the words and affixes of the words. In this way, good readers can continue reading without knowing every words.
 Good readers focus on the general meaning first, then the specific meaning. They try to catch the main idea of the passage first.
 Good readers use all of these skills when reading in their native language. Naturally, it’s more difficult to read in a foreign language, but we can help our students become good readers by teaching them above skills.
II. Principles of teaching reading skill:
 Reading, like listening, is a receptive skill. We listen to comprehend spoken language on the television, radio, the telephone, and in direct conversation. When we read we are able to understand written language in books, on signs, in letters, and many other places. Because it is receptive skill, reading involve many of the same sub-skills as listening. You will recognize many listening strategies in this principles written bellow.
 When teaching a reading text, it is beneficial to state a purpose for reading the given text. Tell the students why they are reading the text. Is it to skim for the main idea? Is it to scan for the specific information? The purpose of the reading task should be stated to the students before they read.
 Prepare students to read by introducing the topic of the passage. When the students are prepared to read, they will focus on the text better and comprehend more.
 Before the students read the text, haven them read questions about it beforehand to help them focus on the meaning. It is even helpful to have them try to answer the questions before they read the text.
 Do not pre-teach the new vocabulary unless necessary. One of the skills readers should learn is guessing the meaning of the unknown words. If all words are pre-taught, this will prevent them from being able to guess from the context. Then, if the students don’t understand after reading, the teacher can explain the meanings of words the students need to know in the future. If a word is rarely used, it is probably not worth the time to explain it all.
 Have students read silently without whispering the words or moving their lips. This will help them read more quickly and focus on the more important words. Reading silently also help them focus on the meaning rather than the form of letters and sounds.
 Discuss difficult vocabulary after reading the text. If they were not able to understand the certain words by guessing from the context, help them by explaining by definition or example.
 When discussing the answer to the comprehension questions be sure to refer back to the context often. This will help the students practice finding the answer themselves.
 Finally, remember to focus on developing the skills of the readers. The purpose of teaching reading is not only to help the students to understand the text for that day, but also help them learn to effectively read for themselves. To do this they must develop the many sub-skills of reading like skimming, scanning, predicting, guessing from the context, and reading for the total comprehension.
 Another reason that different reading skills are important is that not all reading text are the same. Here is a list of different types of reading material and different styles involved in reading them:
 Types of material
Newspapers and magazines
Dictionaries
Advertisements
Main Schedules
Instruction/Directions
Charts and diagrams
 Reading skills
Skimming (for the main ideas)
Scanning (for the specific words)
Predicting (good prices)
Skimming (for interesting products)
Scanning ( for specific departures)
Reading (for total comprehension)
Skimming (for general trends)
 . .       
Steps for presenting a reading text:
+ Select an appropriate text.
+ Give a brief introduction to get the students thinking about the topic of the text.
+ State a purpose for the reading the text (skim, scan, read for the total comprehension).
+ Pre-teach any important words which will otherwise prevent the students from understanding the text.
+Write one or two questions on the board to focus their attention.
+Present the text and tell the students how much time they have to read. (Do not allow them too much time, especially in skimming and scanning exercises).
+ Have the students answer the questions about the text.
+ Present a follow-up activity. In this, the Students can share their own opinions or discuss what else they know about the topic of a text.
Reading exercises and activities.
 Word Attack Skills (vocabulary)
 Affix Analysis- Guessing at the meaning of words by examining their stems: prefixes, and suffixes. (i.e., geology = geo + ology = earth + study (or knowledge)
 Context guessing – By looking at surrounding words in a text, readers can deduce the meaning of many unknown words. This skill should be developed as a normal response to unknown words in a passage to avoid an excessive use of dictionary.
 Grammatical Clues - readers should be able to deduce what part of speech a word is both by the context and the form of the word. From the grammar, we can usually see if a word is a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb
 Skimming - Provide students with a passage to read quickly, looking for the main idea. Have them write a title for the passage or a single sentence capturing the main idea.
 Predicting - Provide portions of a text in successive after students guess at what might come next in the text.
 Scanning - Give the students a text and ask them to find certain specific information. This can be used with different types of reading texts such as poems, phone books, graphs or stories.
 Critical Reading - Present the students with a new story or letter which has clearly false information. Ask them to give their opinion of the text or to find the false information.
 Outlining - At the beginning levels, give students a list of words and ask them to place them in an outline form or in categories. They must decide how to organize them. An example of this looks like this:
 Word list: Fish, Dog, Horse, Dolphin, Whale, Cow
 I. Land animals: 
A. Dog
B. Horse
C. Cow
 II. Sea animals:
Fish
Dolphin
Whale
Paraphrasing - Give students a list of words or sentences and ask then to paraphrase by writing them again, using:
a, very simple meaning
b, different words, and
c, different grammatical structure (when using sentences)
Examlpes: 
desk = work table
student = learner or pupil
Inferencing - Ask the students questions that force them to “read between lines”
 Someone knocked on the door and Mary quickly put the rest of her chocolate bar in her purse.
(Mary was eating when someone knocked at the door.)
Comprehension Questions - A wide variety of question can be write to test the readers’ comprehension.
 Summarizing - This like skimming because it related to the main idea of the passage.
 Time Readings - Give the students texts of different lengths and difficulty. Ask them to read within a given time frame, turn their papers and answer the questions about the text.
 Strip Stories (or Ordering exercises) - Using a story the students can understand, jumble up the order of the sentences and ask the students to put them in the right order by assigning them the correct number.
 Cloze - Give the students an appropriate text. After they read it give them a same or similar passage with some words taken out. Have them fill in the blanks with acceptable words.
 Non-prose Reading - Provide charts, graphs, maps, etc and various comprehension questions.
Part C. Conclusion
	To sum up , there are many methodologies of teaching reading skill , each teacher has her/his own methodology of teaching reading skills but the characteristics of presenting a reading text are the same in any language . The final perpose of every teacher are to enlarge students’ attention to help them tobe good readers in any language. 
 I think those I have mentioned above are the most effective methodology . If we are to help students tobe good learners of English , it is necessary to obey priciples and steps for teaching reading skill above.
Thanh Lang, Oct 12th , 2010
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 Bui Thi Huong