Teaching reading at an advanced level

Theme: Teaching Reading at an Advanced Level

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. The importance of teaching reading

2. Developing reading skills and strategies

3. Stages of conducting reading and reading activities

3.1 Pre-reading

3.2 While-reading

3.3 After-reading

4. Testing reading

Conclusion

Summary

References

Intoduction

Reading is about understanding written texts. It is a complex activity that involves both perception and thought. Reading consists of two related processes: word recognition and comprehension. Word recognition refers to the process of perceiving how written symbols correspond to one’s spoken language. Comprehension is the process of making sense of words, sentences and connected text. Readers typically make use of background knowledge, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, experience with text and other strategies to help them understand written text.

Reading texts can be used for advanced learners for several different purposes:

— developing reading skills and strategies;

— presenting or recycling grammar items;

— extending vocabulary;

— providing modals for writing;

— giving some interesting and useful information for students;

— stimulating oral work.

Also reading can be linked to other skill work, for example writing, speaking or listening. In the process of reading, students will be concerned with the subject-content of what they read and the language in which it is expressed. Both aspects involve comprehension, though of different kinds. Depending on the reading purpose, different strategies and skills will be involved.

As students move on up the developmental ladder, getting closer and closer to their goals, developing fluency along with a greater degree of accuracy, able to handle virtually any situation in which target language is demanded, they become `advanced' students. As competence in language continues to build, students can realise the full spectrum of processing, assigning larger and larger chunks to automatic modes and gaining the confidence to put the formal structures of language on the periphery so that focal attention may be given to the interpretation and negotiation of meaning and to the conveying of thoughts and feelings in interactive communication. Some aspects of language, of course, need focal attention for minor corrections, refinement. So the task of the teacher at this level is to assist in that attempt to automatized language and in that delicate interplay between focal and peripheral attention to selected aspects of language. Reading and writing skills similarly progress closer and closer to native speaker competence as students learn more about such things as critical reading, the role of schemata in interpreting written texts, writing a documents. Everything from academic prose to literature and idiomatic conversation becomes a legitimate resource for the classroom. Virtually no authentic language material ought to be summarily disqualified at this stage. Certain restrictions may come to bear, depending on how advanced the class is. At this level most if not all of students are `fluent' in that they have passed beyond that `breakthrough' stage where they are not more long thinking about every word or structure they are producing or comprehending.

The topicality of this course paper is that reading is one of the most important and effective means of receiving information. It is closely connected with the other skills — listening, writing and speaking. We should stimulate the developing of these skills.

The object of the course paper is the process of teaching reading to advanced learners, the discussion of some strategies, examples, and resources aimed at promoting students to take a deep approach to reading.

The subject of the course paper is teaching reading considering the proper stages of reading and the activities which must be done in order to make the learners comprehend the information in the most productive way. Much attention should be paid to the testing reading that will help us to measure their progress in reading.

The aim of the course paper involves the elaborating of the methods of teaching reading to advaned learners and presenting different techniques and activities in order to help them to comprehend the reading better.

The tasks of the course paper are the following:

— to elaborate different strategies of reading according to the purpose of reading a text;

— to enlighten the stages of reading and show the exercises which can be used at each stage;

— to work out the tests which will measure reading skill of the learners;

— to encourage learners desire to read more.

1. The importance of teaching reading

reading teaching advanced

Reading is the basic foundation on which academic skills of an individual are built. Many believe that reading is an apt measure of a persons success in academics. Most of the subjects taught to us are based on a simple concept — read, synthesize, analyse, and process information. Although a priceless activity, the importance of reading has been deteriorating rapidly.

Learning to read is an important educational goal. For both children and adults, the ability to read opens up new worlds and opportunities. It enables us to gain new knowledge, enjoy literature, and do everyday things that are part and parcel of modern life, such as, reading the newspapers, job listings, instruction manuals, maps and so on.

A reader reads a text to understand its meaning, as well as to put that understanding to use; to find out some information, to be entertained. The purpose for reading is closely connected to a person’s motivation for reading. It will also affect the way a book is read. We read a dictionary in a different way from the way we read a novel. The teachers need to be aware of their students' learning needs, including their motivation for reading and the purpose that reading has in their lives.

It is often difficult to convince students of Eglish as a foreign language that texts in English can be understood even though there are vocabulary items and structures that the students have never seen before. Skills such as extracting specific information can be satisfactorily performed even though the students do not understand the whole text; the same is true for students who want to `get the general idea' of a text [10, p.191]. It is consider vitally important to train students in these skills since they ma y well have to comprehend reading in just such a situation in real life.

The underlying purpose of reading is to develop your thoughts, to weave new ideas and information into the understanding you already have and to give new angles to your thinking. If you try to pass this thinking process, you are not really learning as you read. Learning is to do with changing your ideas, combining them together in new ways and extending them to cover new ground. Reading a text is one way in which you trigger off these changes. The purpose of reading is not to have a lot of words pass in front of your eyes, nor to add a few new items to a long `list' of information in your mind. It is to engage your ideas and make you rethink them, make the proper conclusions [18,p.34].

Researches have shown that reading is only incidentally visual. More information is contributed by the reader than by the print on the page. That is, «readers understand what they read because they are able to take the stimulus beyond its graphic representation and assign its membership to appropriate group of concepts already stored in their memories» (Malderez 1999:134). Skills in reading depend on the efficient interaction between linguistic knowledge and knowledge of the world.

Reading texts also provides opportunities to study language: vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, models for English writing.

2. Developing reading skills and strategies

Advanced students who are literate in their own language sometimes are «left to their own devices» when it comes to teaching them reading skills. They will simply learn good reading by absorption. In reality, there is much to be gained by focusing on reading skills. It is generally recognized that the efficient reader versed in ways of interacting with various types of texts, is flexible, and chooses appropriate reading strategies depending on a particular text in question. The reader has to match reading skill to reading purpose.

We can differ between reading aloud and silent reading. Reading aloud is not appropriate for advanced students. We can use it when we have control reading. At the advanced level the most suitable is silent reading. Sustained silent reading allows students to develop a sense of fluency. Also silent reading can help the students to increase the speed of their reading. Reading speed is usually not much of an issue for all but the most advanced students.

It is now generally accepted that reading is not the careful recognation and comprehension of each word on the page in sequence. A good reader use a minimum of `clues' from the text to reconstruct the writer’s message. It is not difficult for the fluent reader to read the text with missing words. Experiments have shown that sometimes readers are not even aware of these things. Their successful reading depends upon their ability to predict what comes next. We read, in sense, what we expect to read, using our knowledge of language and our knowledge of the topic to predict to a large degree what comes next and so move on quickly [15, p.144].

Fluent advanced readers possess many different skills which they apply actively to the reading of the text:

— they predict from syntactic and semantic clues the words;

— they read in phrases, not in single words and actually skip over words if these are not needed for general understanding;

— they learn to read `between the lines' and working on the meaning of the text at different levels, understanding information, making inferences and critically evaluating ideas;

— they guess the meaning of new words from contextual clues or by applying knowledge of how words can be formed from others;

— they follow meaning through the paragraph by recognizing signals like `however' and `on the other hand' and by understanding how words and phrases like `it', `this', `the latter' and `these matters' refer back to something earlier in the text [17, p.128].

«Successful reading depends on the interaction of reading `strategies' for `processing' the text, background knowledge and linguistic competence» (Wallace 1992:57). Silent reading may be subcategorized into intensive and extensive reading.

Intensive reading is usually a classroom-oriented activity in which students focus on the linguistic or semantic details of a passage. Intensive reading calls students attention to grammatical forms, discourse markers, and other surface structure details, for the purpose of understanding literal meaning, implication, rhetorical relationships. Intensive reading practised in class needs to be complemented by extensive reading in or out of class. It is important to be sure that students have ample time for extensive reading. Only then students are given the opportunity to operate strategies like prediction or guessing word meaning and to develop the ability to follow the lines of argument. It is carried out to achieve a general understanding of a text. All pleasure reading is extensive. Technical, scientific, and professional reading can also be extensive.

The idea that some words in the text may be skipped or ignored will certainly seem strange to students accustomed to plodding word by word; but the techniques of skimming and scanning require this [19, p.34]. These terms are sometimes used indiscriminatly, but we will distinguish them below.

Skimming consists of quickly running one’s eyes across the whole text to get the gist. It gives the learners the advantage of being able to predict the purpose of the passage, the main topic or message, and possibly some of developing or supporting ideas. This gives them a `head start' as they embark on more focused reading.

Scanning — is quickly searching for some particular piece or pieces of information in a text. Scanning exercises may ask students to look for names or dates, to find the difinition of some concept. The purpose of scanning is to extract certain specific information without reading through the whole text. Skimming and scanning are useful skills. They do not remove the need for careful reading, but they enable a reader to select the texts, or the portions of the text, that are worth spending time on.

The strategy of semantic mapping or grouping the ideas into meaningful cluster, helps the reader to provide some order to the chaos. Making such semantis maps can be done individually, but they make for the productive group work technique as students collectively induce order and hierarchy to the passage [1, p.76].

Guessing strategy is very broad on meaning. The students may guess the meaning of a word, the grammatical or discourse relationships, cultural references. «Students should utilize all their skills and put forth as much efforts as possible to be on target with their hypothesis» (Brown 1994:295). The key to the successful guessing is to make it reasonably accurate. We can help them to become accurate guessers by encouraging them them to use effective comprehension strategies in which they fill gaps in their competence by intelligent attempts to use whatever clues are available to them. Language based clues included word analysis, word associations, and textual structure.

3. Stages of conducting reading and reading activities

Reading can be subdivided into three stages: pre-reading, while reading and after-reading. As was admitted by Hedge T. «People reading in foreign language often need to be given support before they begin reading, an introduction which motivates reading by creating interest in the topic and which facilitates reading by developing background understanding and linguistic knowledge» (Hedge 1998:96).

3.1 Before-reading

There are various things we can do before reading a text which will make it easier for students to understand the text and help them focus attention to it as they read.

They include:

— presenting some of the new words which will appear in the text;

— giving a brief intoduction to the text;

— giving one or two `guiding' question (orally or on the board) for students to think about as they read;

— suggest them to read the title of the text and try to guess what it is about.

We do not need to present all the new words in the text before the students read it; they may guess the meaning of the words from the context. An important part of reading is being able to guess the meaning of unknown words, and we can help students to develop their reading by giving them practice in this. It is important to introduce the theme of the text before we ask them to read it. This serves two purposes:

— to help students in their reading, by giving them some idea what to expect;

— to increase their interest and so make them want to read the text [2, p. 69].

One way to introduce the text is just to give the simple sentence. For example: «We are going to read about fossils. The text tells us how animals and plants become fossils.» Another more interesting way of discussion, to start students thinking aout the topic: «Do you know how the fossils are formed? Where do they come from? Have you ever seen the fossils? What was it like?». It is important to mention that the teacher should not say too much when introducing the text, because it may kill the students' interest instead of arousing it [6, p.60−61].

Before reading the text the teacher may give the students some guiding questions. «Guiding questions should be concerned with the general meaning or with the most important points of a text, and not focus on minor details; they should be fairly easy to answer and not too long» (Doff 1988:61). For example:

— Very few animals become fossils. Why?

— What kind of fossils are found in caves?

— How do animals become fossils?[6, p.61]

Different types of activities can be applied to prepare the student to reading the suggested text:

I. 1) Read the text and try to understand the general meaning of the story. (All the words which are highlighted are nonsense words).

A country girl was walking along the snerd with a roggle of milk on her head. She began saying to herself, «The money for which I will sell this milk will make me enough money to increase my trund of eggs to three hundred. These eggs will produce the same number of chickens, and I will be able to sell the chickens and for a large wunk of money. [6, p.60]

2) Now look at the highlighted words again and try to guess what they might mean? (The actual words are: road, can, stock, sum).

II. 1) Discuss in small groups or in pairs the picture of earthquake from the text or the title. Where it might be, what seems to have happend?

2) Do the tasks below before reading the text:

— Write down at least five questions, which you hope the text will answer.

— Try to imagine what text will tell you about: buildings, people, hills around the city, the land and the sea…

— Here are some words and phrases from the text. Can you guess how they are used in the text? (the sea-bed, the Richter scale, a huge wave, tremors, massive shock)

3) Now read the text [6, p.173].

III. Before you read the text, read the questions below and try to answer them. After reading the text read once more the questions and try to correct the mistakes which you have done before the reading.

IV. Read the second or the third paragraph and try to predict what you are going to read in the first and last paragraph.

3.2 While-reading

Not all reading is simple extensive-global reading. There may be certain facts or rhetorical devices that students shoud take note while they read. This gives them a sense of purpose rather than just reading. It is important to inform the students why they are going to read the suggested text. You may supply them with exercises which they should do, or explain what you will do when they continue reading. Then they will be able to choose the right strategy for the reading.

We can distinguish between different aims of the reading:

— Reading for the main idea. This means to read the whole text quickly to get the general idea of what it is about.

— Read text predictions. At points in the text that something dramatic has happend, or is going to happen soon, we can ask students to stop reading, close the books and try to predict what might happen next. This encourage the students to read carefully, imagine and discuss future possibilities, then read the next part to check their predictions [18, p.67].

— Reading to extract specific information. Students are supplied with the questions or task which they are going to answer before reading the text. This type of reading will help them to develop their scanning skills. They should quickly scan the text only to extract the information which the questions demand.

— reading for communicative taks. This type of reading is very important, because it helps to develop not only student’s reading skills, but also their communicative skills. For this purpose you may cut the short text into pieces. Then divide the students in two groups. Then give the part of the text to each students. They should put them together in the right order and read the whole story. Then the teacher may ask the questions concerning the story, or ask the students their opinion about the events in the story. The reading here is purposal and communicative. Those who read know that they they will have to answer some questions in order to communicate [10,p.204].

This type of reading is usually supplied with different activities:

I. For each paragraph or part of the story, students find the words or the sentences, that are the most important. This encourages them to not read the whole text in details.

II. Read the text and note down the most important information about the main hero in the form of the table or the chart. Then compare this information with the information that your partner put down. Discuss the criteria which you use while choosing the information.

III. Before the students start reading the text they are supplied with questions, true or false statements, multiple-choice items or matching items. They should read the text and find the right answer for the tasks.

At two minutes to noon on 1 September 1923, the great clock on Tokyo stopped. Tokyo Bay shook as if a huge rug had been pulled from under it. Towering above the bay the 4,000 Mount Fuji stood above the deep trench in the sea. It was from this trench that the earthquake came, at a magnitude of 8.3 on Richter scale.

The sea drew back for a few moments. Then, a huge wave swept over the city. Boats were carried inland, and buildings and people were dragged out to sea. The tremors dislodged part of the hillside, which gave way, brushing trains, stations and bodies in the water below. Large sections of sea-bed sank 400 metres; the land rose by 250 metres in some places and sank in others. The causalities were enormous, but there were also some lucky survivors. The most remarkable was a woman who was having bath in her roon at the Tokyo Grand Hotel. [6, p.174]

Tasks to the text:

1. What time did the earthquake start?

What time did it finish?

2. Did it start: a) in the mountains?

b) in the sea?

c) in the city?

d) in the desert?

3. Beside each statements write T (true), F (false) or DK (do not know)

a) Parts of the sea became deeper.

b) A hillside slid down onto the city.

c) Most people died by drowning.

d) The Ground Hotel survived the earthquake. [6, p.175]

IV. Match the sentences and the pictures which are given below with the right paragraphs from the text. Put the sentences in the right order.

V. Remove all the verbs, or pronouns, or adjectives from the short part of the text and ask them to fill in the gaps. They should guess the missing word from the story context. The missing words may be given in box, or may not.

It is estimated that in the last two thousand years the world has lost more than a hundred species of animals. The similar number of species of birds has also become extinct. The real significance of… figures, however, lies in… fact that almost tree quarters… all the losses occured… the past hundred years… as a direct result… man's activities on this… It is essential for… whole process of evolution… the extinction of certain… should occur over a… of time.

VI. Read the text below. Copy and complete the chart about either Terry Fox or Steve Fonyo.

Name:

Disease:

Date of start of run:

Age at start of run:

Distance covered:

Amount of money raised:

Answer the following questions.

1 Where did Steve Fonyo begin and end his run?

2 How many differences can you find between Steve Fonyo and Terry Fox?

Terry Fox was a college athlete who lost a leg due to bone cancer. At the age of 21, on a cold February day, he set out to run across Canada. He wanted to raise money for the Canadian CancerSociety, but on September 1st, he was forced to give up. He had raised more than 23 million dollars ana had become a national hero. He died the following June. Steve Fonyo lost a leg during his childhood due to cancer. He never completed high school. But at 19, Steve Fonyo still managed to complete a run all the way across Canada, passing through all the major cities [10, p.197].

3.3 Afterreading

Comprehension questions are just one form of activity appropriate for post-reading. Consider vocabulary study, identifying the author’s purpose, discussing the author’s line of reasoning, examining grammatical structure, or steering students toward a follow-up writting activity. The activities which are given to students after reading the text are generated by the text and extend its potential for meaningful language work. The tasks can not be performed without the text, that is, they cannot replace the text. Frequently, they involve the students in detailed revision of the text, which will help them to understand the text better [8, p.99].

After reading the text students may do the following activities:

I. Do the multiple-choice exercise, and choose the answers which better confirm the statements, explain them or support the ideas.

II. Summarize the text and make a conclusion. Discuss in pairs the main idea of the text.

III. Guess the meaning of new words from the context in the sentence. Match the words with the meanings. Then make your own sentences with this new words.

IV. Write your own ending of the story, or write your own composition on the same topic.

4. Testing reading

There are numerous ways of testing reading comprehension, ranging from multiple-choice items to opend-ended questions. Although the multiple-choice items are sometimes the most suitable instrument for testing reading comprehension, they should not be overused. Frequently other item are more interesting and useful. The text itself should always determine the types of questions which are constructed. Certain texts may lead themselves to multiple-choice items, others to true or false items, others to matching items, others to rearranged items, other to open-ended questions. Indeed, sometimes the same text will demand at least two or three different types of items [12, p.107]. As mentioned Burgess S. «Each of the parts in typical reading test is design to measure a different combination of reading skills» (Burgess 2005:29).

Multiple-choice tests

This task is likely to be the most familiar to the students. It consists of a text, which can be of almost any type and gener, accompined by one or more multiple-choice items. These may be in the form of a series of statements, a question plus answer, or an incomplete statement with a choice of phrases or words with which to complete in.

There must be four options, only one of which is correct. It is common to have items corresponding to specific section of the text, but there also may be items to test comprehension of the text as the whole. Supporting tasks:

1. This type of multiple-choice is used for understanding the main idea. For this purpose we can also use matching tasks.

What is the writer complaining about in the letter:

A Buses are becoming more crowded.

B Bus stops are poorly maintained.

C Adults can be thoughtless on buses.

D Children should be more polite on buses. [4, p.29]

The skill here is reading for gist or skimming. Students need to read the text through from beginning to end.

2. The task to recognize the writer’s attitude and opinion. The answer will not usually be stated explicity at any one point in the text. An appreciation of the writer’s attitude or opinion depends on picking up the meaning of adverbs and modal expressions that may be scattered throughout the text.

The writer thinks that the companies who advertise on the Internet

A should be more carefully monitored;

B never sell quality products;

C are more common;

D try to exploit their customers. [4, p.30]

3. The task is to recognise the tone. In order to be familiar with the tone, students should read the text carefully and pay attention to the details.

She comments on this story:

A admiring;

B critical;

C slightly dismissive;

D excited. [4, p.30]

Multiple-choice test as usual include different types of multiple-choice tasks.

True or false statements

That is another task type which is familiar to most of the students. They are given a text and a list of questions to it. Candidates determine whether the statements are correct or incorrect, according to the text. Sometimes the third option is included (`not given' or `not known'), for case where the text does not give the reader enough information to determine whether a statementas true or false. The true or false test, however, has two main disadvantages: firstly it can encourage guessing, since testees have 50 per cent chance of giving correct answer for each item. Secondly, as the base score is 50 per cent and thus the average text difficulty general in the region of 75 per cent, the test may fell to discriminate widely enough among the testees unless there are a lot of items [12, p.222].

For example:

Read the text and decide whether the statements below are true or false.

There were tales of people who scrape salt from dirty plates back into the salt-cellar, retrieve cloves from eaten apple pies, save lemon slices from dirty glasses and preserve them in water to be reused later, or put used paper tissues to dry on the radiator. Life with a Scrooge is not a lot of fun.

1. Life with a Scrooge is boring T/F

2. People save lemon slices from dirty glasses and preserve them in water to be reused later T/F

3. A Scrooge does not eat apple pie T/F [7, P.88].

Matching tasks

These tasks are used by several of the exam boards, some of which include more than one matching task in the reading tests. In matching tasks the students choose from the list of prompts. The prompts may be headings, statements, or question completion. For example, candidates may be asked to match the descraption to the appropriate paragraph of a text, or to match words or phrases with their meaning.

Task 1- match the words with definitions.

Sphere wind or twist into a continuous circular sphere;

Ellipse structure with a triangular or square base and slopping

sides meeting at a point;

Coil a form of a globe;

Pyramid regular oval [14, p. 122].

Completion items

There are two different types of completion the items: type 1 consisting of the gaps for completion in the items following the text and type 2 consisting of the gaps directly in the text. These tasks of type 2 involve texts from which single words, phrases, sentences or paragraphs have been removed. In some cases students have to decide what should fill the gap, while in others they must choose from the series of alternatives, only one of which is correct. Where paragraph or sentences have been removed, there is usually an item among the alternatives that does not belong to the text. In some cases, students write in words or figures which are missing from diagram or summary, that accompanies the main text.

Type 1

NEWTONE THEATRE

FORTHCOMING ATTRACTIONS

Monday, 8 January for two weeks

MY FAT FRIEND

Charles Laurence’s popular comedy

Wednesday, 24 January to Saturday 27 January

Shanghai Festival Ballet

Presents

SWAN LAKE

1. The Shanghai Festival Ballet will performe on… evening.

2. …will be the most amusing play.

3. If you like dancing, you should see…

4. The comedy written by… is very exciting. [12]

Rearrangement items

This type is particularly useful for testing the ability to understand a sequence of steps in the process or events in a narrative. In the whole in an exercise for classroom practice the students will be often required to rewrite the jumpled sentences in the correct sequences. Also students may be asked to rearrange the paragraphs of the text in right order.

Activity 1 — jumbled text

a. Of course, now I can understand it all more clearly. Father andI belonged to widely different generations, held different expectations; a revolution in attitudes to

b. opportunities that had bee denied him. A neighbor sent me the announcement of his death in the local paper. The funeral was to be the day I received the news. I thought

c. I realised; and maybe I could have eventually forgiven him. But would he ever forgiven me?

d. women had occured between his day and minr. But at the time all I could feel was bitter resentment, because he was not proud of me but deeply jealous that I had

1… 2… 3… 4… [12 ]

Open-ended questions

Student are required to answer the questions or continue the statements concerning the text. The answers may include one word or several sentences. There are many ways in which teachers may support students in developing the skills measured in reading tests, but it is important to highlight the difference between particular reading activities and the demands of the text.

For example — give the answers for the questions based on the text above.

1 Where did Steve Fonyo begin and end his run?

2 Where did Terry Fox begin and end his run?

3 Why did Steve Fonyo stop running at Thunder Bay on November 29?

4 How many differences can you find between Steve Fonyo and Terry Fox?

[10, p.203]

The students can ask and answer the questions in pairs. The answers to these questions are not essential for an overview of the text; they are the details which we expect students to be able to access on the second reading, not on the first.

Summary

Як правило, читання сприймається учнями як нудний процес. Вони читають текст, потім по порядку перекладають його, і на цьому розвиток навичок читання завершується. Однак саме процес читання здатний задіяти всі види умінь та навичок учнів. Дуже часто таке ставлення в учнів формується на основі ставлення самого вчителя. Якщо вчитель не зацікавлений в результаті, в знаннях учнів, то марна справа намагатися їх щось навчити. Тому основним завданням вчителя є організувати урок так, щоб він не обмежувався лише сухим прочитанням тексту, а підкріплювався різними видами діяння. На основі тексту можна розвинути комунікативні здібності учнів, розширити їх словниковий запас, виробити вміння письмово формулювати свої думки стосовно прочитаного. Використовуючи різні види вправ вчитель може зробити урок цікавим та захоплюючим, а також таким, який би розвивав усі види діяльності учнів.

Також варто зазначити, що важливе місце у процесі навчання займає перевірка знань, яка і відображає рівень засвоєння матеріалу учнями.

Ефективність та результативність уроку залежить від багатьох факторів, зокрема від самого педагога, його вміння грамотно організувати роботу на уроці, зацікавити учнів, використовувати різноманітні методи та способи організації навчального процесу.

Conclusion

Reading is a skill that will empower everyone who learns it. They will be able to benefit from the store of knowledge in printed materials and, ultimately, to contribute to that knowledge. Good teaching enables students to learn to read and read to learn. The role of the teacher in the teaching-reading process should be of a companion rather than the boss. Teaching can be made interesting and innovative if the efforts are put in to make learning an enjoyable experience. Successful teaching is where effective learning takes place with the use of appropriate knowledge, the right emotion and accurate application of scientific devices. With consistent progress in science and technology and other areas of study, it is the duty of the teacher to adopt the best methods and employ the best devices to ensure rapid growth in the teaching process. Teachers must be aware of the progress that students are making and adjust instruction to the changing abilities of students. Both research and classroom practices support the use of a balanced approach in instruction. Because reading depends on efficient word recognition and comprehension, instruction should develop reading skills and strategies, as well as build on learners' knowledge through the use of authentic texts. Similarly, the most effective way of dealing with the problem of cultural meaning in texts is to encourage students to read by themselves, choosing subjects related initially to their own interests so that they bring motivation and experience to reading. As their understanding of other cultures and of unfamiliar views increases through reading, they will bring to their reading activities a gradually increasing capacity to understand the full meaning of texts.

When reading comprehension breaks down, different students need to find ways to repair their understanding. This is where the importance of knowing how to teach reading strategies come in, so as to facilitate the reading process and give students a clear sense of what they are reading. Students can become easily frustrated when they do not understand what they are reading and as a result, they become demotivated. A teacher needs to design and teach different strategies in order to help students close the gaps in their understanding. The ultimate challenge for the teacher is to know exactly which strategy is useful and most beneficial to teach, since each student needs different strategies. This course paper in this respect, gives many strategies and a few general pointers for how to teach them.

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