- •Problems of Reading inside Classrooms
- •Introduction:
- •Literature Review:
- •Definition of Reading:
- •The process of Reading:
- •Problems and solutions for the case of Reading in Syria:
- •Problems:
- •Student's misconception:
- •False conceptions about reading
- •Teaching methodologies used in teaching reading:
- •Lack of support from the educational system:
- •The Ministry of Education is actually advocating exam oriented classes:
- •Lack of teacher resources:
- •Solutions:
- •Training programs for teachers:
- •Introducing the readers to the target culture through extensive reading:
- •Providing sufficient extra graded materials for school:
- •Conclusion:
- •Bibliography:
Introducing the readers to the target culture through extensive reading:
Reading texts designed to meet our culture, ideologies, and life style would make an artificial language context which is not really there in the target language and the learner wouldn't be able to comprehend any other books written by native language people or understand their ideas especially if they are different from ours and later on the learner wouldn't be able to understand how the language is used in the target language community. Our culture is characterized by so many traditions and norms of conduct which are different from the American or the English conduct. Introducing some texts and dialogues depicted from the target language community or at least motivating the students to read about them will enhance the students' ability to use the language in the target language community. Angela Scarino and Anthony J. Liddicoat in their book Teaching and Learning Languages: A Guide (2009) suggest that teachers who focus on language simply as a matter of code deciphering of grammar and vocabulary in the goal of language learning, their students will not be engaged with "language as a communicative reality but simply as an intellectual exercise or as a work requiring memorizing" (p:16).
Providing sufficient extra graded materials for school:
Assigning more time for English classes and for reading in particular should be alongside with the existence of materials that should suit every stage of learning (every grade). By supporting the school libraries with English materials graded for every stage of learning, the ministry of education will motivate the students to read in English and show the students the importance of reading in learning a foreign language. Books are the easiest and relatively cheapest teaching aids that teachers can provide to enhance the process of learning and building comprehension in the minds of students
Conclusion:
Reading can be divided into two main components: "decoding" (word recognition) and "comprehension" according to The Reading Acquisition Framework – An overview by Wesley A. Hoover and Philip B. Gough (2000). Decoding is the act of deciphering the morphological aspect of the word and combining the sounds in order for the reader to recognize the words and then comes the next stage which is understanding a word or a sentence out of its context and based on the learner's prior knowledge of his/her culture and the target culture of the language the text is using. Carver makes a difference between "what he calls rauding (`typical' reading done under conditions wherein the individual has no difficulty comprehending each sentence)" from memorizing, studying, and doing some skimming. He suggests that "these are different processes, and only one of these –rauding– is normal reading, where the reader is comprehending all or most of the thoughts the author intended to communicate" (Carver, 1982, as cited in Alderson, C. Assessing Reading, 2000: 12).
So, reading is not about memorizing and studying in an exam oriented approach, it is much more complex than this. Having reading groups and letting the learners analyze things and induce the grammatical and semantical rules of the language from the texts will change the focus of the classroom to make it more about comprehension rather than memorization of the text. This is a huge step towards a learner- based more than teacher based classrooms. This will, eventually, be a great step towards a better EFL teaching methodology in general and teaching the students how to read and acquire the language more efficiently in particular.
