3.Reading as an aim and a means of teaching and learning a foreign languages

What is reading? Reading is one of the main skills that a pupil must acquire in the process of mastering a foreign language in school. 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. Through reading in a foreign language the pupil enriches his knowledge, of the world around him. He gets acquainted with the countries where the target language is spoken. Reading develops pupils' intelligence. It helps to develop their memory, will, imagination. Pupils become accustomed to working with books, which in its turn

facilitates unaided practice in further reading. Teaching reading is very important, because it helps to develop others skills: speaking and writing.

The content of texts, their ideological and political spirit influence pupils. We must develop in pupils such qualities as honesty, devotion to and love for our people and the working people of

other countries, the texts our pupils are to read must meet these requirements. Reading ability is, therefore, not only of great practical, but educational, and social importance, too. Reading is not only an aim in itself; it is also a means of learning a foreign language. When reading a text the pupil reviews sounds and letters, vocabulary and grammar, memorizes the spelling of words, the meaning of words and word combinations, he also reviews grammar and, in this way, he perfects his command of the target language. The more the pupil reads, the better his retention of the

linguistic material is. If the teacher instructs his pupils in good reading and they can read with sufficient fluency and complete comprehension he helps them to acquire speaking and writing skills as well. Reading is, therefore, both an end to be attained and a means to achieve that end.

There are two ways of reading: aloud or orally, and silently. People usually start learning to read orally. In teaching a foreign language in school both ways should be developed. Pupils assimilate the graphic system of the target language as a means which is used for conveying information in print. They develop-this skill through oral reading and silent reading. When one says that one can read, it means that one can focus one's attention on the meaning and not on the form; the pupil treats the text as a familiar form of discourse and not as a task of deciphering. "The aim of the teacher is to get his pupils as quickly as possible over the period in which each printed symbol is looked at for its shape, and to arrive at the stage when the pupil looks at words and

phrases, for their meaning, almost without noticing the shapes of the separate letters” . A good reader does not look at letters, nor even at words, one by one, however quickly; he takes in the meaning of two, three, or four words at a time, in a single moment. The eyes of a very good reader move quickly, taking long "jumps" and making very short "halts". We can call this ideal reading "reading per se". Reading per se is the end to be attained.

As a means of teaching reading a system of exercises is widely used in school, which includes:

1 graphemic-phonemic exercises which help pupils to assimilate graphemephonemic correspondence in the English language;

2. structural-information exercises which help pupils to carry out lexical and

grammar analysis to find the logical subject and predicate in the sentences following the structural signals;

3. semantic-communicative exercises which help pupils to get information

from the text.

The actions which pupils perform while doing these exercises constitute the content of teaching and learning reading in a foreign language.

Difficulties which pupils have in reading in the English language. Reading in the English language is one of the most difficult things because there are 26 letters and 146 graphemes which represent 46 phonemes. Indeed the English alphabet presents many difficulties to Russian-speaking pupils because the Russian alphabet differs greatly from that of the English language. A comparison of the two languages shows that of the 26 pairs of printed letters (52 — if we

consider capital and small letters as different symbols) only 4 are more or less similar to those of the Russian alphabet, both in print and in meaning These are K, k, M, T. 31 letters are completely new to pupils. These are b, D, d, F, f, G, g, h, L, 1, I, i, J, j, N, n, Q, q, R, r, S, s, t, U, u, V, v, W, w, Z, z. The letters A, a, B, C, c, E, e, H, O, o, P, p, Y, y, X, x occur in both languages, bit they are read differently.

They are, therefore, the most difficult letters for the pupil to retain. Obviously in teaching a pupil to read English words, much more attention should be given to those letters which occur in both languages but symbolize entirely different sounds. For example, H, p ... (Pupils often read How as [nau]. Therefore, in presenting a new letter to pupils the teacher should stress its peculiarity not only from the standpoint of the English language (what sound or sounds it symbolizes)

but from the point of view of the Russian language as well. The most difficult thing in learning to read is to get information from a sentence or a paragraph on the basis of the knowledge of structural signals and not only the meaning of words. Pupils often ignore grammar and try to understand what they read relying on their knowledge of autonomous words. And, of course,

they often fail, e. g., the sentence He was asked to help the old woman is understood as Он попросил помочь старушке, in which the word he becomes the subject and is not the object of the action. Pupils sometimes find it difficult to pick out topical sentences in the text which express the main ideas. To make the process of reading easier new words, phrases and sentence

patterns should be learnt orally before pupils are asked to read them. So when pupils start reading they know how to pronounce the words, the phrases, and the sentences, and are familiar with their meaning. The teacher can use the whole system of exercises for developing pupils' ability to read which may be done in two forms — loud and silent.

Reading aloud. In teaching reading aloud the following methods are observed: the phonic, the word, and the sentence methods. When the p h o n i c method is used, the child learns the sounds and associates them with graphic symbols — letters. In the word method a complete word is first presented to the child. When several words have been learnt they are used in simple sentences . The sentence method deals with the sentences as units of approach in teaching reading. The teacher can develop pupils' ability to read sentences with correct intonation. Later the sentence is split up into words. The combination of the three methods can ensure good reading.

Reading in chorus, reading in groups in imitation of the teacher which is practiced in schools forms rather kinesthetic images than graphic ones. The result is that pupils can sound the text but they cannot read. The teacher should observe the rule "Never read words, phrases, and sentences by yourself. Give your pupils a chance to read them." For instance, in presenting the words and among them those which are read according to the rule the teacher should make his pupils read these words first. This rule is often violated in school. It is the teacher who first reads a

word, a column of words, a sentence, a text and pupils just repeat after the teacher.

In teaching to read transcription is also utilized. It helps the reader to read a word in the cases where the same grapheme stands for different sounds: build, suit, or words which are not read according to the rule: aunt, colonel. In modern textbooks for the 5th form transcription is not used. It is given in the textbooks for the 6th and the 7th forms. Beginning with the 6th and the 7^th forms pupils learn the phonic symbols so that they are able to read unfamiliar words which they look up in the word-list or a dictionary.

Silent reading. In learning to read pupils widen their eyespan. They can see more than a word, a phrase, a sentence. The eye can move faster than the reader is able to pronounce what he sees. Thus reading aloud becomes an obstacle for perception. It hinders the pupil's comprehension of the text. It is necessary that the pupil should read silently. Special exercises may be suggested to develop pupils' skills in silent reading. For instance, "Look and say, read and look up." (M. West)

To perform this type of exercises pupils should read a sentence silently, grasp it, and reproduce it without looking into the text. At first they perform such exercises slowly. Gradually the teacher limits the- time for the pupils' doing the exercises. It makes them read faster and faster. All this lead to widening their eyespan. Teaching silent-reading is closely connected with two problems:

1. instructing pupils in finding in sentences what is new in the information following some structural signals, the latter is possible provided pupils have a certain knowledge of grammar and vocabulary and they can perform lexical and grammar analysis;

2. developing pupils' ability in guessing.

4.The role and the content of extra-curricular work in language learning in school

Our net “Colchagua English Network” is formed by thirteen teachers of English who work in the semi-private and municipal high-schools in the cities of Santa Cruz, Peralillo, Chépica, Nancagua, Lolol. We meet once a month to discuss and share pedagogical information to improve the teaching and learning process in our schools. Since we got together we have made several projects to develop the four skills of the language.

One of the most successful for us, was a project whose main aim was to increase the students’ vocabulary in secondary school using graded readers for listening and reading with the implementation of literary circles and the help of vocabulary strategies. This project also had the idea of forming a small library of graded readers of different levels (level 0 to 6), so that we could have books to share among the students of the different high-schools of our net. At the beginning of the project we started with books from level 0 and 1 with 20 copies of each title. We had four titles. Little by little we continue increasing the quantity of books and level and now we have about 60 tittles. Since the development of this project we have had meetings for planning activities, sharing materials and ideas and unifying criteria in the implementation of the methodology: the literary circles and teaching techniques for the acquisition of vocabulary, reading, listening and speaking.

Besides, this project has been a real challenge for many reasons:

It was the first time the students and us, used graded readers for reading and listening in our classes.

It has helped to increase the student’s vocabulary, and we believed that guessing from context has also helped to improve their skills in the language.

Through literature the students have developed a sense of peer learning and better understanding of human behavior and attitude to face life.

Another important fact has been the opportunity of having a small English library with the funds got through the project granted by MINEDUC. It consists of graded readers, audio readers, which can be borrowed from and lent to the colleagues and taken to schools when necessary because in our schools and in the bookshops and local libraries there are no books in English available and they are expensive to afford for our students.

To achieve our goal in this project:

We have focused our attention on different Reading Comprehension strategies.

We have motivated the students to increase new vocabulary by deducing from context using different inference strategies, such as pronoun reference and others.

For reading we have been using as main methodology the literary circles strategy, based on cooperative learning and group work because it was the first time the students were faced to reading books, they needed the help of their partners. And in the literary circles each student has a specific role (a summarizer, a character captain, a vocabulary enriched, a setting responsible, a responsible of detecting important ideas or facts, a drawer, a student in charge of asking questions). When reading the students develop a kind of portfolio where they register all the tasks assigned and it serves them as a guided summary of activities related to the book where every student has played a role. In this project students have also developed speaking skills because they do drama presentations, debates and power point presentations of the books read.

A second successful teaching experience has been a project whose aim was to develop the four skills of the language. It was based on the use of pop songs where the students do listening activities, reading activities about singers and oral presentations in power point about their favorite artists. Also, we did a song festival where students from different schools participated singing dancing and playing musical instruments. We also did a poster competition to advertise the song festival.

And the third project was based on tourism of our region. The aim of this project was to develop reading and listening comprehension and the communicative skills of speaking and writing in students of secondary school (1º to 4º medio). The results of this project were very successful because the students investigated about the tourism in the Colchagua Valley in internet and some of them created a tourist blog, brochures, posters, booklets of recipes, and oral presentation and dialogues which were presented in a tourist fair where lots of people from the city, authorities and teachers and students from other schools could realize of the work we do as network and the level of English our students have.

Main achievements with the development of these projects:

Motivate the learning of the English language.

Integrate the four skills of the language.

Do interdisciplinary work with other teachers (Music, Arts, History, Language)

Show our work and the student’s work to the school and local community.

Develop team work within the members of our net and other nets of the region.

Peer learning among students and teachers.

Developing new ways to evaluate the students work considering the contents, the procedures and the student’s attitude in the learning process.

These projects have become part of the school curriculum in our subject.

The students read at least 3 readers every year.

5The direct method as one of the leading in learning foreign languages. Its main characteristics

The grammatical systems of Russian and English are fundamentally different. English is an analytical language, in which grammatical meaning in largely expressed through the use of additional words and by changes in word order. Russian is a synthetic language, in which the majority of grammatical forms are created through changes in the structure of words, by means of a developed system of prefixes, suffixes and ending. (p. 121, Brown C. and Jule “Teaching the spoken language”, Cambridge, 1983)

No one knows exactly how people learn languages although a great deal of research has been done into the subject.

Many methods have been proposed for the teaching of foreign language. And they have met with varying degrees of success and failure.

We should know that the method by which children are taught must have some effect on their motivation. If they find it deadly boring they will probably become de-motivated, whereas if they have confidence in the method they will find it motivating. Child learners differ from adult learners in many ways. Children are curious, their attention is of a shorter duration, they are quite differently motivated in, and their interests are less specialized. They need frequent of activity; they need activities which are exciting and stimulating their curiosity; they need to be involved in something active.

We shall examine such methods as “The Grammar - Translation Method”, ”The Direct Method”, “The Audio-lingual Method”. And we pay attention to the teaching grammar of the foreign language. We shall comment those methods, which have had a long history.

1.1.1 The Grammar Translation method will be discussed

This method was widely used in teaching the classics, namely Latin, and it was transferred to the teaching of modern languages when they were introduced into schools.

In the grammar-translation mode, the books begin with definitions of the parts of speech, declensions, conjugations, rules to be memorized, examples illustrating the rules, and exceptions. Often each unit has a paragraph to be translated into the target language and one to be translated into native one. These paragraphs illustrate the grammar rules studied in the unit. The student is expected to apply the rules on his own. This involves a complicated mental manipulation of the conjugations and declensions in the order memorized, down to the form that might fit the translation. As a result, students are unable to use the language, and they sometimes develop an inferiority complex about languages in general. Exceptionally bright and diligent students do learn languages by this method, or in spite of it, but they would learn with any method. (R. Lado)

We list the major characteristics of Grammar Translation.

- Classes are taught in the mother tongue, with little active use of the target language.

- Much vocabulary is taught in the form of lists of isolated words.

- Long elaborate explanations of the intricacies of grammar are given.

- Grammar provides the rules for putting words together, and instruction often focuses on the form and inflection of word.

- Reading of difficult classical texts is begun early.

- Little attention is paid to the content of texts, which are treated as exercises in grammatical analysis.

- Often the only drills are exercises in translating disconnected sentences from the target language into the mother tongue.

- Little or no attention is given to pronunciation.

(Brown H., Douglas `Principles of language teaching', N.Y., 1987)

The grammar-translation method is largely discredited today. With greater interest in modern languages for communication the inadequacy of grammar-translation methods became evident.