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Strategies for developing reading proficiency
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| Strategies for developing reading proficiency
Құдабаева П.А. Тараз инновациялық-гуманитарлық университеті (Қазақстан) В данной статье рассматриваются основные стратегии развития навыков чтения. Мақалада оқу машықтарын дамытудың негізгі стратегиялры қарастырылады Reading is one of the main skills that a student must acquire in the process of mastering a foreign language. Reading is of great educational importance as reading is a means of communication, people get information they need from books, journals, magazines, newspapers, etc. Reading develops students’ intelligence. It helps to develop their memory, will, imagination. Reading ability is not only of great practical, but educational and social importance. Such qualities as honesty devotion to and love for people are developed through reading.[5, 158 б.] The current explosion of research in second language reading has begun to focus on readers’ strategies. Reading strategies are of interest for what they reveal about the way readers manage their interaction with written text and how these strategies are related to text comprehension. Research in second language reading suggests that learners use a variety of strategies to assist them with the acquisition, storage and retrieval of information. Strategies are defined as learning techniques, behaviors, problem-solving or study skills which make learning more effective and efficient. Since the early seventies, for the most part, research in this area has concentrated on teaching second language learners to use a variety of language strategies in order to read better. These strategies consist of a whole range of strategies including contextual guessing, reading for meaning, utilizing background knowledge, recognizing text structure and so forth. Less common, however, have been empirical investigations into reading strategies used by successful and unsuccessful second language learners. The problem of the effective use of strategies for developing reading proficiency attracts attention of the following scientists: Ken Hyland, Yue Mei-yun, Meena Singhal. Meena Singhal suggests a useful and comprehensive classification scheme of the various strategies into the following six strategies: cognitive strategies, memory strategies, compensation strategies, metacognitive strategies, affective strategies and social strategies.[3, 4-5 бб.] Ken Hyland in his article «Teaching Extensive Reading Skills» suggests approaching every reading task with a clear purpose and with the flexibility to adjust reading strategy to the purpose at hand. Yue Mei-yun in her article «Teaching Efficient English Foreign Language Reading» suggests the psychololinguistic models of reading as the summary of the efficient reading process. In recent years, English language teachers have benefited from a growing body of research that describes how learning strategies can help students improve their acquisition of the language. Teachers and students alike can easily find useful references that list the numerous learning strategies and explain how to apply them to each of the four skills. According to O’Malley and Chamot, learning strategies are organized into three main categories: social-affective, cognitive and metacognitive. Social affective strategies include interacting and cooperating with others to assist learning; cognitive strategies involve manipulating the language to be learned; and metacognitive strategies encourage learners to reflect on thought processes and to plan, monitor, and evaluate aspects of their learning. These strategies can be valuable instructional tools, especially for the reading skill, because many English as a Foreign Language teachers (EFL) find that there is insufficient practice time for students whoa re required to cope with studying a new language and to read for content. The need is heightened because at the post-secondary level, and particularly at the graduate and post-graduate levels, English suddenly becomes increasingly important for students who must take English for Special Purposes (ESP) courses and read technical subject matter in English. In some subjects English is the medium of instruction and a vehicle of content information. Although there are clear prescriptions from syllabus and curriculum developers to encourage activities that require the use of strategies such as scanning (reading a text quickly for specific details), and skimming (reading and previewing a text to find the main idea), in many EFL classrooms these terms are no more than clichés, and very little training is provided on how to actually use these strategies. As a result, students experience difficulties when reading research articles in subjects related to science and technology. Research in the area of reading has also begun to focus on the role of metacognition. Grabe and Stroller (2002) indicate that reading long selections of text quickly for general comprehension, which most fluent readers can do in their native language, is difficult to achieve and may not be a skill that is readily transferable to their second language. In the EFL classroom, many readers tend to rely on the slow and careful reading of texts from to start to finish, and they have difficulties with reading activities requiring the use of strategies for reading quickly and efficiently, such as skimming a lengthy research article for main ideas. As many practitioners have found, metacognitive strategies are one way to overcome these problems. Metacognition is variously defined as «cognition of cognition» (Carrel, Pharis, and Liberto 1989), [1, 23 б.] «the conscious awareness of cognitive processes» (Bernhardt 1991), and «knowledge about learning» (Wenden, 1998). In relation to reading comprehension, metacognition is the «knowledge that takes as its object or regulates any aspect of any cognitive endeavor» (Flavell 1989). This definition suggests that metacognition not only relates to the individual thought processes one uses to learn but also to the self-regulation of cognition. Williams and Burden (1997), for instance, say that metacognitive strategies «include an ability to manage and regulate consciously the use of appropriate learning strategies for different situations. [6, 82 б.] They involve an awareness of one’s mental processes and an ability to reflect on how one learns, in other words, knowing about one’s knowing». According to O’Malley and Chamot (1990), metacognitive strategies include selective attention to the task, planning, self-monitoring, and self-evaluating.[4, 102 б.] As applied to reading, these metacognitive strategies entail specifying a purpose for reading, planning how the text will be read, self-monitoring for errors in reading comprehension, and self-evaluating how well the overall objectives are being fulfilled, which allows for talking corrective measures if comprehension is not being achieved. While previous research has focused on strategy use researches are examining readers’ awareness of strategies during the reading process – their metacognitive awareness. Metacognitive awareness is knowledge about ourselves, the tasks we face, and the strategies we employ. Knowledge about ourselves may include knowledge about how well we perform on certain types of tasks of our proficiency levels. Knowledge about tasks may include task difficulty level. For example in the area of reading, we may know that «familiar topic material» is easier to understand than «unfamiliar material». Metacognitive awareness involves the awareness of whether or not comprehension is occurring and the conscious application of one or more strategies to correct comprehension. First language reading researches most notably Baker and Brown (1984) have investigated several different aspects of the relationship between metacognitive ability and effective reading. Two dimensions of metacognitive ability have been recognized. knowledge of cognition or metacognitive awareness and regulation of cognition which is stated includes the reader’s knowledge about his or her cognitive resources and the compatibility between the reader and reading situation, for example, if a reader is aware of what is needed to perform effectively then it is possible to take steps to meet the demands of a reading situation more effectively if however, the reader is not aware of his or her own limitations as a reader of the complexity of the task at hand, then the reader can hardly be expected to take actions to anticipate or recover from difficulties. Related to this is the reader’s conceptualization of the reading process in a second language. Younger and less proficient readers tend to focus on reading as a decoding process rather than as a meaning-making process. A reader does not describe how to use a particular strategy but in fact does use it when reading. «To explain this», Baker and Brown (1984) point out that «knowing that» (declarative knowledge) is different from «knowing how» (procedural knowledge) and that knowledge that a particular strategy is useful (awareness) precedes its routine use, which in turn precedes the ability to describe how it is used. For reading, reading strategies such as focusing on grammatical structures, sound letter, word-meaning and text details tend to be negatively correlated with reading performance. The English Foreign Language group of more advanced proficiency levels, tend to be more global (use background knowledge, text gist, and textual organization) or top-down in their perceptions of effective and difficulty causing reading strategies. The English Foreign Language group of lower proficiency levels tend to be more local or bottom-up decoding skills. Students who effectively consider and remember context as they read (i.e. strategy use) understand more of what they read than students who employ this strategy less or less well. So there appears to be a strong relationship between reading strategies used by readers metacognitive awareness, and reading proficiency. Better readers have an enhanced metacognitive awareness of their own use of strategies and what they know, which in turn leads to greater reading ability and proficiency. More proficient readers exhibit the following types of reading behaviors: overview text before reading, employ context clues such as titles, subheadings, look for important information while reading and pay great attention to it than other information, attempt to relate important points in text to one another in order to understand the text as a whole, activate and use prior knowledge to interpret text, reconsider and attempt to determine the meaning of words not understood or recognized, monitor text comprehension, identify or infer main ideas, use strategies to remember text (paraphrasing, making notes, summarizing, self-questioning, etc.) understand relationships between parts of text recognize text structure, change reading strategies when comprehension is perceived not be proceeding smoothly; evaluate the qualities of text, reflect on and process additionally after a part has been read, and anticipate or plan for the use of knowledge gained from the reading. This list does provide with a description of the characteristics of successful readers. The following guidelines for effective strategy instruction in classroom is offered: Teachers must think about how a particular strategy is best applied and in what contexts; Teachers must present strategies as applicable to texts and tasks in more than one content domain so that strategies can be applied in a variety of reading situations and contexts; Teachers must teach strategies over an entire year not just in a single lesson; Teachers must provide students with opportunities to practice strategies they have been taught; Teachers must be prepared to let students teach each other about reading and the studying process. Creating an awareness of reading flexibility and developing the strategies for this are therefore among the most useful contribution the teachers can make to their students` futures. Different purposes demand appropriate comprehension and retention levels and therefore the use of different reading strategies. The teachers’ objective in reading classes must be to improve the skills that will best help the students consciously select and effectively use the most appropriate technique for any reading task.[2, 108 б.] жүктеу/скачать 9,17 Mb. Достарыңызбен бөлісу:
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