Reading

Reading is also the language skill which is easiest to keep up, read in a foreign language that we use to be able to speak as well.

Approaches to reading. Many five to ten years old are in the process of learning to read in their own language. Whether or not their have mastered the skill in their own language and whether or not their own language is writing in the Roman alphabet, will have an effect on the initial stages of teaching reading in English. For example, a German child of nine will already be familiar with most of the techniques of reading, a Japanese child of nine will also be aware of much the same things, but she or he may not be very familiar with the Roman alphabet or relate sounds to individual Roman script have more stages to go through when they are learning to read in English.

There are a number of different ways to approach the introduction of reading in a foreign language, but we have here a couple of examples. This approach is based of letters and sounds. Usually we teach the pupils the letters of the alphabet, and the combination of letters, phonetically as they are actually pronounced. We say how the letters are pronounced. Is recommended that we start off three or four letters that can make up a name of a word, like for example, c a n t. Then you can show your pupils how to pronounce can, can, can’t.

Look and say. This approach is based on words and phrases, and make a lot of use of flashcards. You can also show words written on cards. We can start by teaching everyday words which are familiar to the children. The teacher shows the children the word and say it while pointing to the object, then the children repeat the word, this has to be done several times with each word. There are a lot of games that you can play with them. For example, matching words and pictures, pointing to the object, etc.

Whole sentence reading. In this part the teacher teaches recognition of whole phrases and sentences which have meaning in themselves. This often means a story which the children read for first time themselves after the whole text is familiar to them.

Language experience approach. This approach for reading is based on the child's spoken language. The teacher have to write down a sentence for the child to read. For example. This is me. My sister is nine. She is in class 3F.

Five to seven years old are likely to take longer to learn to read in a foreign language than eight to ten years old. Usually they are children that are starting school are not familiar with books. They have to go through the process of doing reading like activities: first sentence structure, paragraphing, grammar, none of this means anything to most pupils at this stage.

Eight to ten year olds beginner. Usually the eight to ten years old will already be able to read a bit in their own language and most of them seem to have little difficulty in transferring their reading skill to English. This means that you can spend much less time teaching the mechanics of reading and concentrate more on the content.

Reading a story from a book. Some of the stories which you read aloud will become the stories that your pupils read, as an example, we have here Belinda's Story. The whole text of the story is as follows: That's a bird. It's green. That's a butterfly. It's red. That's a fish. It's blue. That's a crab. It's yellow. And so on.

Reading a class story. Instead of reading from a book, you might want to use a class story. This have the advantage that you can photocopy freely, and you can give to them, and they can color their copies.

Reading texts based on the child's language. The idea is that each individual pupil has his or her own written text which says what he or she wants to say and is used for both mother tongue and foreign language learning.

Reading familiar nursery rhymes or songs. Most children learn nursery rhymes in their mother tongue and in English without having a complete understanding of what they are saying.

Reading aloud. Is not the same as a reading silently. It is a separate skill and not one which most people have that much use for outside the classroom, but it is useful, with beginners in a language. Reading aloud the class one by one, is not recommended. It may be harmful to the silent reading techniques of the other pupils.

Silent reading. Reading aloud can be a useful skill to have in the classroom, and one which teachers make good use of, but silent reading is what remains with most people for the rest of their lives.

Building up confidence. Some children are natural readers and will want to read books as soon as they can, but you should spend time building up confidence with the whole class about silent reading. Give pupils only half the story, and discuss what happens next in the mother tongue.

Different reading materials. Once your pupils are on the road to reading, you have to give a wide choice of reading materials available to them as possible. For example, you may want to start off with reading cards. For example: Treasure! And Sheila's rabbits.

Introducing new books. At the five to seven stage you should read all new books. There are different ways to introduce books. For example, show the pupils the new book and tell what it is about. Read them an amusing or interesting bit from one of the books.