What is reading in a second language? What do we read
for?
What do we read?
These are just three questions of the many we ask
ourselves. All teachers must ask themselves these and some
others when reading. When you read you must try to grasp the
general idea, so you must take into account that reading is
more than just getting a literal sense .It’s getting a
global comprehension based on "what you want."
Our students´use of reading is mainly looking
for information, so when teaching them you must guide them how
to do it. They must learn how to look for main ideas, and
details, they should know how to skim and scan from a text, how
to use a dictionary, etc. In general they should achieve
comprehension.
Of course, all that depends on a lot of factors such
as:
- Previous experience in the foreign
language. - Certain mastery of the required vocabulary for
comprehension. - Enough knowledge about grammatical structures used
in the text. - Cultural information.
- Previous background knowledge about topics to be
used. - Students´ own abilities for
reading. - Students´ speed ,motivation, interests,
desires,etc
After teaching reading comprehension to industrial
engineering students for five years we have realized that most
of the students´difficulties in reading lie in the fact
that mostly they don’t have a right command of their
mother tongue especially some grammatical structures such as
the passive voice, so there are often problems of
misunderstanding due to those situations. That’s the main
reason we decided to carry out this work aimed at implementing
activities to improve the students´level of comprehension
and to design other activities which could prove to be useful
in the process of reading
comprehension.
In teaching reading comprehension teachers should be aware
that their students must have a certain knowledge of their
mother tongue ,and which is more important, a great deal of
knowledge of grammar.
This knowledge of the Spanish grammar would be of paramount
importance, for example,in helping students to differentiate a
noun from a verb or an adjective, especially when looking up a
word in a
dictionary. This is a problem we have faced in class a lot and
which contributes to students´mistakes. (They look for
the wrong word and that is misleading in their comprehension of
a text or part of a text).
When exercising you must ask your students to look for
certain words that they can compare with their mother
tongue.
If you teach a synonym, antonym, or any other word you
should take into account their origin (Anglo Saxon, or
Latin)etc. If possible teach them some characteristics of the
English language so that they understand better.(50% Latin,50%
Anglo Saxon)
Verb tense is also important in dealing with certain complex
texts or texts in which tenses like the passive voice is not so
commonly used in Spanish as it is in English resulting in a big
problem for students not only for understanding, but also for
writing summaries, which they are asked to do in their
curricula. For example; when they are supposed to interpret
phrases like:
I´ts been stated, or This matter is being
studied, it becomes troublesome for them to really grasp
what is intended, and as a result, what they infer may not be
right and thus interferes with comprehension. In our modest
opinion we consider teachers should first of all teach students
how the structure functions in the mother tongue, though it
means that they really didn’t master such content in
their previous studies.
We suggest including a very brief summary of both Spanish
and English grammar from the very beginning of the course. It
is a common belief that speakers of a second languageusually
know more about that second language than their mother tongue.
In the case of the mother tongue we most of the time use it but
without worrying much about its structures unless you need to,
you’re a linguist or your job has to do with it, etc
Another difficulty that we usually come across in dealing
with reading comprehension is the interference of the mother
tongue which also affects the process. If they haven’t
formed the right reading habits in their mother tongue they
won’t be able to do it in the foreign language, so
certain processes such as recognizing a word or phrase,
interpretation of these words or phrases ,grouping of them, etc
will not be achieved.
Anyway, certain mechanisms, procedures o reading methods
could be of help to those students who never mastered them in
their mother tongue.
Taking all these into consideration we believe that when
reading you must take into account the purpose while reading,
and the kind of material you’re reading. Your purpose
will determine your reading rate and here we should remember
the most common purposes:
- To locate a specific item of information.
- To get the general idea.
- To have a total comprehension of a material.
- For recreational purposes.
Teachers shouldn’t forget that in learning a foreign
language reading integrates with the other 3 aspects of the
verbal activity, so it works as a means to reinforce the
language learning activity While developing the reading
activity students should review the sounds, vocabulary,
grammar, spelling, etc, but if they have problems with them it
usually becomes a handicap and as a result they usually feel
lost or they lose their motivation for reading or in general
for learning the foreign language.
Taking all that has been stated here we suggest the
following activities or exercises to enrich the
students´level of reading comprehension as well as
integrating it with other skills:
- Brainstorming vocabulary ( According to their specialty,
the teacher should check with the person in charge of
Engineering studies the vocabulary that is to be used in their
future life and look for the correct translation to those
words, then ask students to remember as many words as possible
and to put them into
use in class) ( This is a way of establishing
inter-disciplinary relationships)
- Ask students to look for meanings in dictionaries and to
provide other words they know or find. - Teach some troublesome grammatical structure before
presenting the reading material.
(Establish comparisons with the Spanish language. Suggest
including short Spanish courses to the students.)
- Make a thorough study of the texts included in the
syllabus and the others to be included and from those design
a glossary to be given to the student before teaching the
class (when possible) - Students could do independent work and look for terms
they could use soon. (Make use of intranet
and internet) - Give students a number of words. Accordingly, they are to
predict the kind of text they are going to read. Then they
read the text and check their original predictions. - Students have to match topic sentences with the paragraph
they fit. - Working with newspapers. ( For scanning, skimming,
vocabulary, grammar, asking and answering questions)
Prepare newspaper pages for each member of the class .
Be sure that each page includes more than one article in it.
Give one newspaper to each student. Tell students to read one
article and then to write a question about the article read on
the board.
Tell them not to identify the article on which the
question was based.( The question should be such that it can
only be answered by reading the article)
-Give the newspaper back to the teacher.
-The teacher should spread all the newspapers on the
table in random order, then ask students to find the answers to
the questions on the board.
– Ask students to share what procedures they used and
the kind of reasoning they did to locate the
articles.
While reading in the foreign language you can do the
same as in your mother tongue. If you understand ideas,
don’t worry about the meaning of isolated words. That is
what some authors say about reading, but if students are given
the right instructions and they are aware of what they are
taught and the means to achieve comprehension, the process will
be fulfilled, the students will feel motivated and satisfied
and the teacher’s goals and intentions will have been
worth the troubles.
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Authors:
Lic. Luis González Garcells
Msc Rosabel González Cruz
University of Holguín Oscar Lucero
Moya