LEARNING TO READ IN ENGLISH

IN PRIMARY SCHOOL

Bevz Elena Viktorovna

MBOU "Secondary school number 37",

english teacher

s.t.8-906-901-83-56

I have been working as a teacher at MBOU "Secondary School No. 37" on this topic for several years. One of the important tasks in your work with children is to make the lessons interesting and exciting. To a large extent, it depends on the teacher, his ability to captivate children, to provide everyone with the opportunity to express themselves most fully, to realize their abilities.

The relevance of this topic lies in the fact that there are problems in mastering the technique of reading in English in primary school, that many children cannot read in English, do not learn sounds and letters.

Reading is the main skill of a person in life, without which he cannot comprehend the world around him, it is an independent type of speech activity associated with the perception and extraction of the necessary information encoded with graphic signs (Passov E.I.)

Reading is necessary for a student not only for the practical mastery of a foreign language and the discovery of another culture, but also it is a means of self-education and creative activity.

The formation of skills and abilities in reading is one of the most important components of the process of teaching a foreign language at all its stages. Link to Internet source)

Mastering reading in English presents great difficulties for primary school students, they are often caused by the graphic and spelling features of the English language. This is the reading of vowels, combinations of vowels and some consonants, which are read depending on the position in the word. Many children do not remember the rules for reading letters and combinations of letters well and read words incorrectly. Difficulties often arise associated with the psychological characteristics of children, insufficiently good development of memory, attention, thinking.

Starting from the second grade, it is very important that the processes of education and development of students follow the mainstream of modern methods. At the same time, the ability to competently teach communication in a foreign language to junior schoolchildren who are not yet fully fluent in communicative skills in their native language is a very difficult and responsible task.

The problem is that when reading, the student experiences a very strong influence of the native language. Hence, various kinds of errors arise. The task of the teacher at this stage is not only to help students master a system of symbols that is new to them, but also to prevent their possible mistakes.

There are many reasons for this: the English alphabet consists of 26 letters, 146 graphemes and 46 phonemes. Accordingly, 26 pairs of printed letters make up 52 characters, while: 4 are similar to the characters of the Russian alphabet (K, k, M, T); 33 letters are brand new symbols for students (b, D, d, F, f, G, g, h, I, i, J, j, L, l, m, N, n, Q, q, R, r, S, s, t, U, u, V, v, W, w, Y, Z, z); 15 letters (A, a, B, C, c, E, e, H, O, o, P, p, Y, X, x) occur in both languages, but are read differently. The letters that are found in both Russian and English, but give completely different sounds, are of great difficulty. For example, the letter "H" is very often read by children as the Russian sound [H].

The success of the training also depends largely on how interesting and the teacher conducts the lessons. In the process of teaching primary school students to read in a foreign language, play plays an important role. The more play techniques, clarity the teacher uses, the more interesting the lessons are, the more firmly the material is absorbed

When perceiving the material, junior schoolchildren should pay attention to the bright presentation of the material, clarity, emotional coloring. So, so that teaching the rules of reading is not boring and tedious for primary school students, you can use color pictures.

In many textbooks, teaching to read in English in elementary grades follows the standard principle: first, children learn letters, then the textbooks give rules for reading open and closed syllables and it is assumed that students will immediately begin to read quickly, fluently and without mistakes. Of course, children must know the alphabet in order to see the letters when reading.

With experience, you already begin to understand that this is simply impossible to do. Students know the alphabet but don't know sounds. It is difficult for them to read from transcription. In addition, there are so many exceptions in the English language that even in high school it is difficult to do without a dictionary. Therefore, I came to the conclusion that learning to read should begin with an introduction to English sounds. You can try to record English sounds with Russian letters for a very long time, but sooner or later everyone comes to the conclusion that this is unsuccessful. You need to know the English transcription. This makes it easy to read and correctly pronounce an unfamiliar English word on your own, without any assistance

How can you make learning not only interesting, but also effective? There are many methodologies for teaching reading in English. These are the methods of G.V. Rogova, I.N. Vereshchagina, M. West and others. One of the leading modern methodologists is E.I. Passov. In my work, I use only his general recommendations and use a mixed method (sound and alphabetical).

Let's take a look at how I overcome all the difficulties and improve the quality of teaching in grade 2 students.

Stage I. Acquaintance with the alphabet.

The child's knowledge of the alphabet song gives a lot:

He becomes familiar with the styles of the letters and begins to associate the styles with the names.

1. He remembers the names of letters and their sequence. The student will not yet be able to name or show any letter on his own, but he will know the names of the letters.

They will remember the order of the letters in the alphabet.

Knowledge of the sequence of letters of the alphabet will be used in the future to maintain paper dictionaries, to write down the word dictated by letters.

It will be useful to him when studying open and closed syllables of vowel sounds, since in an open syllable the vowels are read like in the alphabet.

There are many ways to learn the alphabet. You can learn a song, you can play a poem, you can play a game, etc. (for example: I raise my hand up - we pronounce the letters of the alphabet in order (A, B, C, D ...), I direct my hand horizontally - we pronounce the same letter (S, S, S .... "), the hand down - in reverse order (Z, Y, X, W), etc.

Tasks on drawing and coloring letters help a lot.

Stage II. Acquaintance with sounds and letter combinations.

I introduce students to sounds, not letter names. For reading, I select words whose meanings are already familiar to the child. This way you can gain vocabulary while learning sounds.

I introduce students to English sounds. Each sound is introduced in poetic form or I use phonetic exercises, for example, I show the children a picture with images and say: - A woodpecker knocks on wood: [t] [t] [t] [d] [d] [d]; - Push the air out: [p], [p], [p], b], [b], [b].

Thus, during the lesson I introduce up to 7-10 sounds, and children easily remember them, because poetic form and phonetic charging will help you quickly remember and master this sound

At this stage, students in my class create cards on which letters are written on one side, and the transcription of the sound and how it is pronounced in Russian on the other side of the card. You can play with cards and at the same time memorize what the letters look like, which give certain sounds. The pronunciation of vowel sounds depends on many factors. It is influenced by the place of the letter in the word, adjacent vowels and consonants, in an open or closed syllable there is a vowel. There is a way to correctly pronounce English letters and sounds, this is transcription. You need to refer to it when doubts arise about how a particular word is read or pronounced.

I try to explain to children why I pay so much attention to transcription signs and show how icons help in independent work.

Many students do not always do their homework or do flashcards. To teach all children to read, I use in the lesson work with cards of sounds and letter combinations, where strong children teach weak children from cards. Child teachers really enjoy teaching and supervising each other.

There are many different ways that children can be encouraged to learn sounds. But I think the most effective at this stage is the game. For example:

a) invite several children to draw letters in the air, and the rest will guess sounds and name a word.

b) children stand in a circle. Music is playing. Students pass the ball in a circle. When the music stops, the child who is left with the ball in his hands chooses a card with a letter and names the sound.

Many other games can be used. There are many of them now. Games are used from collections or from Internet resources. I myself remake them in my own way and for a specific theme.

Stage III. Reading words.

At this stage, many of my students get frustrated, become confused when they start reading words. Children are afraid when they see the letter combinations. So that the children do not worry, I i prepare children for the fact that most of the letters of the English alphabet can be read in different ways. Children gradually get used to it. When they begin to cope with the minimum, they become curious and interested in reading. Here you can also use games to help children learn to read.

For example, children are divided into two groups, I offer one group a word that they should represent with their own bodies, and the other group reads the word, and vice versa.

Students can play the game "Broken Phone". Students are divided into two teams. I lay out on the table, pictures in one pile, and cards with words in another pile. Students line up. A student standing in front, takes the top picture, whispers the name of the picture to the next, etc. to the last student. The last student chooses a word for the picture, shows and reads it. Then, he chooses the next picture, whispers the word to the one in front, etc. You can use pictures and cards on different topics.

In order to develop my reading speed, I use flashcards with words written on them. I hold the card with the word picture towards me, then quickly show it to the students and turn it back towards me. Children guess and name the word.

Also offer a competition for speed and correct reading of words.

Stage IV. Reading phrases and coherent sentences, texts.

At this stage, children read, first of all, poems and songs with familiar words that were studied on the passing topics of the lessons. Poetry is not necessary to learn - it is just an aid for better mastering and memorization.

How can you make reading lessons loved by students? In accordance with the methodology of teaching reading in a foreign language, Solovova E.N. this can be achieved if several conditions are met:

1. Keep track of the size of the text offered to students. Too long texts will tire children, and some will simply be frightened. And children will not read such a text. The text can include pictures and diagrams. Sometimes they are even more informative.

2. It is necessary to select the text, paying attention to the location of the main idea in it. It has already been proven that children are better at perceiving a text in which the main idea is at the beginning or at the end of the text.

3. It is important that the topic of the text corresponds to the level of development of the child.

4. It is necessary to take into account the problems that the text touches upon. After reading the text and discussing it in class, students draw conclusions about the action of the protagonist and put themselves in his place.

During the second and third quarters of this year in 2 grades, with the regular use of this technique, I managed to teach most children to read meaningfully, as well as to improve the quality and speed of reading, which is clearly demonstrated in the diagrams (Fig. 1 and Fig. 2).

Conclusion:

1. Always read aloud.

2. Spend at least 30 minutes of your time reading a day.

4. Always check the correct reading in the dictionary (especially at the initial stage)!

This is called practice. By reading aloud, students hear themselves and practice their pronunciation.

There are many exceptions to the English reading rules. We speak them separately with the children.

Currently, there is a search for new technologies of teaching and upbringing, the purpose of which should be to create conditions for the maximum disclosure of the creative potential of each specific student.

I see my task in stimulating cognitive interest in my students, using a variety of forms, methods of work that are suitable for my children and which will ultimately give a good result.

Used Books:

Rakhmanova I.V., Mirolyubova A.A., Tsetlin V.S. General methodology of teaching foreign languages \u200b\u200bin secondary school. /. M., 1967.

N.A. Bonk. English for the little ones. / M. 2006

Sharova T.M. "We teach by teaching" // Primary school 2002 №12

Sazhneva M.A. "Play as a way of developing interest in learning a foreign language" // Institute of Nuclear Medicine 2001 № 6

Vygotsky L.S. Play and its role in the psychological development of the child / Questions of psychology: -1966.- No. 6

N. I. Gez, M. V. Lyakhovitsky, A. A. Mirolyubov, S. K. Folomkina, S. F. Shatilov. Methods of teaching foreign languages \u200b\u200bin secondary school: Textbook. -M .: Higher. school, 373 p. 1982

Internet resources

In modern society, the opinion has been established that early learning of a foreign language contributes to an easier, free application of it in practice, and also carries an intellectual, cognitive potential.

Reading is a type of speech activity that occupies one of the main places in terms of importance, accessibility and use.
Each century comes up with its own methods of teaching children to read. Each has its own charm. However, let's understand at least a few.

Reading short picture books in a circle

It takes no more than 5 minutes and not every lesson, so that this technique does not get bored and the stock of aids does not exhaust itself.

We take real children's books (there are dozens of groups on the Internet, where you can buy new or used books at quite reasonable prices. One of the oldest is UkiBOOKi).

Phonics or Phonics

This is a method of teaching reading, based on phonemes - sounds and their blends - blends (fusion of several sounds). Why are they better than the alphabet and transcription?

Here's an example: you may know the history of chopsticks and their clear classification, or you may know how to eat with them. The second option is preferable.

For my 5 year old readers, I settled on the series Jolly Phonics. Even not so much on the entire teaching material (there are so many components in it that I did not even dare to take anything besides the Workbook), as on the order of presentation of sounds - not the alphabet, but the frequency. That is, after a month my students could find and read familiar words of 2-4 letters themselves.

Free options also exist, the simplest is SuperSimple Phonics... All materials are provided on the site, video - on the official channel on youtube.com. There is also a delightful cartoon Alphablocks... Like Jolly phonics, it is made for little Englishmen. Unobtrusively and very clearly, the letters-cubes are held by the hands, merged and even doubled to show how they sound.

Great, let's say the phonemes surrendered under our pressure. What's next?

You can start with the teacher writing simple words on the chalkboard while the students are packing their bags. Everyone is surprised, but they read.

What for? Students now truly believe that reading is easy. Removing fear barriers in elementary school is difficult, it's easier not to build them right away.

Methodical Council:

On sites like Teachers pay teachers, teachers post good designs, some for free.

From there, letters-pumpkins, pencils, snowmen and so on are taken in my collection. We work with them in a circle, at this stage I exclude the competitive moment between the students, sometimes I admit the option of a group against a teacher.

It's no secret that everyone learns at a different speed, and as a teacher, the high motivation of each child is important to me. We lay out by consonance, name or add words, listen to the words and indicate which of the several sounds is present in it (g / t / p - cat? T!), Board games-adventure games (hit the square - read the word), dominoes and Dobbly ... At this stage, it is important for us to form a clear connection between the audible and graphic image of the sound.

Phonetic games

Game from the manual Petra Stepicheva "Phonetic battle", but, in principle, you yourself can print beautiful cards with the right words (the aesthetics of the manuals is important at any age, with preschoolers - especially. The intonation of the teacher + beautiful readable letters + pleasant to the touch aids \u003d impact on all three channels of perception.)

The essence of the game:
I select in advance those cards that my guys will be able to accurately read and those that will not be given to everyone.

We put them on the floor and sit in a circle.

We turn the card over, try to read it. As long as the collective mind is at work, the goal is to turn and read all the words.

Gradually complicating the rules, now we read one by one, failed - returned the card to the floor face down.

With "more advanced readers", a mistake - and in addition to the current word, the teacher turns over another one of his choice. With schoolchildren, you can go to an individual test - they keep the words they read for themselves and at the end of the game they consider who won.

This technique is suitable only for those words that are read "according to the rules." All other Englishmen themselves call sight words (visual words). And we read them as “hieroglyphs”.
In the textbook, the word mother appears before I enter the digraph th. So we just take the sound of this word for granted. And it is very easy to play with these complex phenomena.

Gallows

For those who already know the alphabet (introduced the next year after the phonics), the classic is the gallows, which we replace with a piglet. The losing side must grunt as many times as there are letters in the word. The students are delighted and asked to make long words. For them, this is a great motivation to repeat them properly before class, because a grunting teacher is fun.

Outdoor games for reading?

Of course there are!

• In our "Zoo" signs are constantly disappearing.
• The toy store has mixed up price tags.
• And someone has to sign family photo albums!

Methodology:

We hang pictures or cards in files in the office, and the students put words in the appropriate pockets for a certain time.

This is a competition with the teacher, because for every 5-10 words they get a point, for every mistake they go to the teacher.

The game is impersonal, no one knows who was wrong, so there is no one to blame.

Do we want individuality?

We print lists on colored paper.

More difficult?

We play spies. Pictures are hung face-to-face to the wall, that is, to see the image, the file needs to be slightly raised, next to it is an opaque envelope for words.

Warm up
As a warm-up, make up capital letters from the students (T is legs together and arms to the sides, M, H, A - two people hold hands differently). With enough students, we can write whole words.

Games with cards in a circle.

For kids - put a toy or a picture on the right word (a bag comes to the rescue, from which it is much more interesting to remove objects). Or lay out 2-4 words on the floor, remember the order, mix, restore. You can hide one of the words or throw in a new one.

The teacher's passion and presentation: “But guess what? And so? And if you complicate it? " makes a familiar game interesting.

Another important factor is time. Once the students have grasped the essence, we set the timer. The game shouldn't get boring. All students should clearly know the phrase "One more time, please!" (Again please!)

Thus, the following factors are most important in early learning to read:
1) Removing fears and barriers. Reading is easy.

Recently, the topic of teaching children to read in English began to fascinate me: I revise my past achievements, get rid of the obsolete without regrets, and gladly replenish my basic collection with a new one. Apparently, this topic is interesting to you too, but judging by the large number of views and the lack of comments on the forum topic, you have no ready answers.

Meanwhile, the questions were asked absolutely legitimate. Educators know that one of the most difficult aspects of teaching English is learning to read. In simple terms, the problem can be summarized as follows: there are too many reading rules in English to ignore, but they are not followed often enough to be followed unconditionally. This duality is reflected in the school curriculum: in today's schools, there are two clearly distinguished trends.

Some students are not taught to read at all - instead, their attention is focused on repetition, memorization and development of speaking skills. This method is called the "method of teaching reading the whole word" and it is even applied to newborn children (see on this topic). Schoolchildren who "learned" to read by this method, as a rule, have a fairly tolerable - and sometimes even surprising in its purity - pronunciation and they can say something. But at the same time, they absolutely do not know how to read or (as a rule) write.

Other schoolchildren (in fairness, it should be noted that now such a minority, since the educational system has tilted towards communication) are taught the rules of reading. Note that the deficit of reading rules in English lessons is typical not only for Russia, but also for English-speaking countries. For example, here's how the situation is in the States:

Much research has been done to find a sound basis for teaching children to read. Today, there are two main approaches to reading instruction. The first approach is commonly referred to as the whole word method or whole language. The second is a more traditional method called phonics.

Whole-word reading instruction is not only the most widely used method in the United States, but for over a decade has been the dominate teaching approach in most English-speaking countries. The whole word method is based on the theory that that children should learn to read in a way similar to how they learn to speak. The main idea behind this approach is that reading is natural. Whole word requires children to memorize thousands of words, each as a discrete and separate unit.

This method stresses reading aloud from children "s literature. The sounding out of words is not taught. Instead, children are encouraged to sight-read words. Advocates argue that the whole sounding out of words is cumbersome, time consuming and unnecessary. As reading is supposed to be just like learning how to speak, the child needs to be exposed to good children "s literature, using books and stories which use natural or" normal "language.

One of the problems with whole word learning is that there are more than 500,000 words in the English language. By the time children complete the fourth grade they may be able to recognize only around 1,400 simple words. Children should not be expected to guess words based on the context of a story. This method will not produce good readers. Instead of merely memorizing words, children should learn how words work, how they are put together and how they sound. Knowing the sounds of the alphabet and learning how to properly piece letters and sounds together is much more beneficial to children than simply memorizing words.

The other method used to teach reading is phonics. The phonetic approach is quite different from whole word. Phonics is based on sounding out and blending letters. With phonics, children can read and understand as many words as they have in their spoken vocabulary. They learn the 44 phenomes, or sounds of the alphabet. Once they know the sounds of the alphabet, they can break down multi-syllabic words into their discrete sounds. Phonics instruction teaches children how to use letter-sound relations to read or spell words and how to manipulate phenomes in spoken syllables and words.

Phonics advocates believe children should know how the sounds on words work before they learn to read. Children who have phonemic awareness skills will have an easier time learning to read than children who have little or none of these skills. The main focus of phonics is to help children understand how letters are linked to sounds to form letter-sound correspondences and spelling patterns and to help them learn how to apply this to their reading. Since there are 26 letters in the English alphabet but there are 44 sounds to the alphabet, phonics is a much easier and more efficient approach to reading instruction.

Learning to read can be a very difficult task for some children. Phonics is one key that simplifies this task. While whole word requires children to memorize hundreds of words, phonics helps children sound out words. There is no guesswork with the phonics method, whereas whole word requires children to guess words based on the context in which they are used. While it is good for children to be exposed to literature and encouraged to read books, this alone is not a good means to teach reading. If children know the sounds of the alphabet and can manipulate and put letters together, they will be able to read many more words and will greatly enhance their reading fluency and comprehension. Reading instruction that teaches the rules of phonics clearly will ultimately be more successful than teaching that does not.

As you can see, the author of the article sees a solution to the problem of illiteracy in the introduction of a sound method of teaching literacy (Phonics) in schools. You can find a lot of materials on the net that make it fun and interesting, turning the activity into a game.

In one of the upcoming notes, I'm going to give an overview of the resources I use myself, but for now I want to draw your attention to the disadvantages of this method. First, by directing the focus of the lesson to such "little things" as letter combinations, the regularity of the appearance of the same sounds in the same positions, you slow down the pace of the lesson. Accordingly, progress is slower - and we all know how younger students are demotivated by the lack of quick results.

Secondly, the use of the sound method of teaching literacy requires the most careful selection of materials. Having put phonetics at the forefront, you will no longer be able to bring your students any simple short text for reading - you will have to independently compose or acquire such texts, each word of which will consist only of the studied sounds. And this is not only very time consuming for the teacher, but also ...

Thirdly, when the materials contain only familiar phenomena and nothing new, it is insanely boring. Dealing only with "combed", verified and carefully filtered materials, students begin to get bored - bored, despite the game form, the teacher's broad smile and other attributes of a vigorous facade - after all, they are devoid of any difficulties, and therefore, space for growth.

Thus, both approaches to teaching a child to read have their pros and cons. As for me, I am not a fan of either the whole word reading method or the pure sound method. In my work, I use elements of both methods, taking the best from each. And how exactly I do this will be discussed another time.

What approach do you, dear teachers, use in your work?

Reading is one of the hardest parts of learning English. In my experience, children more or less begin to read only at the end of the second year of schooling, when it comes to secondary school. However, it happens that even after leaving school, many graduates still cannot read English words.

In contrast to the Russian language, which is almost 99% of what we see, then we read (adjusted for reduction, assimilation, etc.), in English the situation is quite different. It so happened historically that the same letter in different positions can be read differently.

Let's take the following words for comparison: cat - cake - want - bath - sofa. The letter "a" in these words will correspond to the sounds: [æ], [ɒ], [ɑ:], [ə]. And it's not just the 4 types of vowel reading. There are also a bunch of rules for letter combinations that govern the reading of the letter "A".

In fact, English is made up of rules and exceptions. Therefore, you can memorize reading rules as much as you like, which may not work in a particular case. Why do you think the verb "to spell" is popular only in English?

To understand the rules of reading English, I recommend the following tutorials. You can download all of them for free from the links below;

• S.V. Shimansky "Rules for reading in English" - gives a general set of rules for reading with a few examples, there are no exercises in the manual. Great as a cheat sheet because consists of only 15 pages.
• The "Reading Rules" poster is a great tool for visual memorization of the rules for reading English.
• Shuman S.E. "English language. Reading Rules ”- a guide to reading rules for mid-level students and adults. The material of the publication contains the rules for reading the letters of the English alphabet, vowels and consonants, articulation options in various linguistic situations.
• Appendix Vasilyeva E.A. "Rules for reading English words for the lazy" - a program for Windows, which sets out the rules for reading monosyllabic, disyllabic and polysyllabic words of the English language. The material is presented in the form of tables and models, which makes it easier to master the rules for reading English words.
• Narrow A.F. "Rules for Reading English Words" - This book is convenient for teachers, students and their parents. Its purpose is to develop readiness for understanding sounding speech and skills of correct reading.
• L.P. Bondarenko "Fundamentals of English Phonetics" is a full-fledged textbook on phonetics for high school students. Contains many rules, examples and exercises to practice pronunciation of English sounds.