TEACHING READING IN ENGLISH

IN PRIMARY SCHOOL

Bevz Elena Viktorovna

MBOU "Secondary School No. 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, this depends on the teacher, his ability to captivate children, to provide everyone with the opportunity to fully express themselves and realize their abilities.

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

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

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

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

Mastering reading in English presents great difficulties for primary school students, 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 their position in the word. Many children do not remember the rules for reading letters and letter combinations well and read words incorrectly. There are often difficulties associated with psychological characteristics children are not enough good development memory, attention, thinking.

Starting from the second grade, it is very important that the processes of education and development of students go in line with modern techniques. At the same time, the ability to competently teach communication in a foreign language to younger students who do not yet fully master communication 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 his native language. This is where various types of errors arise. The task of the teacher at this stage is not only to help students learn a new system of symbols for them, but also to prevent their possible mistakes.

And this is due to many reasons: the English alphabet consists of 26 letters, 146 graphemes and 46 phonemes. Accordingly, 26 pairs of printed letters make up 52 characters, with: 4 similar to the characters of the Russian alphabet (K, k, M, T); 33 letters are completely 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) are found in both languages, but are read differently. The greatest difficulty is represented by precisely those letters that are found in both Russian and English languages, but give completely different sounds. For example, children very often read the letter “H” as the Russian sound [Н].

The success of learning also depends largely on how interesting and the teacher conducts the lessons. In the process of teaching primary school children to read a foreign language, play plays an important role. The more game techniques and visualization the teacher uses, the more interesting the lessons are, the more firmly the material is learned.

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

In many textbooks, teaching reading in English in the early grades follows a 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 errors. Of course, children must know the alphabet in order to see the letters when reading.

With experience, you begin to understand that this is simply impossible to do. Students know the alphabet but not the sounds. They find it difficult to read transcriptions. 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 familiarization with English sounds. You can try to write down English sounds in Russian letters for a very long time, but sooner or later everyone comes to the conclusion that it is unsuccessful. You need to know English transcription. This makes it possible to easily read and correctly pronounce an unfamiliar English word on your own, without outside help

How to make learning not only interesting, but also effective? There are many methods 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 look at how I overcome challenges and improve reading instruction for 2nd grade students.

Stage I. Introduction to the alphabet.

A child’s knowledge of the alphabet song gives a lot:

He gets acquainted with the styles of letters and begins to associate the styles with names.

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

They will remember the order of 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 a word dictated by letter.

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

There are many ways to learn the alphabet. You can learn a song, a poem, 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....."), my hand down - in reverse order (Z, Y, X, W), etc.

Drawing and coloring letters help a lot.

Stage II. Introducing sounds and letter combinations.

I introduce students to sounds rather than letter names. To read, I select words whose meanings are already familiar to the child. This is how you can dial lexicon simultaneously with the study of sounds.

I introduce students to English sounds. Each sound is introduced in poetic form or using phonetic exercises, for example, showing children a picture with images and saying: - A woodpecker knocks on a tree: [t][t][t][d][d][d]; - We push out the air: [p],[p],[p],b],[b],[b].

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

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

I try to explain to the children why I pay so much attention to transcription signs and show how the signs help when working independently.

Many students do not always complete their homework or make flashcards. To teach all children to read, I use sound and letter combination cards in my lessons, where strong children teach weak children using cards. Child teachers really enjoy teaching and supervising each other.

There are many different ways, which encourage children to learn sounds. But I think the most effective thing at this stage is the game. For example:

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

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

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

Stage III. Reading words.

At this stage, many of my students become frustrated and confused when they begin to read the words. Children experience fear when they see letter combinations. So that the children do not worry, I preparing children for the fact that most letters English alphabet can be read differently. Children gradually get used to it. When they start to cope with the minimum, they wake up curiosity and interest 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 must depict using their own bodies, and the other group reads the word, and vice versa.

Students can be given the game “Broken Phone” to play. 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. The student standing in front takes the top picture, whispers the name of the picture to the next one, and so on. until the last student. The last student chooses a word for the picture, shows and reads it. Then, selects the next picture, whispers the word to the one in front, and so on. Pictures and cards can be used different topics.

In order to develop reading speed, I use cards with words written on them. I hold the card with the picture word 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 connected sentences, texts.

At this stage, children read primarily poems and songs with familiar words that have been studied through the current lesson topics. It is not necessary to learn poetry - it is just an aid for better mastery and memorization.

How can you ensure that students love reading lessons? 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. Monitor the size of the text offered to students. Texts that are too long will bore children, and some will simply be scared. And children will not read such text. The text may include drawings 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 perceive better text in which the main idea is at the beginning or end of the text.

3. It is important that the topic of the text corresponds to the child’s developmental level.

4. It is necessary to take into account the issues that the text addresses. After all, by reading the text and discussing it in class, students draw conclusions about the actions of the main character and put themselves in his place.

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

Conclusion:

1. Always read out loud.

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

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

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

The English reading rules contain many exceptions. We speak them separately with the children.

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

I see my task as stimulating cognitive interest in my students, using a variety of forms and 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 for teaching foreign languages ​​in high school. /. M., 1967.

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

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

Sazhneva M.A. "Game as a way to develop interest in learning a foreign language" // IYaSh 2001 No. 6

Vygotsky L.S. The game and its role in the psychological development of the child / Issues 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 ​​in high school: Textbook. -M.: Higher. school, 373 p.. 1982

Internet resources

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

Reading is a type of speech activity that occupies one of the main places in importance, accessibility and use.
Each age comes up with its own methods of teaching children to read. Each has its own charm. However, let's look at 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 boring and the supply of benefits does not exhaust itself.

We take real children's books (there are now dozens of groups on the Internet where you can buy them new or used 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 (merging of several sounds). How are they better than the alphabet and transcription?

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

For my five-year-old readers, I settled on the series Jolly Phonics. Not even so much on the entire CMD (it has so many components that I didn’t even dare to take anything besides the Workbook), but on the order in which sounds are presented - 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 one is SuperSimple Phonics. All materials are provided on the website, videos are provided on the official channel on youtube.com. There is also a delightful cartoon Alphablocks. Like Jolly Phonics, it was created for little Englishmen. In an unobtrusive and very visual way, the cube letters are held together, merged and even doubled to show how they sound.

Great, let’s say the phonemes gave in under our pressure. What's next?

You can start by saying that while the students are packing things into their backpacks, the teacher writes on the board simple words. Everyone is surprised, but they read it.

For what? Now students sincerely believe that reading is easy. It is difficult to remove fear barriers in elementary school; it is easier not to build them right away.

Methodical Advice:

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

This is where the pumpkin letters, pencils, snowmen, etc. come from in my collection. We work with them in a circle, at this stage I exclude the competitive moment between students, sometimes I allow the option of a group against a teacher.

It is no secret that everyone learns at different speeds, and as a teacher, the high motivation of each child is important to me. We arrange according to consonance, name or add words, listen to the words and indicate which of several sounds is present in it (g/t/p – cat? T!), board games-adventures (hit a 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 sound.

Phonetics games

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

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

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

Turn the card over and try to read it. While the collective mind is working, the goal is to turn over and read all the words.

We gradually complicate the rules, now we read one at a time, if we didn’t manage it, we returned the card to the floor face down.

With “more advanced readers” there is a mistake - and in addition to the current word, the teacher flips another one of his choice. With schoolchildren, you can switch to an individual test - they leave the words they read to 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 English themselves call sight words (visual words). And we read them as "hieroglyphs".
In the textbook, the word mother appears before I introduce the digraph th. Therefore, we simply take the sound of this word for granted. And you can play with these complex phenomena very simply.

Gallows

For those who already know the alphabet (introduced the 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 ask to make a wish long words. This is a great motivation for them 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 price tags in the toy store are mixed up.
• And someone has to sign family photo albums!

Methodology:

We hang pictures or cards in files around the office, and students put the words into the appropriate pockets over a certain period of time.

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

The game is impersonal, no one knows who made a mistake, so there is no one to blame.

Do we want individuality?

We print lists on colored paper.

Even more difficult?

Let's play spies. The pictures are hung with their front side to the wall, that is, to see the image, the file needs to be lifted a little, next to it is an opaque envelope for the words.

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

Games with cards in a circle.

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

The teacher’s passion and delivery: “Can you guess? And so? What if we make it more difficult? makes a familiar game interesting.

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

Thus, when teaching reading early, the most important factors are:
1) Removing fears and barriers. Reading is easy.

Recently, I have become fascinated by the topic of teaching children to read in English: I am reviewing my past work, without regrets getting rid of what has become obsolete and with pleasure adding new things to my basic collection. Apparently, this topic is of interest to you, too, but judging by the large number of views and the lack of comments on the forum topic, you do not have ready answers.

Meanwhile, the questions asked are absolutely legitimate. Educators know that one of the most difficult aspects associated with teaching English is learning to read. Speaking plain language, the problem can be stated as follows: in English there are too many reading rules to ignore, but they are not observed often enough to be followed unconditionally. This duality is reflected in school curriculum: There are two clearly demarcated trends in schools today.

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

Other schoolchildren (in fairness, it should be noted that now there are such a minority, since the educational system has tilted towards communicativeness) are taught the rules of reading. I would like to note that the lack of reading rules in English lessons is typical not only for Russia, but also for English-speaking countries. For example, this is 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 instructions. 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 instruction reading 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 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 the 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 phenomena 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 the 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 the sound method of teaching literacy (Phonics) in schools. You can find a lot of materials online that make this fun and interesting, turning the activity into a game.

In one of my upcoming posts I am going to give an overview of the resources that I use myself, but for now I want to draw your attention to the disadvantages of this method. Firstly, by directing the focus of the lesson to such “little things” as combinations of letters, the regularity 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 junior schoolchildren 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 to read - you will have to independently compose or purchase such texts, each word of which will consist only of the studied sounds. And this is not only very labor-intensive for the teacher, but also...

Thirdly, when materials contain exclusively familiar phenomena and nothing new, it is incredibly boring. Dealing only with “coiffed”, verified and carefully filtered materials, students begin to get bored - bored, despite the game form, the teacher’s wide smile and other attributes of a cheerful facade - after all, they are deprived of any difficulties, and therefore, of 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 method of teaching reading or the pure sound method. In my work I apply 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?

Published in,

Reading is one of the most difficult parts of learning English. In my experience, children more or less begin to read only at the end of the second year of school, if we're talking about about high school. However, it happens that even after graduation, many graduates still cannot read English words.

Unlike the Russian language, which in almost 99% of what we see is what 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 following sounds: [æ], , [ɒ], [ɑ:], [ə]. And it’s not just about the 4 types of reading vowels. There are also a bunch of rules on letter combinations that govern the reading of the letter "A".

In fact, the English language 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, meaning “to spell”?

To have an idea of ​​the rules of reading English, I recommend you the following manuals. You can download all of them for free using the links below;

• S.V. Shimansky “Reading Rules in English” - gives a general set of reading rules 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 an excellent tool for visually memorizing the rules of reading English.
• Shuman S.E. "English language. Reading Rules" - a guide to reading rules for middle school students and adults. The publication contains rules for reading letters of the English alphabet, vowels and consonants, and articulation options in various language situations.
• Appendix Vasilyeva E.A. “Rules for Reading English Words for the Lazy” is a program for Windows that outlines the rules for reading one-syllable, two-syllable and polysyllabic words in the English language. The material is presented in the form of tables and models, which makes it easier to learn reading rules English words.
• Narrow A.F. “Rules for Reading English Words” - this book is convenient for use by teachers, students and their parents. Its goal is to develop readiness to understand spoken speech and correct reading skills.
• L.P. Bondarenko “Fundamentals of English Phonetics” is a complete textbook on phonetics for high school students. Contains many rules, examples and exercises for practicing the pronunciation of English sounds.