Techniques of reading and stages of teaching

Every kind of reading makes a reader use a number of perceptive and interpretative techniques in complex so that to comprehend the information. The techniques are trained in special exercises based on the elements of the text. Due to the techniques he possesses, the reader is able to read in different ways. The teacher should begin with the techniques useful for all kinds of reading, passing later on to the special techniques. The most favourable conditions for developing reading skills are supplied by the following reading course sequence:

Every skilled, but not yet fluent reader goes through the stage of the so-called simple reading (i.e. evenly attentive/careful reading). This is also true of reading in a foreign language. Thus, students start reading easy texts based on the already known language elements. Such already known in isolation language items are brought together to compose comprehensible input. It is loud simple reading, not aggravated with language difficulties. This is the way both first general reading and then close reading are being taught.

At every stage of teaching, students master a new kind of reading and basic techniques of the kind coming after. All the techniques are preliminary trained in exercises. Training is based on the language elements of the text taken in isolation. New techniques, as well as a new kind of reading, are introduced in addition to the already acquired techniques and skills. They, however, do not substitute the acquired ways of reading altogether. Training the acquired habits and skills is carried on, but the accent of training moves on to new techniques and kinds of reading, taken as the main objectives at a given stage.

Reading aloud takes the major place in teaching reading during the first years of studying English. The main task during the 1^st half of the junior (beginner/elementary) period of teaching is to make students work out basic techniques of perceptive processing the information received. At this stage, students are required to be able to make use of perceptive processing techniques while reading aloud and silently at the reading speed, which suits them. By the end of the 5^th grade their tempo of silent reading should become slightly quicker than their individual speed of reading aloud. For this purpose, not only special exercises based on the elements of the text are used. Simple reading, which is considered the easiest way of reading, serves the same purpose. Simple reading is not aggravated with either any special tasks of understanding or any difficulty of language input. All this creates favourable conditions for forming and consolidating the habits of reading. The consolidated habits are revealed in the correct techniques for perceptive processing the received information. Such abilities are called the reading technique. The correct perceptive processing techniques (=the reading technique) should serve the basic ground for teaching silent reading at the elementary stage.

Alongside with simple reading, it is necessary to introduce exercises helping form fluent mature reading. These are exercises in chunking segments of language input (contraction, rejoinder, extension, completion), in picking up/singling out primary or secondary things, etc. Thus, simple reading is being changed into general reading, but it has not become general reading yet. It is so because the student is not yet required to make use of the whole complex of techniques composing this kind of reading. It becomes the prevailing kind in the 7-9^th forms/ at the intermediate stage. Fluency is the main specific feature of the general reading. It is necessary to make the speed of reading of every individual student in silent reading exceed his individual rate of reading aloud by the end of the 9^th grade.

Another main task of the intermediate stage is mastering basic techniques of interpreting the received information. Interpretation techniques are characteristic of close reading.

At the senior stage, the development of the ability to read should be brought to its completion. The level of communicative efficiency in reading is achieved in 3 ways. In the first, it is the perfection of information processing techniques. These should allow for the exactness of the new information received. Rapidity of reception accounts for the acquired language input too. This means that the student’s tempo of general reading of an easy text should exceed the possible speed of pronouncing the same text aloud. In the second, it is done through practical mastering the techniques of close reading. And in the third, it is mastering the techniques of interpretation of the received information at the level that allows to vary the kinds of reading depending on the set task and on the degree of difficulty of the text. By the end of this stage, the students are introduced some techniques of skimming reading.

Close reading presupposes the ability of students to possess 1) the elementary techniques of silent reading; 2) complex usage of a number of difficult techniques, which have already been trained on the element-by-element basis previously; 3) acquisition of a sufficient amount of language knowledge.

The development of the techniques of skimming reading requires long texts or a number of texts, as well as the reader’s automated habits of language items recognition.