Semantic-communicative exercises

Semantic-communicative activities are recommended for instructing students how to get the needed communicative message from the text. These exercises are connected with silent reading and may have such communicative tasks:

- Read the text and say why…

- Read the text. Find answers to the following questions.

- Read the text. Find words, which describe…

- Read the text. Say what made N. do…

- There are two reasons of the happening (…..). Find them in the text.

- There are three main features of the hero of the story. Find them in the text.

- The author describes his main character as… Find in what words he expresses his attitude to the character.

- Read the text and prove that… Etc.

Semantic-communicative exercises are activities of the communicative character, close to real communication.

The three types of exercises are distributed differently depending on the stage of teaching. At the junior stage, grapheme-morphemic exercises and structural-information exercises should prevail. At the intermediate and senior stages structural-information exercises and semantic-communicative activities are mostly used. The leading role belongs to semantic-communicative exercises at the senior stage.

Conclusions

In this talk, we have considered the nature of reading as both reception and interpretation of information. We have also discussed reading as a skill and discussed specialist skills of reading. Further, we have defined aims of teaching reading at school. We have described kinds of reading and outlined appropriate techniques of teaching different kinds of reading at school.

Discussion

1. Define the difference between vocalisation, verbose and sub-vocalisation.

2. Why is information the reduction of uncertainty?

3. What role does redundancy play in reading? List all of its sources.

4. What is the difference between the surface and the deep structures?

5. Characterise the components of reading as a perceptual process.

6. Characterise reading as the process of interpreting the information.

7. Describe the way of reducing the load on short-term memory.

8. Dwell upon reading as a skill in real-life communication. What are the specialist skills of reading?

9. What are the aims of teaching reading in school?

10. What kinds of reading are mastered in school?

11. Characterise stages of teaching reading.

12. What kind of exercises would you employ to teach reading aloud?

13. What is the best way to teach reading for communication?

How to teach silent reading in school?