Reading is of great educational importance, as reading is a means of communication, people get information they need from books, journals, magazines, newspapers, etc. Through reading in a foreign language the pupil enriches his knowledge of the world around him. He gets acquainted with the countries where the target language is spoken.
Reading develops pupils’ intelligence. It helps to develop their memory, will, imagination. Pupils become accustomed to working with books, which in its turn facilitates unaided practice in further reading. The content of texts, their ideological and political spirit influence pupils. We must develop in Soviet pupils such qualities as honesty, devotion to and love for our people and the working people of other countries, the texts our pupils are to read must meet these requirements. Reading ability is, therefore not only of great practical, but educational, and social importance, too.
Reading is not only an aim in itself, it is also a means of learning a foreign language. When reading a text the pupil reviews sounds and letters, vocabulary and grammar, memorizes the spelling of words, the meaning of words and word combinations, he also reviews grammar and, in this way, he perfects his command of the target language. The more the pupil reads, the better his retention of the linguistic material is. If the teacher instructs his pupils in good reading and they can read with sufficient fluency and complete comprehension he helps them to acquire speaking and reading skills as well. Reading is, therefore, both an end to be attained and a means to achieve that end [1].
Some difficulties pupils have in learning to read in the English language. Reading in the English language is one of the most difficult things because there are 26 letters and 146 graphemes which represent 46 phonemes. Indeed the English alphabet presents many difficulties to Russian-speaking pupils because the Russian alphabet differs greatly from that of the English language. A comparison of the two languages shows that of the 26 pairs of printed letters /52 – if we consider capital and small letters as different symbols/ only 4 are more or less similar to those of the Russian alphabet, both in print and in meaning. These are K, k, M, T. 31 letters are completely new to pupils. These are b, D, d, F, f, G, g, h, L, l, I, i, J, j, N, n, Q, q, R, r, S, s, t, U, u, V, v, W, w, Z, z. The letters A, a, B, C, c, E, e, H, O, o, P, p, Y, y, X. x occur in both languages, but they are read differently. They are, therefore, the most difficult letters for the pupil to retain. [2] Obviously in teaching a pupils to read English words, much more attention should be given to those letters which occur in both languages but symbolize entirely different sounds. For example, H, p … /pupils often read How as [hau]/. Therefore, in presenting a new letter to pupils the teacher should stress its peculiarity not only from the stand point of the English language /what sound or sounds it symbolizes/ but from the point of view of the Russian language as well.
It is not sufficient to know English letters. It is necessary that pupils should know graphemes, how this or that vowel combination, consonant, or consonant combination is read in different positions in the words /window, down/.
The teacher cannot teach pupils all the existing rules and exceptions for reading English words. Nor is it necessary to do so. When learning English pupils are expected to assimilate the following rules of reading: how to read stressed vowels in open and closed syllables and before r; how to read ay, oo, oo, ow; the consonants c, s, k, g, ch, sh, th, ng, ck, and tion, ssion, ous. The rules are not numerous, but they are important to the development of reading.
Pupils should learn the reading of some monosyllabic words which are homophones. For example: son – sun; tail – tale; too – two; write – right; eye – I. etc.
At the very beginning, the pupil is compelled to look at each printed letter separately in order to be sure of its shape. He often sees words and not sense units. For instance, he reads: The book is on the desk and not /The book is/ /on the desk/ [3].
The most difficult thing in learning to read is to get information from a sentence or a paragraph on the basis of the knowledge of structural signals and not only the meaning of words. Pupils often ignore grammar and try to understand what they read relying on their knowledge of autonomous words. And, of course, they often fail, e.g., the sentence He was asked to help the old woman is understood as Он попросилпомочьстарушке, in which the word he becomes the subject of the action. Pupils sometimes find it difficult to pick out topical sentences in the text which express the main ideas.
To make the process of reading easier, new words, phrases and sentence patters should be learnt orally before pupils are asked to read them. So when pupils start reading they know how to pronounce the words, the phrases, and the sentences, and are familiar with their meaning [4].
Consequently, in order to find the most effective ways of teaching the teacher should know the difficulties pupils may have.
Therefore reading is one of the practical aims of teaching a foreign language in schools.
Literature:
1. Рогова Г.В. Чтение как цель и как средство обучения иностранному языку // Иностранные языки в школе. – 1997. - № 3.
2. // Қазақстан мектебі. – 2001. - №2.
3. // Қазақстан мектептерінде ағылшын тілін үйрету. – 2001. - №1.
4. Рогова Г.В. Методика обучения английскому языку». - М., Просвещение, 1983.
