Organizing and managing a literature based on reading program



This article reveals the importance of teaching basic concepts of reading materials and the way of conveying the information from the written literary works. Its main purpose is to introduce English teachers and language learners to the many linguistic reading approaches connected with reading materials, processes and to the modern methods applied in dealing with them.

Reading can also act as a mean of formation of related speech skills and language skills, as:

– to use reading allows students to optimize the process of language acquisition and speech material;

– communicative-oriented job controls of lexical units and grammar, listening, writing, reading and speaking ability to read and are based on written texts and instructions;

Traditionally, the purpose of learning to read in a language has been to have access to the literature written in that language. In language instruction, reading materials have traditionally have chosen from literacy texts that represent “higher” forms of culture. [2, p. 70]

This approach assumes that students learn to read a language by studying in vocabulary, grammar and sentence structure, not by actually reading it. In this approach, lower leaners read only sentence and paragraphs generated by textbook writers and instructors.

Reading is visual and cognitive process to extract meaning from writing by understanding the written text, processing information, and relating it to existing experience. The process of reading can be viewed in terms of purpose, strategy and outcome. Purpose of reading is what makes the process necessary for the reader. Related to the purpose, strategy of reading is chosen. [2, p. 72]

Plot, the action of the story, is an essential literary element. A children’s book may have beautiful illustrations, attractive characters, a noble theme, a fascinating setting. And all the other qualities that characterize good literature. Characters are developed and action rises through the middle of the plot. [1, p.45.] The plot reaches its climax. With conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist. Sometimes the conflict can be between the character and other people, between the character and nature, between the character and social values, or between the character and him/herself. In most children’s stories the plot concludes with the successful resolution of the conflict and ends with the speedy tidying up of loose details. Plot is the literary element that keeps the story moving. The setting might shift and the characters’ change, but plot makes the reader want to continue reading.

A text chosen for reading is expected to be authentic-made or authentic-like, not to difficult for the learners, suitable for the teaching goal and usable in the series of activities, lending itself as a resource of information and ideas. During my reading classes I tried all my best to identify all my learners point of view related to the read material. I have been teaching to third course learners. There are 25 learners in my group, all my participants were distributed the same text in order to work with the reading materials and deeply analyzing the plot of it. “The Sandcastle” by I. Murdoch, “Old man at the bridge” by E. Hemingway were chosen by me in order to read and identify the writers’ main purpose and goal. The process of reading is crowned with interaction between communicative message and reader’s response. Communicative message is the intended meaning, which the text is made to convey to the reader in pursuit of the author’s goal. After having read the reading material, all learners tried to share their own ideas belonging to the literary work. Any literary work appears on the national ground, reflects national problems, features and at the same time the problems common to all mankind. Passing from one nation to another literature enriches and extends the notion of peoples about each other. It is one of the most difficult cases to convey national coloring. Paying attention to all words and deeply analyzing them, my learners tried to give their own point of view belonging to the main content of the literary work.

Identifying and classifying the process, I was wondering about different point of view of my learners. By reading task-driven, text-driven and purpose-driven reading materials, language learners can not only learn essential vocabulary or sentence structures but deeply understanding the main plot of it.

As an illustration of this process, I would like to share some of my experiences and reflections and the theory that has guided them. I discovered the pleasure of observing, measuring, and analyzing students’ knowledge. The teacher must first recognize that learning English involves far more than memorizing words, and mastering basic skills. Good readers get excited about books and discuss, debate them with groupmates, teachers, and family to share their own ideas, enthusiasm, poor readers don’t discuss what they read unless required.

To explore this, I tested the following questions with the following results:

Question: On an average day of study, how much time do you spend reading various types of literary works in English?		Less than 1 hour			1 hour or more
Successful Learners		45,.46 %			55.55 %
Non-Successful Learners		81 %			19 %
Question: How well do you understand the plot of the English texts while reading the text in English?	A I understood all of it easily.		B I understood the main message but didn’t understand some parts.	C I understood only some of it with great difficulty.		D I could not understand what was said except for a few words.
Successful Learners	15 %		85 %	0 %		0 %
Non-Successful Learners	0 %		50 %	46 %		4 %

Learning to read and write has been long at the heart of education. In explaining the theory of whole language, Cambourne (1989) examines the process of learning to read and write in light of the process of learning to speak. He proposes that the human brain can ‘learn to process oral and written forms of language in much the same way, provided the conditions under which each is learned are also much the same’ What are these conditions?[1, p.9.]

Below, I also want to mention some of his criteria in order to classify my own learners. Immersion. When children learn language, they are immersed in a total language environment. Pupils are surrounded and bombarded with what they are supposed to learn-printed language. In other words, try to put your finger on what you as a teacher could, or should do to help to foster the “efficient” quality: what types of texts or tasks you might select, what kind of instructions advice you might give. [3, p.61.] A text can come in any form and be any kind of writing. When reading something, it helps to know why it has been written. According to the purpose of the text, we can differentiate the following types:

– descriptive texts create a vivid picture of a person, place, object or event;

– narrative texts tell a story;

– expository texts explain and analyze complex facts;

– argumentative texts evaluate a problem and give reasons for or against;

– persuasive texts encourage you to do something;

– instructive texts tell you how to do something;

– informative texts prove information about something. Atext may come in one of many different forms: an article, a story, a letter, an advertisement, a shopping list, a catalogue, etc.

As a teacher, we try to do all the best to motivate our language learners to read and grasp information which is mentioned in the literary text. Here, teachers are always motivators and challengers. Learners should be able to make inferences, develop interpretations, make connections and definitions between texts, and draw conclusions; and they should be able to provide some support for each. They should be able to interpret the meaning of a word, word combinations, phraseological units as they are used in the text.

Modeling. In learning to talk, children are constantly exposed to others using language in different ways for different purposes. As you know, we need to perceive and understand all the words in order to understand the meaning of a text. While reading any types of reading materials, we put some purpose and aims before us. The reader is aware of a clear purpose in reading for example, to find out something to get pleasure. [3, p.63.]

Holistic. Children learn language as a whole, not in little bits and pieces. In the classroom learning to read and write is integrated in holistic, meaningful contexts. The reader is motivated to read by interesting content or challenging task.

Authentic. Children learn to talk in authentic situations, not artificial ones. While observing the reading activities, learners are to teach to think ahead, hypothesizes, predicts. These ones help our learners to give their own point of view, think deeply about the given reading materials, and developing their critical thinking.

Purposefulness. In learning language, language learns learn not only what speech is but also what it can do. In learning to read, pupils learn the many functions that print can play in their lives and how they can use literacy in practical ways to influence their relationships with others. [1, p.10.] Good readers should be able to analyze both the meaning and the form of the text and provide complete, explicit, and precise, implicit text support for their analyses with specific example. They should be able to read across numerous texts for a variety of purposes, analyzing, criticizing and evaluating them individually and as a set.

Expectation of success. Although there is tolerance for error in the process of language acquisition, few parents doubt that their children will eventually learn to talk. There is a corresponding expectation of success in reading and writing in the philosophy of whole language. [1, p.10.] The language of the text is comprehensible to the learners. The reader concentrates on the significant bits, and skims the rest; may even skip parts they know to be insignificant.

We read novels, books of poetry, and printed versions of plays not only for entertainment but also obtaining information. Around the group, teachers have to teach students to share the sentence they choose and the reason for choosing it. Students discuss choices and help each other to clear up any confusion, hesitation, clarifying their meanings, especially if the choice was because the students didn’t understand.

This article would never have become a reality without his continuing support and friendship. I have been blessed with opportunities to meet and work with people I deeply respect and whose ideas, professional guidance and friendship have been invaluable in contributing, directly or indirectly, to the development of my thinking summarized in this article. I owe a debt of gratitude to my students who participated in this study.

We have presented some options; now it is your responsibility to hold them up to the filter of your own beliefs, experience, and the needs of your student.

References:

1. John F. Savage. Teaching Reading Using Literature. Brown and Benchmark publishers. USA, Dubuque, Iowa, 1994.
2. Agzamova D. B. English teaching methodology. Tashkent, “Barkamol fayz mediya” publishing, 2016
3. Penny Ur. Trainee Book. A Course in Language Teaching, Cambridge University Press, 1999.