Finding the reasons why learners are struggling can help them develop necessary skills. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to figure out some reading difficulties of ESL/EFL learners and suggest some solutions to tackle these issues. Besides, the paper also indicates the important roles of reading so as to help students pay more attention to this skill.
AMBIENT/
Chủ đề:
Nội dung Text: Common reading techniques for English language readers
- COMMON READING TECHNIQUES FOR
ENGLISH LANGUAGE READERS
Huynh Bao Tran, Nguyen Pham Thuy Uyen, Nguyen Lam Tuyet Nhi
Faculty of English, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH)
Supervisor: Tran Quoc Thao (Ph.D)
ABSTRACT
Reading is one of the most difficult skills of language learning, so many young learners encounter
obstacles in the reading process. Difficulties in reading can cause troubles in writing, spelling,
fluency, and comprehension. When students want to improve their reading skill, they need to know
the main causes of their reading difficulties. Finding the reasons why learners are struggling can
help them develop necessary skills. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to figure out some
reading difficulties of ESL/EFL learners and suggest some solutions to tackle these issues. Besides,
the paper also indicates the important roles of reading so as to help students pay more attention to
this skill.
Keywords: English; difficulties; reader; reading; technique.
1 INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, reading plays an important role in our daily lives. It not only helps everyone to reduce
stress but also improves our knowledge. Reading is also one of the necessary skills in learning a
language, especially English. "Of all the skills students learn, reading is arguably one of the most
important learning skills. Today, especially in the developed world, it is considered a fundamental
skill required for success‛ (Smith, 1994, p.26).
Nowadays, many people read books, magazines, and newspapers to relax and also get their
news. In a second language classroom, reading is a significant part of forming background
knowledge for other language skills. Seeing that there is too much information that the teacher can
not give students within a lesson, we have to read materials to get more information about the
subjects. What is more, in order to catch up in school, learners have to read the textbooks at home
before. In the English examination, students have to read as fast as possible to get the meaning of
the whole passage, so they have to use reading skills such as; skimming and scanning to get the
information (to answer related questions ) within the short time.
2 COMMON DIFFICULTIES IN READING COMPREHENSION ENCOUNTERED
BY ENGLISH LANGUAGE READERS
Lack of vocabulary and grammar: English has many synonyms that can replace each other in
different contexts to avoid repetition of words, so if learners are not diverse enough in vocabulary,
they will misspell sentence structures and cannot understand specific vocabulary such as the
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- information of technology, medicine, economy, or ancient literature, etc. Similar to vocabulary,
reading offers students a wide range of grammar in different contexts. When you cannot put the
new grammar in a specific context, you will misunderstand the content of the text. (Thornbury, 1999,
p.69)
Lack of the reader’s background knowledge: Reading can help people understand clearly about the
culture of the English- speaking countries. Culture is not only inseparably related to language but
also plays an important role throughout the process of language teaching and learning. Tucker and
Lambert (1973) stated that the successful learner must develop "an awareness of and sensitivity
toward the values and traditions of the people whose language is being studied" (p.246). Therefore,
if they do not have a good background, they will face the difficulties to understand terms in fables or
idioms and guess the meaning of these phrases in the text. For example, outside the cultural
context, it would be difficult for readers to figure out the meaning of the phrases ‚It’s raining cats
and dogs‛.
Decoding difficulties: The ability to decode is essential to reading comprehension. If the learners do
not have the decoding skill, they will confuse between the meaning of sounds they’ve heard and the
words they have seen in the paper. There are many decoding problems that can make the students
get difficulties in reading such as slow oral reading rate (reading word-by-word), reading without
expression, ignoring word-punctuation while reading (Klinger, 2011, p.9).
3 COMMON READING TECHNIQUES FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE READERS
Besides exploring the above difficulties in reading comprehension, readers can improve their
reading skills by seeking common methods. These methods build a strategic background for
readers to develop reading skills effectively.
Grellet (1990) offers three groups of techniques:
+ Sensitizing
Inferences are made by readers when they read something. It means readers predict the meanings
of new words basing on information from the surrounding words in the sentence, and from their
own supply of knowledge.
+ Improving reading speed
Readers can get a lot of materials in English. If learners read slowly, they can have no much time to
understand what the author wrote. Consequently, it is very necessary for English learners to develop
their reading speed so that they spend less time connecting and reflecting on what they read.
+ Skimming and scanning
Predicting and previewing are applied to find the aim of reading and remind readers’ prior
knowledge. Readers preview a text to get main ideas that can help them read it in detail later.
Skimming means moving eyes quickly the whole text but the readers can carefully pay attention to
what forms the structure of that reading material.
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- Nuttal (1982) proves ‚By skimming, we mean glancing rapidly through the text to determine whether
a research paper is relevant to our own work or in order to keep ourselves superficially informed
about matters that are not of great importance to us‛ (p.36). From that point, skimming supports
readers to get the information quickly.
Scanning is the perfect way to look for something more particular rather than an overview idea in
your mind. When crossing a keyword while scanning, the readers can stop and carefully read the
surrounding text. According to Grellet (1981) ‚When scanning, we only try to locate specific
information, and often we do not even follow the linearity of the passage to do so‛ (p.19). Therefore,
scanning is a reading technique with high speed. When using this method, readers should have
keywords of a question and scan these words answering that question.
The readers have to know how to use these techniques appropriate to build expectations in reading
activities for lower levels of language proficiency.
4 CONCLUSION
Reading is considered as the foundation of learning English. In reading, we have more chances to
boost vocabulary and grammar as well as help us to understand more about the culture of English
speaking countries. However, the process of improving reading skills is not like a piece of cake.
Many students are struggling with reading comprehension and each of them has different kinds of
troubles. The problems that learners have in reading can be fixed if they can identify the reason for
their reading difficulties. There are many reading techniques that everyone can choose a suitable
one for themselves. In addition, English learners should practice more and more by reading favorite
topics at their same or a little higher level. The more time you spend enjoying your reading, the
fewer obstacles you get.
REFERENCES
[1] Christine Nuttall (1982). Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language. London: Heinemann
Educational Books.
[2] Grellet, F. (1981). Developing Reading Skills. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[3] Klinger, L. (2011). Preventing Reading Difficulties. A Report of the National Research Council.
Washington, DC: Academy Press.
[4] Lia Oktisa (2018) The Analysis of syntactical errors made by students of Tbi Iain Bengkulu in
writing thesis abstracts, p16,17.
[5] Smith, F. (1994). Understanding Reading. A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning
to Read. (Fifth Edition). NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
[6] Thornbury, Scott. (1999). How to Teach Grammar. Essex: Pearson Education Limited.
Tucker, W. E. (1973). Sociocultural aspects of language study. In J.W. Oller, Jr. & J.
[7] C. Richards, (Eds.), Focus on the Learner: Pragmatic perspectives for the language teacher.
Rowley, M.A.: New bury House Publishers.
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