2479 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) Superviso[.]
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 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 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 2479 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 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 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) 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 2480 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 not even follow the linearity of the passage to 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 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 2481 ... reading such as slow oral reading rate (reading word-by-word), reading without expression, ignoring word-punctuation while reading (Klinger, 2011, p.9) COMMON READING TECHNIQUES FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE. .. 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. .. these techniques appropriate to build expectations in reading activities for lower levels of language proficiency CONCLUSION Reading is considered as the foundation of learning English In reading,