Reading as an aim and a means of teaching and learning a foreign languages

What is reading? Reading is one of the main skills that a pupil must acquire in the process of mastering a foreign language in school. Reading is about understanding written texts. It is a complex activity that involves both perception and thought. Reading consists of two related processes: word recognition and comprehension. Word recognition refers to the process of perceiving how written symbols correspond to one’s spoken language. Comprehension is the process of making sense of words, sentences and connected text. Readers typically make use of background knowledge, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, experience with text and other strategies to help them understand written text. 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. Teaching reading is very important, because it helps to develop others skills: speaking and writing.

The content of texts, their ideological and political spirit influence pupils. We must develop in 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 writing skills as well. Reading is, therefore, both an end to be attained and a means to achieve that end.

There are two ways of reading: aloud or orally, and silently. People usually start learning to read orally. In teaching a foreign language in school both ways should be developed. Pupils assimilate the graphic system of the target language as a means which is used for conveying information in print. They develop-this skill through oral reading and silent reading. When one says that one can read, it means that one can focus one's attention on the meaning and not on the form; the pupil treats the text as a familiar form of discourse and not as a task of deciphering. "The aim of the teacher is to get his pupils as quickly as possible over the period in which each printed symbol is looked at for its shape, and to arrive at the stage when the pupil looks at words and

phrases, for their meaning, almost without noticing the shapes of the separate letters”. A good reader does not look at letters, nor even at words, one by one, however quickly; he takes in the meaning of two, three, or four words at a time, in a single moment. The eyes of a very good reader move quickly, taking long "jumps" and making very short "halts". We can call this ideal reading "reading per se". Reading per se is the end to be attained.

As a means of teaching reading a system of exercises is widely used in school, which includes:

1 graphemic-phonemic exercises which help pupils to assimilate graphemephonemic correspondence in the English language;

2. structural-information exercises which help pupils to carry out lexical and

grammar analysis to find the logical subject and predicate in the sentences following the structural signals;

3. semantic-communicative exercises which help pupils to get information

from the text.

The actions which pupils perform while doing these exercises constitute the content of teaching and learning reading in a foreign language.

Difficulties which pupils have in reading 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, 1, 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, bit they are read differently.

They are, therefore, the most difficult letters for the pupil to retain. Obviously in teaching a pupil 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 [nau]. Therefore, in presenting a new letter to pupils the teacher should stress its peculiarity not only from the standpoint of the English language (what sound or sounds it symbolizes)

but from the point of view of the Russian language as well. 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 попросил помочь старушке, in which the word he becomes the subject and is not the object 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

patterns 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. The teacher can use the whole system of exercises for developing pupils' ability to read which may be done in two forms — loud and silent.

Reading aloud. In teaching reading aloud the following methods are observed: the phonic, the word, and the sentence methods. When the p h o n i c method is used, the child learns the sounds and associates them with graphic symbols — letters. In the word method a complete word is first presented to the child. When several words have been learnt they are used in simple sentences. The sentence method deals with the sentences as units of approach in teaching reading. The teacher can develop pupils' ability to read sentences with correct intonation. Later the sentence is split up into words. The combination of the three methods can ensure good reading.

Reading in chorus, reading in groups in imitation of the teacher which is practiced in schools forms rather kinesthetic images than graphic ones. The result is that pupils can sound the text but they cannot read. The teacher should observe the rule "Never read words, phrases, and sentences by yourself. Give your pupils a chance to read them." For instance, in presenting the words and among them those which are read according to the rule the teacher should make his pupils read these words first. This rule is often violated in school. It is the teacher who first reads a

word, a column of words, a sentence, a text and pupils just repeat after the teacher.

In teaching to read transcription is also utilized. It helps the reader to read a word in the cases where the same grapheme stands for different sounds: build, suit, or words which are not read according to the rule: aunt, colonel. In modern textbooks for the 5th form transcription is not used. It is given in the textbooks for the 6th and the 7th forms. Beginning with the 6th and the 7^th forms pupils learn the phonic symbols so that they are able to read unfamiliar words which they look up in the word-list or a dictionary.

Silent reading. In learning to read pupils widen their eyespan. They can see more than a word, a phrase, a sentence. The eye can move faster than the reader is able to pronounce what he sees. Thus reading aloud becomes an obstacle for perception. It hinders the pupil's comprehension of the text. It is necessary that the pupil should read silently. Special exercises may be suggested to develop pupils' skills in silent reading. For instance, "Look and say, read and look up." (M. West)

To perform this type of exercises pupils should read a sentence silently, grasp it, and reproduce it without looking into the text. At first they perform such exercises slowly. Gradually the teacher limits the- time for the pupils' doing the exercises. It makes them read faster and faster. All this lead to widening their eyespan. Teaching silent-reading is closely connected with two problems:

1. instructing pupils in finding in sentences what is new in the information following some structural signals, the latter is possible provided pupils have a certain knowledge of grammar and vocabulary and they can perform lexical and grammar analysis;

2. developing pupils' ability in guessing.

4.The role and the content of extra-curricular work in language learning in school

Our net “Colchagua English Network” is formed by thirteen teachers of English who work in the semi-private and municipal high-schools in the cities of Santa Cruz, Peralillo, Chépica, Nancagua, Lolol. We meet once a month to discuss and share pedagogical information to improve the teaching and learning process in our schools. Since we got together we have made several projects to develop the four skills of the language.

One of the most successful for us, was a project whose main aim was to increase the students’ vocabulary in secondary school using graded readers for listening and reading with the implementation of literary circles and the help of vocabulary strategies. This project also had the idea of forming a small library of graded readers of different levels (level 0 to 6), so that we could have books to share among the students of the different high-schools of our net. At the beginning of the project we started with books from level 0 and 1 with 20 copies of each title. We had four titles. Little by little we continue increasing the quantity of books and level and now we have about 60 tittles. Since the development of this project we have had meetings for planning activities, sharing materials and ideas and unifying criteria in the implementation of the methodology: the literary circles and teaching techniques for the acquisition of vocabulary, reading, listening and speaking.

Besides, this project has been a real challenge for many reasons:

It was the first time the students and us, used graded readers for reading and listening in our classes.

It has helped to increase the student’s vocabulary, and we believed that guessing from context has also helped to improve their skills in the language.

Through literature the students have developed a sense of peer learning and better understanding of human behavior and attitude to face life.

Another important fact has been the opportunity of having a small English library with the funds got through the project granted by MINEDUC. It consists of graded readers, audio readers, which can be borrowed from and lent to the colleagues and taken to schools when necessary because in our schools and in the bookshops and local libraries there are no books in English available and they are expensive to afford for our students.

To achieve our goal in this project:

We have focused our attention on different Reading Comprehension strategies.

We have motivated the students to increase new vocabulary by deducing from context using different inference strategies, such as pronoun reference and others.

For reading we have been using as main methodology the literary circles strategy, based on cooperative learning and group work because it was the first time the students were faced to reading books, they needed the help of their partners. And in the literary circles each student has a specific role (a summarizer, a character captain, a vocabulary enriched, a setting responsible, a responsible of detecting important ideas or facts, a drawer, a student in charge of asking questions). When reading the students develop a kind of portfolio where they register all the tasks assigned and it serves them as a guided summary of activities related to the book where every student has played a role. In this project students have also developed speaking skills because they do drama presentations, debates and power point presentations of the books read.

A second successful teaching experience has been a project whose aim was to develop the four skills of the language. It was based on the use of pop songs where the students do listening activities, reading activities about singers and oral presentations in power point about their favorite artists. Also, we did a song festival where students from different schools participated singing dancing and playing musical instruments. We also did a poster competition to advertise the song festival.

And the third project was based on tourism of our region. The aim of this project was to develop reading and listening comprehension and the communicative skills of speaking and writing in students of secondary school (1º to 4º medio). The results of this project were very successful because the students investigated about the tourism in the Colchagua Valley in internet and some of them created a tourist blog, brochures, posters, booklets of recipes, and oral presentation and dialogues which were presented in a tourist fair where lots of people from the city, authorities and teachers and students from other schools could realize of the work we do as network and the level of English our students have.

Main achievements with the development of these projects:

Motivate the learning of the English language.

Integrate the four skills of the language.

Do interdisciplinary work with other teachers (Music, Arts, History, Language)

Show our work and the student’s work to the school and local community.

Develop team work within the members of our net and other nets of the region.

Peer learning among students and teachers.

Developing new ways to evaluate the students work considering the contents, the procedures and the student’s attitude in the learning process.

These projects have become part of the school curriculum in our subject.

The students read at least 3 readers every year.

5The direct method as one of the leading in learning foreign languages. Its main characteristics

The grammatical systems of Russian and English are fundamentally different. English is an analytical language, in which grammatical meaning in largely expressed through the use of additional words and by changes in word order. Russian is a synthetic language, in which the majority of grammatical forms are created through changes in the structure of words, by means of a developed system of prefixes, suffixes and ending. (p. 121, Brown C. and Jule “Teaching the spoken language”, Cambridge, 1983)

No one knows exactly how people learn languages although a great deal of research has been done into the subject.

Many methods have been proposed for the teaching of foreign language. And they have met with varying degrees of success and failure.

We should know that the method by which children are taught must have some effect on their motivation. If they find it deadly boring they will probably become de-motivated, whereas if they have confidence in the method they will find it motivating. Child learners differ from adult learners in many ways. Children are curious, their attention is of a shorter duration, they are quite differently motivated in, and their interests are less specialized. They need frequent of activity; they need activities which are exciting and stimulating their curiosity; they need to be involved in something active.

We shall examine such methods as “The Grammar - Translation Method”, ”The Direct Method”, “The Audio-lingual Method”. And we pay attention to the teaching grammar of the foreign language. We shall comment those methods, which have had a long history.

1.1.1 The Grammar Translation method will be discussed

This method was widely used in teaching the classics, namely Latin, and it was transferred to the teaching of modern languages when they were introduced into schools.

In the grammar-translation mode, the books begin with definitions of the parts of speech, declensions, conjugations, rules to be memorized, examples illustrating the rules, and exceptions. Often each unit has a paragraph to be translated into the target language and one to be translated into native one. These paragraphs illustrate the grammar rules studied in the unit. The student is expected to apply the rules on his own. This involves a complicated mental manipulation of the conjugations and declensions in the order memorized, down to the form that might fit the translation. As a result, students are unable to use the language, and they sometimes develop an inferiority complex about languages in general. Exceptionally bright and diligent students do learn languages by this method, or in spite of it, but they would learn with any method. (R. Lado)

We list the major characteristics of Grammar Translation.

- Classes are taught in the mother tongue, with little active use of the target language.

- Much vocabulary is taught in the form of lists of isolated words.

- Long elaborate explanations of the intricacies of grammar are given.

- Grammar provides the rules for putting words together, and instruction often focuses on the form and inflection of word.

- Reading of difficult classical texts is begun early.

- Little attention is paid to the content of texts, which are treated as exercises in grammatical analysis.

- Often the only drills are exercises in translating disconnected sentences from the target language into the mother tongue.

- Little or no attention is given to pronunciation.

(Brown H., Douglas `Principles of language teaching', N.Y., 1987)

The grammar-translation method is largely discredited today. With greater interest in modern languages for communication the inadequacy of grammar-translation methods became evident.

1.1.2 The Direct Method

The Direct Method appeared as a reaction against the grammar-translation method.

There was a movement in Europe that emphasized language learning by direct contact with the foreign language in meaningful situations. This movement resulted in various individual methods with various names, such as new method, natural method, and even oral method, but they can all be referred to as direct methods or the direct method. In addition to emphasizing direct contact with the foreign language, the direct method usually deemphasized or eliminated translation and the memorization of conjugations, declensions, and rules, and in some cases it introduced phonetics and phonetic transcription.

The direct method assumed that learning a foreign language is the same as learning the mother tongue, that is, that exposing the student directly to the foreign language impresses it perfectly upon his mind. This is true only up to a point, since the psychology of learning a second language differs from that of learning the first. The child is forced to learn the first language because he has no other effective way to express his wants. In learning a second language this compulsion is largely missing, since the student knows that he can communicate through his native language when necessary.

The basic premise of Direct Method was that second language learning should be more like first language learning: lots of active oral interaction, spontaneous use of the language, no translation between first and second languages, and little or no analysis of grammatical rules. We can summarize the principles of the Direct

Method:

- Classroom instruction was conducted exclusively in the target language.

- Only everyday vocabulary and sentences were taught.

- Oral communication skills were built up in a carefully graded progression organized around question-and-answer exchanges between teachers and student in small, intensive classes.

- Grammar was taught inductively, i.e. the learner may discover the rules of grammar for himself after he has become acquainted with many examples.

- New teaching points were introduced orally.

- Concrete vocabulary was taught through demonstration, objects, and pictures; abstract vocabulary was taught by association of ideas.

- Both speech and listening comprehension were taught.

- Correct pronunciation and grammar were emphasized.

1.1.3 The Audiolingual Method

The Audiolingual Method (It is also called Mimicry-memorization method) was the method developed in the Intensive Language Program. It was successful because of high motivation, intensive practice, small classes, and good models, in addition to linguistically sophisticated descriptions of the foreign language and its grammar.

Grammar is taught essentially as follows: Some basic sentences are memorized by imitation. Their meaning is given in normal expressions in the native language, and the students are not expected to translate word for word. When the basic sentences have been overlearned (completely memorized so that the student can rattle them off without effort), the student reads fairly extensive descriptive grammar statements in his native language, with examples in the target language and native language equivalents. He then listens to further conversational sentences for practice in listening. Finally, practices the dialogues using the basic sentences and combinations of their parts. When he can, he varies the dialogues within the material hr has already learned. The characteristics of ALM may be summed up in the following list:

- New material is presented in dialog form.

- There is dependence on mimicry, memorization of set phrases and overlearning.

- Structures are sequenced by means of contrastive analysis and taught one at a time.

- Structural patterns are taught using repetitive drills.

- There is a little or no grammatical explanation: grammar is taught by inductive analogy rather than deductive explanation.

- Vocabulary is strictly limited and learned in context.

- There is much use of tapes, language labs, and visual aids.

- Great importance is attached to pronunciation.

- very little use of the mother tongue by teachers is permitted.

- Successful responses are immediately reinforced.

- There is a great effort to get students to produce error-free utterances.

- There is a tendency to manipulate language and disregard content

6. Teaching aids and teaching materials

Teaching aids and materials

To master a foreign language pupils must be engaged in activities which are characteristic of the language; they should hear the language spoken, speak, read, and write it. Classroom practices which are restricted to teacher’s presentation of linguistic material (vocabulary, grammar) and the testing of pupils’ knowledge cannot provide good learning. The teacher covers “content” but does not instruct pupils. The majority of pupils remain passive, and work only to memorize what the teacher emphasizes. We cannot but agree with the following words: “... most of the changes we have come to think of as ‘classroom learning’ typically may not occur in the presence of a teacher. Perhaps it is during seatwork and homework sessions and other forms of solitary study that the major forms of any learning are laid down.”1 Nor can the teacher ensure pupils learning a foreign language if he uses only a textbook, a piece of chalk, and a blackboard.

To achieve effective classroom learning under the conditions of compulsory secondary education, the teacher must use all the accessories he has at his disposal in order to arouse the interest of his pupils and retain it throughout the lesson which is possible only if the pupils are actively involved in the very process of classroom learning.

To teach a foreign language effectively the teacher needs teaching aids and teaching materials.

During the last few years important developments have taken place in this field. As a result there is a great variety of teaching aids and teaching materials at the teacher’s disposal.

TEACHING AIDS. By teaching aids we mean various devices which can help the foreign language teacher in presenting linguistic material to his pupils and fixing it in their memory; in testing pupils’ knowledge of words, phrases, and grammar items, their habits and skills in using them.

Teaching aids which are at teachers’ disposal in contemporary schools may be grouped into (1) non-mechanical aids and (2) mechanical aids.

N o n - m e c h a n i c a l a i d s are:

a blackboard, the oldest aid in the classroom; the teacher turns to the blackboard whenever he needs to write something while explaining some new linguistic material to his pupils, correcting pupils’ mistakes, or arranging the class to work at some words and sentence patterns, etc.; the blackboard can also be used for quick drawing to supply pupils with “objects” to speak about;1

a flannelboard (a board covered with flannel or other soft fabric for sticking pictures on its surface), it is used for creating vivid situations which would stimulate pupils’ oral language; the teacher can have a flannelboard made in a workshop or buy one in a specialized shop; the use of a flannelboard with cut-outs prepared by the teacher or pupils leads to active participation in the use of the target language, as each pupil makes his contribution to working out “a scene” on the flannelboard;

a magnet board (a board which has the properties of a magnet, i.e., can attract special cards with letters, words, phrases or pictures on it) used with the same purpose as a flannelboard;

a lantern which is used for throwing pictures onto a screen.

M e c h a n i c a l a i d s are:

tape recorders (ordinary and twin-track); the same tape may be played back as many times as is necessary, the twin-track tape recorder allows the pupil to play back the tape listening to the speaker’s voice and recording his own on the second track, the lower one, without erasing the first track with the voice of the speaker, the tape recorder is considered to be the most important aid in teaching and learning a foreign language;1

a gramophone or record player is also an audio equipment available in every school; the record player is an indispensable supplement to contemporary textbooks and other teaching materials as they are designed to be used with the long-playing records which accompany them;

an opaque projector or epidiascope used for projection of illustrations and photographs;

a filmstrip projector which can be used in a partially darkened room (the Soviet filmstrip projector ЛЭТИ does not require a darkened room);

an overhead projector used for projection of a table, a scheme, a chart, a plan, a map or a text for everyone to see on a screen;

television and radio equipment: television would make it possible to demonstrate the language in increasingly varied everyday situations; pupils are invited to look, listen, and speak; television and radio programmes are broadcast, but it is not always easy for teachers using these programmes to synchronize their lesson time with the time of the television or radio transmissions;

teaching machines which can be utilized for presenting information to the pupils, for drilling, or testing; the teaching machine can provide an interaction between the pupil and the “programme”; the learner obtains a stimulus and a feed-back from his response; thus, favourable

conditions are created for individual pupils to learn, for instance, vocabulary, grammar, reading, etc.;

a language laboratory, this is a special classroom designed for language learning. It is equipped with individual private or semi-private stalls or booths. They are connected with a network of audio wiring, the nerve centre of which is the monitoring console which has a switch board and tapedecks, making it possible to play tapes and send the programme to all or any combination of booths. The teacher at the monitoring console can listen in, or can have a two-way conversation with any pupil.

There are two main types of language laboratories — library and broadcast systems. The library system is suitable for students capable of independent study; each student selects his own material and uses it as he wishes. The broadcast system is suitable for classwork when the same material is presented at the same time to a whole group of students, and a class works together under a teacher’s direction.

The language laboratory is used for listening and speaking. The pupil’s participation may be imitation or response to cues according to a model. The language laboratory is used for “structural drills” which usually involve rephrasing sentences according to a model, or effecting substitutions. The language laboratory is often used for exercises and tests in oral comprehension.

Tape recorders fulfil all the functions required for this use of the language laboratory. Tape programmes can be associated with visual aids for individual work or work in pairs.

The language laboratory keeps a full class of pupils working and learning for the entire period, and thus enables the teacher to teach the foreign language more effectively.

In conclusion, it must be said that the use of teaching aids is very demanding on the teacher. He must know about each aid describe above, be able to operate it, and train pupils to use it. He should also know what preparations must be made for classroom use of each of these teaching aids, and what teaching materials he has at his disposal.

In teaching foreign languages in our secondary schools most of the teaching aids are available. Each school should be equipped with a filmstrip projector, a film projector, an opaque projector, a tape recorder and a phonograph.2 Specialized schools, where English is taught nine years, should have language laboratories.

When used in different combinations teaching aids can offer valuable help to the teacher of a foreign language in making the learning of this subject in schools by more effective way.

TEACHING MATERIALS

By teaching materials we mean the materials which the teacher can use to help pupils learn a foreign language through visual or audio perception. They must be capable of contributing to the achievement of the practical, cultural, and educational aims of learning a foreign language. Since pupils learn a foreign language for several years, it is necessary for the teacher to have a wide variety of materials which make it possible to progress with an increasing sophistication to match the pupils’ continually growing command of the foreign language. Good teaching materials will help greatly to reinforce the pupils’ initial desire to learn the -language and to sustain their enthusiasm throughout the course.

The following teaching materials are in use nowadays: teacher’s books, pupil’s books, visual materials, audio materials, and audio-visual materials.

A teacher’s book must be comprehensive enough to be a help to the teacher. This book should provide all the recorded material; summaries of the aims and new teaching points of each lesson; a summary of all audio and visual materials required; suggestions for the conduct of the lesson and examples of how the teaching points can be developed.

Pupil’s books must include textbooks, manuals, supplementary readers, dictionaries, programmed materials.

Textbooks. The textbook is one of the most important sources for obtaining knowledge. It contains the material at which pupils work both during class-periods under the teacher’s supervision and at home independently. The textbook also determines the ways and the techniques pupils should use in learning the material to be able to apply it when hearing, speaking, reading, and writing.

The modern textbooks for teaching a foreign language should meet the following requirements:

1. The textbooks should provide pupils with the knowledge of the language sufficient for developing language skills, i. e., they must include the fundamentals of the target language.

2. They should ensure pupils’ activity in speaking, reading, and writing, i.e., they must correspond to the aims of foreign language teaching in school.

3. The textbooks must extend pupils’ educational horizon, i.e., the material of the textbooks should be of educational value.

4. The textbooks must arouse pupils’ interest and excite their curiosity.

5. They should have illustrations to help pupils in comprehension and in speaking.

6. The textbooks must reflect the life and culture of the people whose language pupils study.

Each textbook consists of lessons or units, the amount of the material being determined by the stage of instruction, and the material itself.

The lessons may be of different structure. In all cases, however, they should assist pupils in making progress in speaking, reading, and writing.

The structure of the textbook for beginners should reflect the approach in developing pupils’ language skills. If there is an oral introductory course, the textbook should include a lot of pictures for the development of hearing and speaking skills. Thus the textbook begins with “picture lessons”. See, for example, Fifth Form English by A. P. Starkov and R. R. Dixon.

If pupils are to be taught all language skills simultaneously, the textbook should include lessons which contain the material for the development of speaking, reading, and writing from the very beginning. See, for example, English 5 by S. Folomkina and E. Kaar.

The textbook should have a table of contents in which the material is given according to the school terms.

At the end of the book there should be two word-lists: English-Russian and Russian-English, which include the words of the previous year and the new words with the index of the lesson where they first occur.

Every textbook for learning a foreign language should contain exercises and texts.

Exercises of the textbook may be subdivided: (1) according to the activity they require on the part of the learners (drill and speech); (2) according to the place they are performed at (class exercises and home exercises); (3) according to the form (whether they are oral or written).

Exercises for developing pronunciation should help pupils to acquire correct pronunciation habits. Special exercises should be provided for the purpose, among them those designed for developing pupils’ skills in discriminating sounds, stress, or melody. It is necessary that records and tape-recordings should be applied, and they should form an inseparable part of the textbook.

Exercises for assimilating vocabulary should help pupils to acquire habits and skills in using the words when speaking and writing, and recognizing them when-hearing and reading.

Most of the exercises should be communicative by nature:

— they should remind us of natural conversation: questions, statements, exclamatory sentences, etc.;

— they should be somehow logically connected with pupils’ activity;

— they should reflect pupils’ environment;

— they should stimulate pupils to use the given words.

The textbooks should provide the revision of words in texts, drill and speech exercises.

Grammar exercises should develop pupils’ habits and skills in using the grammar items to be learnt in speaking, reading, and writing. The teaching of grammar may largely be carried on through sentence patterns, phrase patterns, words as a pattern, and the ample use of these patterns in various oral and written exercises. Grammar, therefore, must be divided into small fragments, each taught in response to an immediate need “... It is not the grammar of English that is so difficult: it is English usage. “Therefore grammar exercises must be suggested in connection with situations, and remind us of the real usage of grammar forms and structures in the act of communication.

Exercises for developing oral language should constitute 40—50% of the exercises of the textbook. The other 50% will be those designed for assimilating vocabulary, grammar, the technique of reading, etc.

In all stages of teaching exercises for developing oral language should prepare pupils to carry on a conversation within the material assimilated. This is possible provided pupils are taught to use the words and the sentence patterns they learn in various combinations depending on the situations offered, on the necessity to express their own thoughts and not to learn (to memorize) the texts arranged in topics, which is often the case in school teaching practice.

Exercises designed for developing oral language should prepare pupils:

— to use a foreign language at the lessons for classroom needs;

— to talk about the subjects within pupils’ interests, and about the objects surrounding them;

— to discuss what they have read and heard.

The textbook should provide pupils with exercises for developing both forms of speech — dialogue and monologue. As far as dialogue is concerned pupils should have exercises which require: (1) learning a pattern dialogue; the pattern dialogues should be short enough for pupils to memorize them as a pattern, and they must be different in structure: question — response; question — question; statement — question; statement — statement; (2) substitutions within the pattern dialogue; (3) making up dialogues of their own (various situational pictures may be helpful).

As to monologue pupils should have exercises which help them: (1) to make statements, different in structure (statement level); (2) to express their thoughts or to speak about an object, a

subject, using different sentence patterns, combining them in a logical sequence (utterance level); (3) to speak on the object, subject, film, filmstrip, story read or heard, situations offered (discourse level). The textbook should include exercises which prepare pupils for reciting the texts, making oral reproductions, etc.

Exercises for developing reading should help pupils to acquire all the skills necessary to read and understand a text. Therefore, there should be grapheme-phonemic, structural information, and semantic-communicative exercises, the amount of each group being different depending on the stage of teaching.

Exercises for writing should develop pupils’ skills in penmanship, spelling, and composition.

Texts in the textbook should vary both in form and in content. Pupils need topical and descriptive texts,-stories and poems, short dialogues, and jokes.

Texts should deal with the life of our people and the people whose language the pupils study.

It should be noted that a great deal of work has been done in the field of the textbooks. As a result new textbooks have appeared in English, German, and French. There is no doubt that these books are better than those formerly used.

The modern textbooks which are now in use in ten-year schools meet most of the requirements given above.

Manuals. The manual is a handbook which may be used in addition to the textbook, for example, English Grammar for Secondary School by E. P. Shubinand V. V. Sitel, in which pupils can find useful information about various items of English grammar described in a traditional way.

Selected readings. There is a great variety of supplementary readers graded in forms and types of schools. For example, Stuart Little by E. B. White; English Readers for the 6th and for the 7th forms; Our Animal Friends (for the 7th form).

Dictionaries. For learning English there are some English-Russian dictionaries available, for instance, the Learner’s English-Russian Dictionary, compiled by S. K. Folomkina and H. M. Weiser (M., 1962); Англо-русский словарь. Cост. B. Л. Apaкин, 3. C. Bыгодская, H. H. Ильина (M., 1971).

The pupil needs a dictionary to read a text which contains unfamiliar words.

Programmed materials. They are necessary when programmed learning is used.

The main features of programmed learning are as follows:

1. Learning by small easy steps. Every step or frame calls for a written or an oral response which requires both attention and thought.

2. Immediate reinforcement by supplying a correct answer after each response. The pupil is aware that his response is right. The steps are so small and their arrangement is so orderly that he is likely to make very few errors. When an error occurs, he discovers his mistake immediately b» comparing his response will the one given in “the feed-back’

3. Progression at the learning rate of each individual pupil. Each pupil can work at his own pace.

Programmed learning creates a new individualized relationship between the learner and his task. He learns for himself and the programme teaches him. Programming is concerned with effective teaching since it is aimed, as carefully as possible, at a particular group of pupils and

leads them through a number of steps towards mastering a carefully thought-out and circumscribed teaching point. Programming allows the teacher to improve the effectiveness of teaching by constructing materials which will guide the pupil through a series of steps towards the mastery of a learning problem. These steps should be of appropriate size and require the pupil’s active cooperation; he may be asked to answer a question, to fill in a blank, to read, etc. It is very important to grade progress of steps throughout the programme so carefully that each pupil get every step right.

Media of programmed instruction are programmed lessons or textbooks and teaching machines.

There are at least two types of programmes: linear and branching. In a linear programme the information is followed by a practice problem which usually requires the completion of a given sentence. The pupil can compare his answer with the one given in the clue on the right one frame below. All pupils should progress from frame to frame through the programme.

Visual materials.

Objects. There are a lot of things in the classroom such as pens and pencils of different sizes and colours, books, desks and many other articles which the teacher can use in presenting English names for them and in stimulating pupils’ activities to utilize the words denoting objects they can see, touch, point to, give, take, atc. Toys and puppets may be widely used in teaching children of primery schools, which is the case in the specialized schools.

Flashcards. A flashcard is a card with a letter, a sound symbol or a word to be used for quick showing to pupils and in this way for developing pupils’ skills in reading and pronunciation. Flashcards are usually made by the teacher or by the pupils under the teacher’s direction, though there are some ready-made flashcards.

Sentence cards. They bear sentences or sentence patterns which can be used with different ams, e.g., for reading and analyzing the sentences, for using these sentences in speaking, for compiling an oral composition using the sentence as a starting point, for writing a composition.

These cards are prepared by the teacher and distributed among the pupils for individual work during the lesson. The teacher checks his pupils’ work afterwards.

Wall-charts. A wall-chart is a big sheet of paper with drawings or words to be hung in the classroom and used for revision or generalization of some linguistic phenomenon. Such as “English Tenses”, “Passive Voice”, “Ing-Forms”, “Rules of Reading”.

Posters or series of illustrations portraying a story. They are used as “props” in retelling a story read or heard. The teacher himself, or a pupil who can draw or paint, prepares such posters.

Pictures. There are at least three types of pictures which are used in teaching a foreign language: object pictures (e. g., the picture of a bed), situational pictures (e. g., the picture of a

boy lying in bed), topical pictures (e. g., the picture of a bedroom). They may be big enough to be hung in the classroom or small to be distributed among the pupils for each one to speak on his own. Pictures may be utilized separately (as single units) and in sets to be used as “props” for oral composition or re-telling a story. For example, there is a set of pictures by M. S. Kaplunovsky which can be used for creating vivid situations on a flannelboard.

Printed pictures are available for the teacher to use in the classroom. However, they cannot cover the teacher s needs in these materials. So he should make pictures. The., teacher either draws or paints them himself or asks some of his pupils to do this. He can also use cut-outs (pictures cut out of some periodicals).

Photographs. They are of two kinds: black-and-white and coloured. One can use photographs which are on sale, e. g., “Views of Moscow” or have them taken, e. g., “We are going on a hike”, or “Our family”.

Albums. An album is a book of pictures or photographs which is used for developing pupils’ language skills. It usually contains textual material to supply pupils with necessary information, and in this way make their work easier in describing these pictures.

Maps and plans. In teaching English the maps of Great Britain, the USA, and other countries where English is spoken may be used. The plans, for example, of a house, a building, a piece of land with measurements may be a help in comprehension and thus stimulate pupils’ speaking.

Slides. A slide is a glass or plastic plate bearing a picture. Slides are usually coloured and used in sets to illustrate a story; the teacher can utilize slides for developing hearing and speaking skills.

Filmstrips. A filmstrip 3 represents a series of pictures, as a rule, situational pictures in certain sequence which a learner sees while listening to a story from the teacher or the tape to reproduce it later. Special filmstrips are available. They last about 5—10 minutes and can be used with synchronized tapes. When a picture appears on the screen, the tape is heard. See, for example, “Great Britain”, “London”.

Audio materials. Tapes and records or discs belong to audio materials. Tapes are usually prepared by the teacher (he selects the material and the speaker for recording). Tapes and records are used for teaching listening comprehension, speaking, and reading aloud.

Audio-visual materials. Sound film loops and films are examples of audio-visual materials:

Sound film loops are becoming popular with the teachers. They are short (each lasts 1.5—1.7 min.) and the teacher can play the film loop back as many times as necessary for the pupils to grasp the material and memorize it.

Films. Specially prepared educational films for language teaching have appeared, e. g., “The Mysterious Bridge”, “Robert Burns”, “Australia”, “New York”, “Winter Sports”.

Young children like to sing and play various games, that, is why songs and games should constitute an important part of teaching materials. Folksongs and popular current songs develop a feeling for the distinctive culture being studied. They furnish a frame work for pronunciation practice. Games give an opportunity for spontaneous self-expression in the foreign language and can be used as a device for relaxation.

Practical and educational functions of teaching materials are as follows:

Teaching materials used in various combinations allow the teacher to develop his pupils’ oral-aural skills. Recorded materials can provide the teacher and the pupil with an authentic model, tireless and consistent repetition and many different voices.

These materials are valuable for presentation, exercises, revision, testing, etc.

Visual materials have an important role to play in the development of hearing and speaking skills. Carefully devised they help to get rid of the necessity for constant translation and assist the teacher in keeping the lesson within the foreign language.

7.Aims and content of teaching pronunciation

Pronunciation involves far more than individual sounds. Word stress, sentence stress, intonation, and word linking all influence the sound of spoken English, not to mention the way we often slur words and phrases together in casual speech. 'What are you going to do?' becomes 'Whaddaya gonna do?' English pronunciation involves too many complexities for learners to strive for a complete elimination of accent, but improving pronunciation will boost self esteem, facilitate communication, and possibly lead to a better job or a least more respect in the workplace. Effective communication is of greatest importance, so choose first to work on problems that significantly hinder communication and let the rest go. Remember that your students also need to learn strategies for dealing with misunderstandings, since native pronunciation is for most an unrealistic goal.

A student's first language often interferes with English pronunciation. For example, /p/ is aspirated in English but not in Spanish, so when a Spanish speaker pronounces 'pig' without a puff of air on the /p/, an American may hear 'big' instead. Sometimes the students will be able to identify specific problem sounds and sometimes they won't. You can ask them for suggestions, but you will also need to observe them over time and make note of problem sounds. Another challenge resulting from differences in the first language is the inability to hear certain English sounds that the native language does not contain. Often these are vowels, as in 'ship' and 'sheep,' which many learners cannot distinguish. The Japanese are known for confusing /r/ and /l/, as their language contains neither of these but instead has one sound somewhere between the two. For problems such as these, listening is crucial because students can't produce a sound they can't hear. Descriptions of the sound and mouth position can help students increase their awareness of subtle sound differences.

Here are some ideas for focusing on specific pronunciation features.

Voicing
Voiced sounds will make the throat vibrate. For example, /g/ is a voiced sound while /k/ is not, even though the mouth is in the same position for both sounds. Have your students touch their throats while pronouncing voiced and voiceless sounds. They should feel vibration with the voiced sounds only.

Aspiration
Aspiration refers to a puff of air when a sound is produced. Many languages have far fewer aspirated sounds than English, and students may have trouble hearing the aspiration. The English /p/, /t/, /k/, and /ch/ are some of the more commonly aspirated sounds. Although these are not always aspirated, at the beginning of a word they usually are. To illustrate aspiration, have your students hold up a piece of facial tissue a few inches away from their mouths and push it with a puff of air while pronouncing a word containing the target sound.

Mouth Position
Draw simple diagrams of tongue and lip positions. Make sure all students can clearly see your mouth while you model sounds. Have students use a mirror to see their mouth, lips, and tongue while they imitate you.

Intonation
Word or sentence intonation can be mimicked with a kazoo, or alternatively by humming. This will take the students' attention off of the meaning of a word or sentence and help them focus on the intonation.

Linking
We pronounce phrases and even whole sentences as one smooth sound instead of a series of separate words. 'Will Amy go away,' is rendered 'Willaymeegowaway.' To help learners link words, try starting at the end of a sentence and have them repeat a phrase, adding more of the sentence as they can master it. For example, 'gowaway,' then 'aymeegowaway,' and finally 'Willaymeegowaway' without any pauses between words.

Vowel Length
You can demonstrate varying vowel lengths within a word by stretching rubber bands on the longer vowels and letting them contract on shorter ones. Then let the students try it. For example, the word 'fifteen' would have the rubber band stretched for the 'ee' vowel, but the word 'fifty' would not have the band stretched because both of its vowels are spoken quickly.

Syllables

Have students count syllables in a word and hold up the correct number of fingers, or place objects on table to represent each syllable.

Illustrate syllable stress by clapping softly and loudly corresponding to the syllables of a word. For example, the word 'beautiful' would be loud-soft-soft. Practice with short lists of words with the same syllabic stress pattern ('beautiful,' 'telephone,' 'Florida') and then see if your learners can list other words with that pattern.

Specific Sounds

Minimal pairs, or words such as 'bit/bat' that differ by only one sound, are useful for helping students distinguish similar sounds. They can be used to illustrate voicing ('curl/girl') or commonly confused sounds ('play/pray'). Remember that it's the sound and not the spelling you are focusing on.

Tongue twisters are useful for practicing specific target sounds, plus they're fun. Make sure the vocabulary isn't too difficult.

The Sounds of English, American Accent Training, and EnglishClub.com websites below offer guidelines for describing how to produce various English sounds. You can find representative practice words for every English sound on the English is Soup site.

Here are some resources for teaching pronunciation.

Sounds of English
Mouth diagrams and photographs; instructions for producing selected English sounds, word stress, sentence stress, and intonation; many example sound clips to play with audio software such as RealPlayer (free).

American Accent Training: Pronunciation
The most common trouble sounds in English and how to pronounce them.

EnglishClub.com English Pronunciation - Pronunciation for ESL learners
Guides to word and sentence stress, linking, pronunciation of '-ed' and 'the,' and other topics.

Some Techniques for Teaching Pronunciation
Detailed instructions for two pronunciation activities.

English is Soup: A Phonics Resource For ESL Adults
Mouth diagrams and representative words showing various spellings for every English sound; short introduction to rules of pronunciation based on spelling; PDF format.

The Tongue Twister Database
Large collection of tongue twisters to practice specific sounds.

Teaching Pronunciation

Main Problems:

Aim

Content

Strategies

Types of Exercises.

Aim is to form and develop clear and comprehensible pronunciation. It is impossible to achieve the aim of communicative ability without forming and developing clear and comprehensible pronunciation habits and skills. Received pronunciation of the English language is taught in school, that is the pronunciation of the language of radio, TV, universities, colleges and schools.

Sound is the basis of all languages Language exists in meaningful sound sequences. Words are meaningful combinations of sounds. Speech is meaningful sound sequences.

So teaching/learning pronunciation is a matter of great importance.

To use a language as a means of communication, on the one hand, the learner should form and develop receptive pronunciation habits and skills, that is to hear and discriminate pronunciation units correctly and automatically to comprehend the information conveyed, on the other hand productive pronunciation habits and skills, to articulate pronunciation units automatically and correctly, to convey the information clearly and comprehensibly.

In our conditions to teach/learn absolute correctness in pronunciation is hardly possible, so we expect approximate correctness that makes communication possible, among people speaking the same language.

So the aim of teaching/learning pronunciation is to form and develop clear and comprehensible pronunciation, receptive and productive pronunciation habits and skills, that is automaticity in hearing, discriminating, understanding, on the one hand, and in articulating the pronunciation units on the other.

The following factors affecting pronunciation learning should be taken into consideration.

native language of the learners

the age of the learners

exposure

innate phonetic ability

identity and language ego

motivation and concern for good pronunciation.

The Content

The content of teaching/learning pronunciation includes:

sounds (vowels, consonants, and diphthongs),

stress (word and logical stress),

intonation (rise, fall, rise-fall),

rhythm and melody.

Connected with the content the peculiarities of sounds, stress and intonation should be taken into account in both languages, comparing both phonic systems similarities and differences, difficulties for assimilation and strategies to overcome the difficulties should be underlined.

Learners should become able to hear, discriminate, understand, stress correctly, intone, articulate, produce pronunciation units automatically, subconsciously.

Strategies for Teaching/learning Pronunciation

Languages have their specific phonic systems. The systems of Armenian and English should be compared to find out similarities, differences, sounds which don't exist in Armenian, sounds which seem similar but have a different shade of pronunciation, to underline difficulties for assimilation in stress, sound and intonation, [to design strategies to overcome/them aimed at organizing effective teaching/learning process.

Sounds such as

The length of vowels ship-sheep, Iip-leap

Voiced, voiceless consonants at the end of word bet-bed, hit-hid / diphthongs …..

create a lot of difficulties for assimilation or are cause of interference.

The pronunciation of words is not only a matter of sounds but also of stress. Stress is fixed in Armenian and isn't in English which is another source of interference/ negative transfer.

Intonation also presents difficulty to Armenian learners. It has grammatical
meaning as well.

îÕ³Ý Ý³Ù³Ï ·ñ»ó. ѳëï³ïáõÙ The boy wrote a letter.

îÕ³Ý Ý³Ù³±Ï ·ñ»ó: The boy wrote a letter?

Learners automatically pronounce English sounds, stress words and intone sentences the way they do in their mother tongue. If the regularities coincide learners don't make mistakes, if not interference creates mistakes. Teachers should know what these mistakes/difficulties are and how to overcome them.

Teaching/learning pronunciation is based on both didactic and methodological principles, such as automaticity, meaningful learning, native language effect,
self-confidence and so on.

Strategies for teaching pronunciation are: imitation, explanation, demonstration, synthetical and analytical.

Imitation is the main way of teaching/ learning pronunciation. We learn what we do and we don't learn what we don't do.

Practice is the best of all instructors.
Learners listen to the example, given by the teacher or the speaker, following the
example they try to articulate the pronunciation unit (sound, stress or intonation). If the
difficulty can't be overcome through imitation, the teacher tries to help the learners
through useful, helpful explanation and demonstration (whenever they are useful and
helpful, as little explanation and demonstration is possible) teaching/learning the
sounds ………, explanation and demonstration help learner to imitate the sound correctly. This way the teacher may combine imitation, explanation and demonstration to overcome the difficulty.

Children's ability to imitate is rather good, so this ability should be actively and effectively used in teaching/learning pronunciation, besides too many cases are hardly explainable to learners. That is why imitation is the main strategy for teaching/learning pronunciation.

Foreign language teaching/learning in school begins with oral introductory
course, proceeds with oral approach and the unit of teaching/learning is the sentence.
So learners listen to a long sequence of sounds from the very beginning. lf the sounds of a sequence are assimilated in the sequence (sentence) through imitation we have synthetical assimilation, all the sounds in the sequence are assimilated together, e.g.
My name is Nick.

He is ten.

She is my sister.

On some cases when there are difficult sounds in the sequence learners can't assimilate them synthetically. So the teacher should take out the word with the difficult sound and the difficult sound out of the word and work on it, overcome the difficulty and put it back in the sequence. e.g. What's your name? Where is your book?

This is my book. That is your book.

What's your name? This is my book.

This is the analytical way of teaching/ learning pronunciation.

Learners imitate both in unison and individually. Imitating individually the teacher asks first bright, then average and finally slow pupils to repeat the pronunciation unit after the example.

Teaching pronunciation is a matter of great importance not only for oral
communication but also for written. As we mentioned above, language exists in
meaningful sound sequences.

Pronunciation skills are formed an developed mainly at junior stage of instruction, but they should be developed and perfected through the whole course of instruction. So the teacher should practise pronunciation drills whenever the necessary irrespective of the stage of instruction.

Types of Exercises

Pronunciation exercises may be of two main groups:

recognition exercises

reproduction exercises

Recognition exercises are aimed at developing learner's ability to listen to, discriminate and understand the sounds, stress, sound sequences and intonation. The assimilation of clear and comprehensible pronunciation depends on learner's ability to and on the factors mentioned above (native language, the age, exposure...).

To acquire the phonic aspect of the language learners should perform a lot of exercises in listening and understanding