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appropriate input and output so that they have the opportunities to practice both skills at the same time. In
this sense, a wide range of communicative exercises should be proposed in the classroom and these
should be as varied as possible: between students, a student and the teacher, the students and the
CD/computer, etc. in this sense, Brown et al. claim: There are listening activities called "live listening‖.
In these kind of activities, the teachers or visitors talk face to face with the students, which is a way of
interaction to practice listening and learning about different accents, intonation, paralinguistic features.
For example, if the teacher is reading aloud, this activity allows students to hear how English sounds
clearly. Telling a story is a suitable material that provides listening material, students can predict what
will happen or they can describe the characters in a story, it is a good way of improving vocabulary. In
pairs, they can also do an interview or a conversation. It is a good method because aside from listening,
they are integrating speaking and it is a motivating activity when they think of their own questions or the
subject is funny and interesting.
There are also activities with films, for example, where students can analyze some trailers or
describe characters of their favorite scenes. All of them are ideas of live listening, which are very useful
for students and teachers in Secondary Education. According to the results obtained, we can notice that
listening and speaking competences are complex skills that need to be developed consciously.
Day by day school life is when students really learn the mentioned skills previously. Sometimes,
it is only when a child spontaneously uses vocabulary or expresses his own opinion related to a previous
listening or reading aloud carried out in the classroom. An idea would be giving pupils opportunities to
use their speaking and listening skills in real life situations, giving them the sense of what they are
learning in situations that they do not have in the classroom. EFL classes must experience rich and well-
integrated opportunities to participate in listening, speaking, reading, and writing through well-planned
activities by the English language teachers.
REFERENCES:
1. Lynch, T. (1997) The Multilingual Self: An Inquiry into Language Learning. Mahwah: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.
3. McLaren, D. and N. Madrid (1995) Didactic procedures for TEFL. Valladolid: La Calesa.
4. McLaren, D. and N. Madrid (1996) A handbook for TEFL. Alcoy: Marfil
5. Morley, J. (1972) Improving aural comprehension. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
BASIC FACTORS TO DEVELOP READING COMPREHENSION OF EFL STUDENTS
Djoldasbaeva Kh.R.
Teacher, KarSU named after Berdakh, Nukus, Uzbekistan
Abstract:
The article is dedicated to the study of various researchers‘ viewpoints on the different
approaches and factors involved in developing the Reading comprehension of EFL students.
Key words:
explicit strategy, lifelong skill, learning, input and output,learning awareness, text size,
motivation, goal, proficiency, researchers, critical thinking, argumentation.
Due to the ever-increasing importance of reading in every aspect of our everyday life, it is
essential to find ways or methods to improve our reading skills. To this purpose, a great emphasis
is laid on the use of reading strategies as the best way so far to improve students‘ reading skills.
Researchers have found that teaching reading strategies is a key element in developing student
comprehension. However, many teachers lack a solid foundation for teaching these reading
comprehension strategies. Therefore, teachers need to be prepared on how to design effective
comprehension strategies and how to teach these strategies to their students. Therefore, this study aims to
study the effective reading strategies in order to improve reading skills in language classes. The study is
an action research applied to a number of 14 students in an intermediate level integrated skills course. The
main question of the study is ―Would reading strategies help my students‘ reading comprehension
studies?‖ The results of the study indicate that the students had an improvement to a great extend have
been tutored about the reading strategies.
Reading is a lifelong skill to be used both at school and throughout life. According to Anderson,
Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson, reading is a basic life skill. It is a cornerstone for a child's success in school
and, indeed, throughout life. Without the ability to read well, opportunities for personal fulfilment and job
success inevitably will be lost (1985). Despite its importance, reading is one of the most challenging areas
in the education system. The ever-increasing demand for high levels of literacy in our technological
society makes this problem even more pressing (Snow, Burns, &Griffin, 1998).
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Learning to read is challenging for many students and is even more so when the process is
unclear. Without effective reading strategies, many students struggle and a large percentage will be left
behind when they are unable to acquire the skills necessary to read grade level materials.
In America, approaches for teaching reading strategies have existed since the 1600s when the
New England Primer was published for the American Colonies followed by Noah Webster‘s American
Spelling Book in 1783. Strategies for reading have existed for almost as long but without agreement as to
the most effective methods of instruction.
There are now so many types of strategies that it is common for teachers and parents to feel
overwhelmed.Fortunately, there has been a great deal of research, as well as substantial evidence from
classrooms, to identify the reading strategies and instructional components that produce the best reading
outcomes.
Reading strategies is the broad term used to describe the planned and explicit actions that help
readers translate print to meaning. Strategies that improve decoding and reading comprehension skills
benefit every student, but are essential for beginning readers, struggling readers, and English Language
Learners. Within the last two decades, significant progress has been made in determining the most
effective strategies for reading instruction.
Reading is an integral part of academic affairs and it is equally important outside academic
contexts. Apart from the essential linguistic requirements of the reading process (e.g. vocabulary and
grammar), there are some so-called reading strategies that are attested to improve reading. Many articles
and, indeed, whole books have been devoted to investigating reading. However, little research has been
done to explore the nature of the reading strategies. This text attempts to provide a brief synthesis of the
literature on the reading strategies.
In his introduction to Alderson (2000) on assessing reading, Lyle Bachman notes: "Reading
through which we can access worlds of ideas and feelings, as well as the knowledge of ages and visions
of the future, is at once the most extensively researched and the most enigmatic of the so-called language
skills." The enigmatic nature of this "psycholinguistic guessing game" (Goodman, 1979) is even more
evident when we are faced with reading in a foreign or second language. But, what is involved in reading
that makes it so complicated and indeed difficult?
King (see references) believes that four factors are involved in reading comprehension: the
reader, the text, the strategies, and the goal. He, then, goes on to emphasize that what actually makes the
difference is the reading strategies. For king, the single most important factor in reading is the strategies
learners utilize. But, what are reading strategies? We will have a brief look at the literature to answer this
question.
Wenden (1987 cited in Alderson 2000) notes that the strategies have been labeled differently in
the literature and goes on to list the following: techniques, tactics, potentially conscious plans,
consciously employed operations, learning skills, basic skills, functional skills, cognitive abilities,
language processing strategies and problem-solving procedures. A general distinction has often been
made between strategies and skills. However, for some, they denote essentially the same processes.
Brown (2007 P.119) defines strategies as the ""specific methods of approaching a problem or
task, modes of operation for achieving a particular end, planned designs for controlling and manipulating
certain information." He differentiates 3 between strategies and styles. Styles are ―consistent and rather
enduring tendencies and preferences within an individual". Styles are what distinguish you from others
they are rather consistent and defy changes. Strategies on the other hand, vary within individuals from
moment to moment as the specific problems and contexts change. Chamot (2005 cited in Brown 2007)
emphasizes the distinguishing feature of the strategies is consciousness. We utilize them rather
consciously. Alderson (2000) takes the same position. These definitions are provided in the context of
general learning. Pani defines reading strategies as ―the mental operations involved when readers
approach a text effectively to make sense of what they read… Good readers apply more strategies more
frequently …and more effectively than poor readers.‖ (Pani 2004).
According to Brown (2007), the literature on second language acquisition has differentiated
between two broad categories of strategies: learning strategies and communication strategies. Simply put,
the former relates to input whereas the latter pertains to output and how we produce language either in
speech or writing. As reading is considered to be a receptive skill, we are concerned with learning
strategies here.
Among the learning strategies cited in the literature, the metacognitive and cognitive
strategies are most relevant to reading. Metacognition is concerned with monitoring, or
watching, and evaluating the success of the learning process. Cognitive strategies, on the other
hand, relate to the specific contexts and learning tasks.Note that these strategies are part of our
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overall capacity in dealing with problems and tricky situations. This capacity is called strategic
competence (see Bachman 1990, Bachman and Palmer 1996, Canale and Swain 1980).
The impact of these strategies on reading is conceived to be of utmost importance in any act of
reading. Remember that King (see above) emphasized that what differentiate between poor and good
readers are reading strategies. Of course, he is not alone in this regard. Brown (2001), for example, points
out that "reading 4 comprehension is a matter of developing appropriate, efficient comprehension
strategies" (ibid P. 306). He goes on to enumerate ten such strategies:
1. Identify the purpose in reading.
2. Use graphemic rules and patterns to aid in bottom-up reading.
3. Use different silent reading techniques for relatively rapid reading.
4. Skim the text for main ideas.
5. Scan the text for specific information.
6. Use semantic mapping or clustering.
7. Guess when you aren't certain.
8. Analyze vocabulary.
9. Distinguish between literal and implied meanings.
10. Capitalize on discourse markers to process relationships.
Interestingly enough, there have been some studies which have enumerated poor readers‘
characteristics. Lau (2006), for example, cites the following in the literature: 1. They do not know how to
construct the main ideas and macrostructure of the texts, 2. They are not familiar with the text structure
and do not make use of the text structure to organize the main ideas, 3. They have little prior knowledge
and do not know how to activate their knowledge to facilitate text comprehension, 4. They have
difficulties in drawing inferences to achieve in-depth understanding of the texts, 5. They lack
metacognitive ability, and are not aware of the problems that emerge during reading and do not know
how to monitor their reading process.
Empirical investigations have been done into the usefulness of strategy instruction on reading.
Wright and Brown (2006) investigated the impact of explicit strategy instruction on reading
comprehension of students of Spanish and/or French as a foreign language. The authors concluded that
although the results indicated that the participants‘ awareness of some strategies and their ability to reflect
upon their reading did increase,‖ other strategies seemed harder to acquire. They also pointed out that
some learners faced difficulties in acquiring some complex strategies. 5 The use of strategies after they
have been learned has also been related to a variety of factors. For example, it is claimed that there is a
close relationship between strategy use and motivation or the goal of reading. Generally, it is conveyed
that the higher the motivation and the more important the goal, the more learners utilize strategies. He
(2008) investigated the effect of the goal of reading and motivation on the learners‘ utilization of
strategies. The results indicated that the participants with stronger goals generally performed better than
those with the same proficiency levels but weaker goals.
Based on this general review, we may be in a position to provide a synthesis definition of reading
strategies. Reading strategies may be defined as the conscious, internally variable psychological
techniques aimed at improving the effectiveness of or compensating for the breakdowns in reading
comprehension, on specific reading tasks and in specific contexts.
REFERENCES:
1.
Alderson, J.C.(2000). Assessing Reading. Cambridge University Press.
2.
Bachman, L.F. (1990). Fundamental considerations in language testing. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
3.
Bachman, L.F. (2000). Introduction. In Alderson (2000).
4.
Brown, H. D. (2001). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy.
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall Regents
5.
Brown, H. D. (2007). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. White Plains, N.Y.:
Pearson Education.
6.
Canale, M. and Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics 1, 1-47.
7.
Goodman, K.S. (1979). Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game. In H. Singer & R. B.
Ruddell (Eds.). Theoretical models and processes of reading (pp. 259- 271). Newark, DE: International
Reading Association.
8.
He, T. (2008). Reading for different goals: the interplay of EFL college students‘ multiple goals,
reading strategy use and reading comprehension. Journal of Research in Reading 31, 224–242.
209
9.
King,
K.
(2008).
Reading
Strategies.
Freely
available
at:
http://www.isu.edu/~kingkath/readstrt.html
10.
Lau, K. (2006). Reading strategy use between Chinese good and poor readers: a think-aloud
study. Journal of Research in Reading 29, 383–399.
11.
Pani, S. (2004). Reading strategy instruction through mental modeling. ELT Journal 58, 355-362.
12.
Wenden, A. L. (1987). Metacognition: An expanded view on the cognitive abilities of L2
learners. Language Learning 37 (4), 573-594.
13.
Wright, M. and Brown, P. (2006). Reading in a modern foreign language: exploring the potential
benefits of reading strategy instruction. Language Learning Journal 33, 22-33.
THE ROLE OF MOTIVATION IN TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES
Joldasbaeva D.B.
1-year Master student, NSPI named after Ajiniyaz, Nukus, Uzbekistan
tel: + 99899 098 77 97
The problem of motivation in learning arises in every subject, but it is especially acute it
manifests itself in the study of a foreign language. The importance and role of motivation in learning
foreign languages has been proven by different research. For the first time the word motivation was used
by A. Schopenhauer in the article ―Four Principles of Sufficient Cause‖ (1900–1910). Then this term
entered into psychological use for explain the causes of human and animal behavior.
Currently, motivation as a mental phenomenon is interpreted in different ways. In one case - as a
set of factors that support and guide, i.e., determine behavior (K. Madsen, 1959; J. Godfroy, 1992), in
another case - as a set of motives (K.K. Platonov, 1986), in the third case - as an impulse that causes the
activity of the organism and determines its direction.
The word motivation is derived from the word motive. ―A motive is an impulse to activity
associated with the satisfaction of a person's need; a set of external and internal conditions that cause the
activity of the subject and determine its direction.
The term motivation refers to a system of rewards or incentives that can have a positive impact on
the degree of assimilation of the material and the effectiveness of developing skills and abilities.
Therefore, in the methodology of teaching foreign languages, the formation of a motive for learning is
always an important priority not only for the educational process as a whole, but also for each teacher.
The task of foreign language teacher is, along with all educational and developmental aspects, to
form the student's desire to learn a foreign language, to generate such an important phenomenon, as a
motivation. A teacher of a foreign language is always faced with the question of how to encourage
students to learn a language, how to interest and maintain this interest for a long time, how to develop an
interest in learning foreign languages.
It should be remembered that learning motivation is closely related to social factors, since many
factors that influence on learning motivation, is formed under the influence of society and social
conditions. As L.A.Regush said: ―Because learning motivation is mostly is socially conditioned, the
possibilities for managing it in the pedagogical process are very wide‖
[
Regush.L.A 2011
:
p. 243].
Learning motivation is a process that involves the use of various motives and incentives for the
student. The student's attitude to learning is largely determined by the system of motives of the person
himself. At the same time, we must not forget that there are other factors that influence the learning
process and the formation of educational motivation. Some experts classify motives by type, ―in this
regard, internal and external motives are distinguished‖ [Reanh A.A 2011, p. 97]
Internal motives arise within the person himself. With an internal motive, the learning process
itself is a source of satisfaction, when, for example, in the foreground the student is interested in
implementing the process and achieving the best result. External motives are due to external components,
in other words, they are formed under the influence of the teacher, other persons and society, other
external circumstances. Undoubtedly, the effectiveness of the process of teaching a foreign language
depends on many factors, but motivation in a foreign language class plays a very important role.
R.M. Ryan and E.L. Deci note that internal motivation dominates in importance, reflecting the
internal desire of the individual to learn and acquire knowledge, while external motivation can vary
considerably in its relative autonomy and, accordingly, can be a reflection of either external control or
self-regulation.
So, external motivation can be divided into several types. In the first case, students with a
pronounced external motivation carry out activities with indignation, indignation, and reluctance. in the
second case, we are talking about the forced desire of the individual to perform certain actions, but at the
