BENEFITS OF IMPLEMENTATION OF PRE-, WHILE AND POST READING ACTIVITIES IN LANGUAGE LEARNING

Summary: This article deals with the implementation and benefits of using pre-, while and post reading activities in language learning.

Key words:reading strategies, a pre-reading stage, a while-reading stage, a post-reading stage, activities.

Pedagogical  sciences

УДК 17.51                                                                         

Khamraeva Gulchekhra Ibrakhimovna

Teacher

Bukhara State University

BENEFITS OF  IMPLEMENTATION OF PRE-, WHILE AND POST READING ACTIVITIES IN LANGUAGE LEARNING

Summary: This article deals with the implementation and benefits of using pre-, while and post reading activities in language learning.

Key words:reading strategies, a pre-reading stage, a while-reading stage, a post-reading stage, activities

Reading is the most important activity in any language class. A person may read in order to gain information or verify existing knowledge, or in order to critique a writer’s ideas or writing style. A person may also read for enjoyment, or to enhance knowledge of the language being read. Reading is not only a source of information and pleasurable activity, but also an essential part of language instruction at every level because it supports learning in multiple ways:

• Reading to learn the language: Reading material is language input. By giving students a variety of materials to read, teachers provide multiple opportunities for students to absorb vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, and discourse structure as they occur in authentic contexts.
• Reading for content information: Students' purpose for reading in their native language is often to obtain information about a subject they are studying and it gives students both authentic reading material and an authentic purpose for reading.
• Reading for cultural knowledge and awareness: Reading everyday materials that are designed for native speakers can give students insight into the lifestyles and worldviews of the people whose language they are studying.

Strategic approaches to foreign language reading include different kinds of reading activities, such asusing titles and illustrations to understand a passage, skimming for an overview, scanning for specific information, guessing or predicting meaning, applying background knowledge about the text's genre and context, etc. Of course, these activities vary according to the phase, approach and specific aims of the lesson, and they are both staged and sequenced to help students develop reading skills. Awareness of those reading strategies that help learners understand the text is essential for reading success.

Generally, a reading lesson has three major stages: a pre-reading stage; a while-reading stage and a post-reading stage.

Pre-reading stage- By pre-reading activities, we mean tasks/activities that students do before they read the text in detail. The purpose of this stage is to facilitate while-reading activities. Garmer calls this stage of reading Lead-in, where the students and teacher prepare themselves for the tasks and familiarize themselves with the topic of the reading exercises.

Pre-reading activities contain: Predicting based on the title, Predicting based on vocabulary, Predicting based on the true or false questions, Skimming, Scanning, Eliciting word games, Word spider, Discussions, Brainstorming

While-reading stages- these include activities that a pupil engages in while  reading the text and the purpose of these activities would be to enable pupils to achieve the lesson aims by handling the text in different ways. Reading discussion, Answering the questions, Predicting what is next, Matching, Jigsaw reading, Reading puzzles, True/False activities are while-reading activities

Post-Reading Stage- the purposes of this stage are: to help students use their acquired knowledge in similar readings, to have them integrate their reading skills both with the other language skills: listening, speaking, writing and with the foreign culture, to make use of key words and structures to summarize the reading passage, to extract the main idea of a paragraph or a reading text and to interpret descriptions (outlining and summarizing).Useful and interesting activities of this stage are: Retelling, Reporting, Discussion, Writing a paragraph, Role play, Gap-filling, Summarizing. These activities provide the students with opportunities to relate what they have read to what they already know or what they feel.

From my teaching experience I have noticed that in order to conduct the reading lessons effectively and improve your students’ reading sub skills implementing pre-, while, and post stages is very pivotal.

Here I want to give one of the lesson plans of my Reading class.

Lesson Plan.

• 2nd year students of English Philology Department
• Reading

Topic: Environment

Duration: 80 minutes

Materials: teacher-created Power Point slides, handouts, posters,  projector

The aim: to increase students reading and speaking skills with the help of pre, while, post activities.

Lesson objectives: To raise students’ reading and critical thinking skills through communicative activities, to brush up students’ vocabulary, topractise scanning, skimming, predicting

Interaction: individual, group work and plenary – learner-centered class

The Procedure of the lesson:

1. Warm up

a) Teacher held a warm up session, in order to motivate the students and focus their attention to the topic she showed a poster with different pictures. Looking at the pictures students should logically think and guess  the topic of the lesson

b) Teacher asked brainstorming questions about the topic and discussion was held

2. Pre – reading stage:

1. Predicting based on the title. Teacher wrote the title of the text and asked students to predict what reading passage they were going to read was about
2. Guessing the meaning. Teacher showed the pictures of disasters and asked students to guess the meaning of these desasters.

3.  While reading stage:

1. Scanning and  Skimmimg.Teacher askeds students to read the text and highlight the main ideas of the text, then to find a specific pieces of information
2. Matching.Students were asked to match text captions to pictures and to elicit the main points of each paragraph in a text
3. Jigsaw.Students were asked to fit headings and subheadings into a text from which they had been removed
4. True/False/Not Given.Students read the statements and decide whether statements were related to the content of the text or not

4.  Post reading stage:

1. Retelling. Students were asked to retell the meaning of the text
2.  Reporting-Roleplay. Teacher asked  1 student to be a journalist and take interviews from his classmates about the environment
3. Summarizing. Students summarized the topic and filled T-chart-table

 Homework:Writing a paragraph about Environmental problems

During the class reading was  integrated  with both speaking and writing. While doing reading activities students were highly motivated, participated in pair work and group works and enjoyed doing different tasks.

In Conclusion I want to say that reading is an excellent way for students to make progress in language learning and implementing different pre-, while, post reading activities not only practical to integrate the other skills, but also very beneficial and effective way of developing students reading and understanding comprehension.

References:

1. David Nunan. Language teaching methodology. A textbook for teachers
2. Ivana Trajonoska. Developing Students Reading skills.
3. Fry E.B. Skimming and Scanning. Middle level. Jamestown Publishers..

       4. Exploring second language reading:Issues and strategies. Boston.2003.