WAYS TO OVERCOME DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING READING IN ENGLISH

Abstract

The article justifies the importance of the practice of daily reading against the background of consumption of “quick” information from social networks, available video content and television. The relevance and urgency of the formation of reading skills is emphasized in view of the “Strategy for the development of reading for the period until 2032 “Reading as a life strategy”, approved by the order of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. The article is devoted to the characteristics of difficulties in learning to read in English and the description of ways to overcome them. The authors analyzed the main causes of difficulties in teaching Ukrainian students to read in English in view of the differences in the sound and letter composition of these languages. The necessary prerequisites for successful learning to read have been determined. Considerable attention is devoted to the characteristics of phonemic awareness as a necessary skill for successful learning to read in any language. Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. This includes blending sounds into words, segmenting words into sounds, and deleting and playing with the sounds in spoken words. Explicit teaching of phonological awareness in early years can eliminate future reading problems for many students. The authors gave examples of various exercises for the formation of reading micro-skills. Special attention is paid to the strategy of multisensory leaning, which incorporates different activities in teaching reading based on seeing, hearing, moving, touching, reading and writing. Multisensory approach is overall beneficial to the learners’ academic development as it includes a wide spectrum of highly motivational, interactive and entertaining activities. Such activities as Sound Chain, Sound and Pound, Key Vowel, Catch the Sound, Paddle Pop, Syllable Segmenting and Blending are described and carefully exemplified in the article.