How to Teach Reading Successfully

 How to achieve a successful teaching of reading in Romanized Languages

by Manuel (a RW 7 Student)

Reading is one of the most important processes that human beings have

developed along their history. The importance of this process is related to all those

simple and daily activities in which reading is involved. For instance, when a person

wants to make a delicious recipe, he or she should have previously developed some

readings skills such as reading comprehension to understand the steps and

procedures to get successfully that recipe. Another example that shows the

relevance of reading in the modern world is when someone buys a medicine at the

pharmacy that should be taken according to the written instructions that the

container has. In this case, if the person who bought the medicine does not know to

read, she or he would be at risk to get serious health problems or eventually death.

These two simple examples show clearly that those who know how to read have

many more advantages than those who have not acquired the basic skills to

decipher written information. Therefore, many countries around the world have

spent large sums of money to improve the reading teaching in schools because they

believe that reading is the key factor to be successful in the academic aspect as in

daily life. Countries such as the United States, Spain and Chile are some examples of

governments who have spent a lot of economic resources to research what

strategies are the most adequate to teach children to read. Researchers from all over

the world who have devoted a long time researching this topic have demonstrated

and agreed that teaching reading should be developed in accordance to three

fundamental steps that can not be forgotten by who is teaching to read.

The first step to teach to read is the teacher or the person who is teaching

 should assess the child’s phonological awareness level because according to

researchers this is a key factor to learning to read. Phonological awareness is a

phonological skill that permits people to know that words are comprised of letters

and syllables that have different sounds and each one of them represents a

distinctive sound. Thus, if a child has not developed a proper level in the skills

associated with phonological awareness, the student could have a lot of difficulties

to achieve this learning. After the teacher has already assessed this aspect, he or she

would know what phonological awareness level the child has. If the child has

achieved a good performance in the assessment, the teacher could pass them to

following stage. However, if the obtained results from the assessment are low, the

teacher should generate a program to improve these skills before he or she begins to

teach the letters(vowels and consonants). Usually, these programs consist in a series of

activities that permit children to develop skills such as recognition of initial or end sounds

of words, counting syllables, spelling tasks, etc. Thus, when the teacher sees that the child

is able to face successfully these tasks, he or she could be thinking about the next step

where the child will start to learn the different letters that compound the Romanized

alphabets.

After the child has earned an adequate performance in the tasks related to

phonological awareness, he or she will be ready to face the second step to learn to

read. Here, the teacher teaches each letter and its sound. For example, the teacher

shows the letter /C/ which is written on a card. While at the same time, the teacher

pronounces the sound that represents the letter. Usually, teachers use some

illustrations to support the memorization process of a letter. For example, if the

teacher is teaching the /C/ in Spanish, he or she will use a card where the letter /C/

appears beside the world /CASA/. Obviously, if the teacher is teaching the letter /C/

in English, he or she will use another different illustration, for example a cup. After

the child has memorized the sound and is able to recognize visually the letter, the

teacher will teach the child how to build syllables. At this stage, the teacher joins the

consonant with a vowel. For example, if we use the example of the letter /C/, the

teacher will teach the child that if he joins the /C/ with the vowel /A/, he will build

the syllable /CA/ or if he joins it with the vowel /O/, the child will build the

syllable /CO/. When the child has already built all the possible combinations, he will

be able to create and read words. For example, the child could built simple words

such as /CACO/, /COCO/, /CUCO/, etc. and read them. Despite these words can be

called pseudowords because some of them do not have meaning, the important of

this activity is children can be able recognizing the letter’s sound. This last thing is

very important because if the children recognize the letter and its sound, it means

that the child could read any word. Once the student has achieved mastery to read

syllables and words that contain the letter /C/ the teacher should continue teaching

the next consonant and using the same steps used in the teaching of the letter /C/.

Although the visual and aural recognition of the alphabet is an important skill to

earn good performances in reading, it is not sufficient because whoever wants to be

a successful reader should have a high level of reading comprehension.

The last step to complete the reading teaching process is to develop reading

 comprehension. Reading comprehension is a complex skill in which a series of

processes such as memory, attention and language interact as well as other factors

related to a student’s background. At this step, the teacher should teach some skills

that help students to analyze and synthesize information that has been read. Usually,

at the beginning the analysis and synthesis tasks are done in simple sentences and

later in paragraphs. For example, the teacher ask a child to read a sentence and the

child read it. After that the teacher asks some questions about what the child read

about. These type of questions are related to main characters, facts or opinions that

the student could give about it. After a certain time, the teacher should increase the

tasks complexity by asking the child to read paragraphs and simple readings such as

stories or informative texts. At this stage, the child could answer questions more

complex than those answered at the previous stage. In addition, the teacher could

add tasks such as paraphrasing or discussion questions. Finally, and as has been

noted previously, reading comprehension is considered a complex skill that is very

important for all the students therefore it should be worked on every day in the

school and at home.

Over time, reading has become a fundamental tool and skill to achieve simple

things as for example to read a recipe or a medical prescription, or other more complex as

to earn academic goals. That is one of the reasons why most countries throughout the

world have been spending a lot of economic resources to improve the teaching in the

schools. Therefore, a successful reading teaching process should approach or teach some

skills such as phonological awareness, letters recognition and reading comprehension.