Difficulties that face students in Learning to Read English as F/ S language
Learning Outcomes:
- By the end of this article you will be able to: l know some of the difficulties that face teachers at school, and find out solutions to deal with these difficulties.
- Our students face various problems while learning to read in English. These issues are:
- Not mastering the spoken form: learning to read a foreign / second language is different from learning to read the mother tongue. The two situations are different. When children learn to read their mother tongue at around the age of five, they have mastered their sound system and basic structures in spoken form. You also know the vocabulary corresponding to your area of expertise. But when the child learns to read English as a foreign / second language, he does not know anything about its sound system, structures or vocabulary. The implication for the English teacher is that the child must first be aware in oral form of what he is going to read.
- Ryburn rightly observed: “It can be said as a general principle that in their first year a student should never be forced to read an unfamiliar word during a conversation…. The more this rule is followed, the better the result will be. By trying to familiarize a student with the sound and “feel” of a word before asking them to read it, we are simply following the treatment applied to them when learning to read in their native language. “
- The problem with English spelling: unlike oriental languages, English is not a phonetic language, that is, the pronunciation of a word is not the combination of the sounds of the letters that make up this word. Consider the word knowledge; the student must therefore learn the pronunciation of each word separately.
- The writing problem: English is written in Roman script, which is different from the script in which the eastern language is written. The child, in a certain case, is already familiar with the scriptures of oriental languages. When you learn the Roman script, you have mastered a new script.When learning Roman writing there is the added difficulty of learning two types of letters namely upper and lower case, Eastern language scripts are not case sensitive.
- The problems of the interference of the mother tongue: The child brings the reading habits of the mother tongue to the reading of English. Some of these habits are flawed, for example. For example, incorrect eye movements, interrupted reading, backward movement of the eye for a second look, lip movements, sub-vocal reading, etc.
- Homework
- Some student don`t appear interested in English
- Disruptive (upsetting) behavior
- Pronunciation difficulties
- Learning vowel letter is difficult
- Some students can`t understand a dialogue or a reading passage
- Most students are afraid to read English in classroom.
- The difficulty, the fist and the last reading English is the lack of a large enough incentive, very specific purpose, an environment to practice reading skill, a reasonable reading teaching method in English as an official language recognized countries, as well as non-sovereign entities.
- How to evaluate students?
