Comprehension Difficulties of Authentic Reading in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (FLT) in Kazakhstani Context

Ainiya Abdrakhmanova¹ and Dilraba Anayatova²
Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Kazakh Ablaikhan University of International Relations and World Languages, Foreign Language Teacher Training Faculty, Almaty, Kazakhstan, ms.ainiya@mail.ru
Masters of Education, Kazakh Ablaikhan University of International Relations and World Languages, Foreign Language Teacher Training Faculty, Almaty, Kazakhstan, dilya.anayatova@gmail.com

Abstract

This article will concentrate on questions of methodology, namely comprehension difficulties of authentic texts. Over the past three years we had the benefit of continuing discussions with the staff and students of the Foreign Language Teacher Training Faculty at Almaty and most of what is worthwhile in this article derives directly or indirectly from them. This article is an attempt to explore certain difficulties in authentic reading that seems to us to arise from adopting a communicative approach to the teaching reading. It is the purpose of this article to reveal the reasons and causes that make reading hard and analyze the nature of errors. We must accept the commitment to propose a preparation and exploited exercises and the practical consequences of applying them as a teaching aim. The methods of the research include literature review, analysis of research cards, questioners, survey. In the study difficulties are classified into six groups according to their linguistic, semantic, syntactic, conceptual, extra linguistic features. They can be summarized as following: there is a general lack of awareness about the principles of affixation, when expressions are used in a figurative sense, poor realization of metaphorical meanings of familiar words and phrases. The main aim of this article is to suggest basic rules and guidelines on avoiding errors in foreign language reading. The task before the teacher, then, is to help students change their reading habits by teaching them efficient reading strategies. An effective way to do this is through guided reading.  For example, word-attack skills. These skills enable the reader to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words and phrases without looking them up in the dictionary. Here are two useful word attack skills: using context clues, and using structural information. Using context clues, includes using the meanings of other words such as synonyms and antonyms in the same sentence or paragraph, or the meaning of the sentence or paragraph as a whole, to deduce the possible meaning of unfamiliar words and phrases. Using structural information, this refers to word formation. An analysis of the stems and affixes of words can help our students get the meaning of many unfamiliar words. The meaning of the whole word can be worked out by analyzing its component parts. Reading in meaningful units, students should be able to read in meaningful units instead of isolated words. A useful way to train students to read in meaningful units is to break up a sentence into sense groups and have students focus their eyes on the middle of each sense group arranged in separate lines and try to see words on each side of the middle line.

Keywords: strategy, conceptual, psycholinguistic, interaction, comprehension, authentic reading, affixation, glossary.