Effective ways to teach reading skills to B1 students Content Introduction

1.3. Foreign experience in teaching reading skills to students of B1 level
The English methodologist Michael West created his methodological system, which had a great influence on the subsequent development of the methodology of teaching reading. He developed his system in the 1920s and 1930s for a public school in Bengal, India, and described it in the book Learning to Read a Foreign Language, as well as in a whole series of reading aids in English. He considers the main task of the system to be teaching students, first of all, to read in a foreign language, transferring the teaching of oral speech to the next classes.
The psychological substantiation of this system is the following provisions:
reading can be taught separately from oral speech, in any case, not on the basis;
reading is an easier activity than speaking;
reading at any level of development has practical value, and the associated feeling of success increases students' interest in a foreign language;
reading is the main way of familiarization with the culture of the people whose language is being studied.
As a result of reading a large number of texts, the student develops a sense of a foreign language, due to which the negative influence of the native language is weakened, which facilitates and speeds up the subsequent development of oral speech.
M. West sees the goal of teaching foreign languages ​​in free reading to himself with a general scope of content, during which the reader does not delve into details. To achieve this goal, the types of work adopted at school are unsuitable: reading aloud and reading-surveillance, which accustom the student to fixing attention on every word, which hinders the development of free, fast reading skills [3, p. 58]. Throughout the course, only related, mostly interesting texts are used. The light language of the texts, combined with the task of searching for certain information, as well as an exciting plot, create conditions for direct understanding of the text and develop reading speed.

Putting forward the path from mastering reading to oral speech as the main goal of teaching reading, M. West proposed a number of provisions:

understanding is paramount, not the expression of thoughts;
reading is significant, and the skill itself can be improved independently.
when mastering reading, the student more easily feels his success even at the initial stage, then reading serves as a source for the development of speech structure;
reading creates an opportunity to establish direct links between the concept and the word of a foreign language.
To teach each type of speech activity, M. West built lessons using "cycles of work", for example, the "Read and Say" technique - "Reading and Response". Depending on the purpose of the lesson, the lesson may consist of various cycles, but the cycles themselves should be uniform in form. The teacher can change the objectives of the lesson, but strictly adhere to the construction of the lesson once chosen by him, do not change it, so that the class knows what awaits him. Thus, students know the goal and what will happen next, so the learning process proceeds with a minimum of instructions from the teacher.
From the very beginning of learning to read, “The Prevention of Eyemouth Reading” must be prevented by adhering to the following rule: the student should not be allowed to read without checking in one way or another for his correct understanding of the words spoken aloud. To do this, in the early stages, "Reading with the Assignment" - "Reading-with-response" and pre-text questions "Before Questions" at later stages are used.
Here's an example:
The student is shown an image:
elephant
Signature below it:
This is a frog. Is this a frog?
The student must tick:
Yes or No Yes or No

The student reads the sentences:

Ted has three sweets. Dan has twoo sweets
The student must tick:
Yes or No Yes or No
In all cases, the answers must be brief, otherwise the time allotted for learning to read will be spent on writing out words slowly and carefully. Pre-text questions "Before Questions" can be used to check the understanding of the content by paragraphs. The main goal is to arouse students' interest in reading this "Forward Urge" text and prevent them from reading only the general content.
Reception "Read and Say" / "Read and Look Up".
M. West proposed the following methodology for introducing students to the “read and say” technique. Students should hold the book high, at chest level and slightly to the left. The teacher says: "Read!" The students read the sentence to themselves. After that, the teacher says: "Speak", and they, turning the book to their chest and looking at the teacher, pronounce the words, moving their lips, and so on: "Read ... Speak ... Read ... Speak ...". Then the teacher calls the student to the blackboard and invites him to read the passage to the class. From time to time the teacher interrupts him, saying: “Who did you say that to?”, trying to ensure that each phrase is addressed to any one student, and not to the whole class as a whole without a name [2, p.43].
All English teachers are familiar with the unnatural voice that a student responds to in class when called to read. The student only "voices" the words, and does not speak the language. Speech is a form of behavior! Someone is always talking to someone. It is very important that the teacher teaches his class to observe the rule: “never speak with your head in a book; you're not talking to a book, but to someone." This is important because the student speaks naturally, using language as a means of communication, and he also has to keep in mind the words of a whole phrase or phrase, or even a whole sentence. A connection is formed not from the book to the speech apparatus, but from the book to the brain, and then to the reproduction of speech