Teach English in Maoba Zhen - Enshi Tujiazu Miaozu Zizhizhou

91 How can reading influence language acquisition? There have been many discussions and debates whether reading can affect language acquisition or not. This essay is going to write about “How can reading influence language acquisition”. The writer was born and raised in Japan, acquired English domestically. In this essay, the writer is going to analyze the methods and the influence of the reading, incorporating the experience the writer has had in Japan. When starting to learn English, most schools are going to teach students alphabet, which is essential basis of English letter, and then move on to basic English greeting, and after that, students are finally ready to learn grammar through textbook. This path is very logical and effective way to learn faster than being exposed to foreign language in the first lesson. Those who have finished learning basic English grammar, which in most language or general schools teach, can move on to exposure of English, which basically means getting used to English itself by reading, listening, speaking and writing many times. I believe this “exposure” is indispensable to acquire English. Especially, reading is the most important element of four skills. Learning a foreign language for most people, can be a hardship. To eliminate the hardship and to learn appropriately as much as possible, learners need to study grammar at the fist stage, not from the conversation. Learning grammar always entails written English sentences to analyze the language structure. This logic tells the truth that if you cannot understand an English written sentence, you also cannot understand it when you hear it. Whenever students learn a foreign language, they need to go through written English to know the grammar in order to look at English objectively. In the case of language exposure, students should get used to reading English written materials at first. Although in many cases, it is often said that reading, listening, speaking and writing skills are all equally important, I believe reading skill is the most important skill of four skills including listening, speaking and writing. In the training of the reading, learners recognize English word written on the media, which in most cases paper or the screen, and then they imagine what the word means in their mind. That process is the most basic step of using a language. To explain this, this arrow would be easy to understand. Recognize→Think→Understand. Auditory sense will be added in this process in the case of listening. Reading and listening are similar since they are categorized as the receptive skills on the TEFL textbook. The reason why I believe learners should start taking on reading rather than other elements, is very simple. Reading is much simpler than other three skills and most English learners have gone through written English in the grammar study. Learners can see the written language and analyze it on the paper or screen. As for other skills, there are additional factors in each, hence the hurdles are relatively higher than reading. For example, in the case of listening, learners need to recognize the spoken language itself, connecting the written language’s information at the same time. In addition to that, learners need to practice pronunciation to get used to spoken English itself so that they become able to catch the word when spoken. Long process would be entailed in the listening practice. If students resort to speaking and writing in the first exposure stage, they tend to make simple mistakes continuously. To avoid that, learners should receive many corpus data of the language in their brain. If they go through that procedure, they will get the sense of congruous to feel the right or wrong. Students who have accomplished it can make their own sentences and check the sentence on their own. Building the sense is the top priority. By doing that, learners can write and speak English more appropriately, which would make the learning more productive. Then you would have a question, “what kind of reading materials students should read?”. My answer is that since most learners are living in their own countries, they need to get to know about the current world itself : Reading news papers or magazines would be good option to enhance the reading skill and to know about the current events happening in the world. The reason why they need to read news articles is that knowing about the current events, while improving reading skill is very productive. This method can be applied to other English skills. For example, if a student finished reading the article, he/she can write own opinion about the article, which can improve writing skill and critical thinking ability. Using news media is very effective to improve English skills because learners can relate English with the real world. In my opinion, incorporating English is very important to improve English, because English is used in many countries. Gaining the news information in English is like “two birds with one stone”. In conclusion, reading skill is most fundamental of every English skill from the aspect of cognitive ability. Reading is the basic receptive skill. Using the news articles would be very effective method to relate English with the real world. I hope that many English teachers are feeling the same thing, but in the reality, looking at the entire world, there is no one god. There are many ways to acquire foreign languages and each person has different aptitude. I would like to be teacher who can find the students aptitude as soon as I can and make the most suitable lessons for them.