Reading as one of the types of speech activity in English lessons

Reading is one of the most important means of human communication, and one of the most important means of human culture. In the modern world, with the constantly increasing flow of information between countries, reading in a foreign language begins to occupy a large place in a person's life.

One of the main tasks of teaching a foreign language in a primary school is to teach reading and understanding of the text in a foreign language. Reading in a foreign language is a type of speech activity that allows you not to imitate, but to reproduce one of the forms of real communication in a foreign language. Based on this function, reading education should be built, in my opinion, in such a way that pupils perceive it as a real activity that has practical significance. What is the reason for the poor proficiency of primary school pupils in reading techniques and reading comprehension? The main reason is that pupils pay very little attention to the development of teaching methods for reading and understanding text in a foreign language. In addition, oral speech in the classroom is given much more time than reading. In modern school textbooks on foreign languages, a differentiated approach to teaching oral speech and reading is reflected. Reading in the classroom seems to lose its independence and becomes an attribute of oral speech, and reading material - only an additional incentive for the development of speaking skills.

However, reading from a psychological point of view is a process of perception and active processing of information graphically encoded according to the system of a particular language. Thus, in this process of speech communication, there are two main inseparably interrelated distinctive features:

• a)    the process of perception of printed or written text;

• b)    the process of understanding what is being read. Reading as a type of speech activity is the extraction of information from printed text. This activity is differentiated by different characteristics, which is reflected in different types of reading. In any educational institution, including the main school, the purpose of training is to develop the ability to read about yourself, synthetic, untranslated. Other types of reading prepare its functioning as a type of speech activity and generally serve as a means of teaching a foreign language.

The new state standard of basic general education in a foreign language specifies the minimum content of basic educational programs. Depending on the kind of reading, it requires pupils to achieve an understanding of texts with various depth and precision of penetration of their content: understanding of the basic content (introductory reading), with a full understanding of the content (learning reading), with selective understanding of the basic content of the authentic texts, on the materials reflecting the peculiarities of life, culture and way of life of the target language. The main types of reading in the course of educational activities are viewing and searching, translated and untranslated, studying and introductory, analytical and synthetic, as well as reading aloud and to yourself.

Search reading is focused on reading newspapers and literature in the specialty. Its purpose is to quickly find certain data (facts, characteristics, numerical indicators, and instructions) in a text or in an array of texts. It is aimed at finding specific information in the text. Learning reading provides the most complete and accurate understanding of all the information contained in the text and critical understanding of it. This is a thoughtful and unhurried reading that involves a purposeful analysis of the content of the text being read based on logical connections of the text. Its task is also to develop the pupil's ability to independently overcome difficulties in understanding a foreign text. Introductory reading is a cognitive reading, in which the subject of the reader's attention becomes the entire speech work (book, article, story) without setting up to receive certain information. Untranslated reading are closely related to the degree of pupils ' foreign language proficiency. Their essence lies in the fact that the penetration into the content of the text goes through the conductor-the native language or directly bypassing it.

The process of understanding the content of the text can be mediated by the pupil's native language or be direct. When the content of a text is understood directly, we are talking about untranslated reading. Untranslated reading occurs in advanced pupils when the process of reading in a foreign language becomes similar to the process of reading in their native language.

The main task when learning to read aloud is to achieve the correct intonation of the text in terms of logical division of the sentence, highlighting the main and secondary. However, the abuse of reading aloud prevents the formation of fluency in reading, as it strengthens the habit of full pronunciation. Reading about yourself must be carried out both in the classroom and at home. Analytical and synthetic types of reading are differentiated on the basis of psychological attitudes. In analytical reading, pupils' attention is directed to the detailed perception of the text with the analysis of the language form, in synthetic reading - to the holistic perception of the content. Analytical reading develops pupils ' ability to identify places in the text that make it difficult to understand, and use a dictionary and other reference literature. Synthetic reading is based on a strong command of lexical and grammatical material, the ability to recognize the meaning of unknown words by contextual guess and formal features, the function of words in a sentence.

One of the typical mistakes made by pupils in the course of learning to read is the discrepancy between the sensory and motor processes that occur during the perception of the text. Errors of thinking when reading can be divided into a number of groups, the nature of which, although similar to the nature of errors in writing, but has some features: the first group of errors is due to insufficiently active thinking. This group includes errors in reading a word without taking into account the relevant rules or features of the letter designations of sounds included in this word. This case is observed when the pupil has studied the rule of writing a given word and its letter designation has not yet been automated and is necessarily controlled by consciousness. The second group of errors is caused by the fact that the pupil thinks in the structure of the native language. Most often, these errors occur at the initial stage of training. Moreover, when reading, there is a mechanical substitution of an unfamiliar word for another word known to the pupil. The fourth group of errors is associated with the formation of false automated links (false connection errors).

The nature of the fifth group of thinking errors is the inability to apply the rule. These errors arise from the inability of pupils to accurately and correctly analyze language phenomena and the lack of a strong connection between the features of language phenomena and the corresponding rules. The sixth group of errors is "perseveration errors". They are based on the inertia of nervous processes, as a result of which the perceived visual image is obviously too long in the mind, which leads to reading extra letters, skipping or rearranging them. The same group of errors can be attributed to errors of inertia of action, which are associated with the tendency of the pupil to act stereotypically. Errors related to incorrect perception of the context of a phrase or the entire text are very common. And finally, the last, seventh type of error-errors of extra-contextual perception. These errors are explained by the fact that " the word affects when reading not as part of a complex stimulus (phrase), but as an independent unit taken out of context. The word is not understood in the context of the entire phrase."

The pupil must clearly understand the psychological and linguistic nature of reading errors in order to correct them more effectively. Pupils' awareness of the causes of errors will also help to overcome the erroneous action.

In conclusion, it should be noted that currently teaching reading in a foreign language is a very important problem, and the search for effective methods and means of teaching reading in a foreign language is quite an urgent task. After all, one of the generally accepted means of forming a personality in a civilized society is reading because of its great intellectual and emotional impact on the individual. But, unfortunately, the vast majority of school children do not read much in their native language. That is why reading has been and is being given a lot of attention in the methodology of teaching foreign languages. Without mastering reading as a type of speech activity, further use of a foreign language after school is quite limited.