The development of reading and writing skills in the teaching process of English

There are a lot of teaching strategies to be applied in the classroom that result in hours of fun for learners such as crosswords, songs, and all types of didactic games. These activities provide students with knowledge in context in addition to the sense of recreation.

To reach the improvement of this process it is necessary that teachers apply the approaches that lead to the success of English learning by motivating students to participate in it.

Long ago, the fact that a person did not know a foreign language such as English was not an obstacle to make their dreams come true, because they could perform any role in any field without having studied this language.

However, since science is progressing every day in all the fields, this fact pushes individuals to prepare themselves as part of their moral obligation with their societies to be ready to face challenges. Therefore, to know English is an important factor that will be required and at the same time decisive to get a job.

It is important to mention that appropriate approaches to teach English efficiently have always existed throughout the time, but many teachers do not always apply them, causing lack of interest and demotivation for learning which definitely affect the teaching-learning process.

The methodological strategies to develop the students’ skills of reading and writing are basic to obtain a continuous improvement of learning. This fact will allow students to become critical, analytical, and develop a systemic thinking to boost the quality of education.

In some countries, including Ecuador, the development of reading and writing in their mother tongue has not been efficient and shown a poor production which demonstrates that people have little interest on the development of these skills.

It is regrettable to read in the newspapers that only 10% of the population has the ability to write an article or text and in the classrooms just a few students prove to be competitive when reading and much fewer the ones who can perform as a good speaker in some speech or event.

Since the ability to read and write is limited in Spanish, it is logical to think that something similar likely happens in English because for some reasons the students do not like to work on reading nor writing tasks such as e-mails, formal or informal letters, summaries, short stories and articles.

Furthermore, a lot of students do not feel confident enough to participate in activities related to reading because they think they are exposed to the teasing from peers when they hear their pronunciation and notice their insecurity at the moment they are not able to answer questions.

It is important to mention that not all of them had opportunity to receive regularly English classes in high schools or the teachers who taught this subject were not specialized in this area. As a result of this, students do not have the same level or at least a basic one that lets them perform successfully in this subject when they start their studies at the university.

This is one of the main reasons that cause students to quit their English classes or fail their study modules. To change this situation, teachers must use effective strategies that involve motivation and interest for learning from students to help them develop reading and writing skills in the English language.

This research work focus on the idea that teachers must prepare their teaching portfolio with didactic material based on suitable strategies that enable students to an active participation in the classroom that generates a real sense of cognitive learning and critical thinking in this language.

Therefore reading and writing skills are the bases that define the guidelines to be able to coordinate ideas and interact efficiently in this language. Students at the Agrarian Institute show a series of problems when trying to use the English language because they do not handle a proper lexical so they cannot organize their ideas that allow them do good writings or work successfully on reading comprehension tasks, so their production is limited due to the scarce practice in the English laboratories and in the assignments that are sent to them to reinforce the learning process. This is shown during the teaching process of the modules and turns evident in the results of the midterm and final evaluations.

Since the technological resources offer a very high potential to learn foreign languages in a different and more effective way, it is worthy that teachers encourage their students to use this material that is free and available nowadays on the web and that definitely support the development of the language skills during their learning process.

Teachers’ training must be assumed as a key part in their profession in this globalized world where all professionals have to be well-qualified to be competitive no matter what the professional fields are. This attitude should be internalized in each educator to generate and transmit their knowledge to students inside and outside the classroom.

Since the challenge of new educational approaches cannot be absent from these requirements, it is important to incorporate new tools of information, interactive resources, technologies and communication in the learning platform that is presented to students and try to use it as much as possible to get better results in this educational process.

Learning English as a foreign language requires having a lot of concentration and development of basic skills, as it is a language that has its own structures and rules that demands to maintain a discipline of study to acquire this knowledge.

On the Internet there is a wide variety of material that turns greatly useful for learners of foreign languages so English is not the exception, as a matter of fact, most of the material that is on the web can be used to reinforce and develop all the English skills and contribute with the teachers roles.

Teachers need to work harder with reading and writing activities that include general and specific information which may require students to develop their cognitive side and critical thinking through the applying of useful techniques and strategies that help students to get autonomy and perform naturally.

Teachers must be aware of the updated technological tools and therefore use a variety of teaching methods about reading, writing and also the other skills and areas by considering English language as a whole that needs to be taught by integrating all its skills and components.