The Process of Teaching English (3rd Draft)

The process of teaching English in Venezuela has been evolving during the last thirty years, and the students have been adapting themselves and their needs as students to this reality. This process of changing is understood as a teaching method that the student must pass through to achieve an effective English apprenticeship as a foreign language. One of the most important skills in the process of teaching is “The Reading Comprehension”, and is for that reason that during the time of teaching English is very important to develop mainly this skill. Regarding to the teaching process orientation about Reading Comprehension as a skill, there are three approaching groups which are established depending on the way that the students processes the information during the reading, such as: Ascending Approach, Descending Approach and finally The Interactive Approach.

Firstly, The Ascending Approach consist on explain the process as the execution of a series of operations which are initiate with the perception of the visual stimulus that appear on the reading and conclude when the student reconstruct in their minds what the author wants to transmit; this approach is characterize for giving more importance to the visual perception process during the reading. Because of that, this approach is taken as important for the process of teaching English since it helps to the students to improve their knowledge and vocabulary; giving them the tools to create new ideas that will assist them to interpretate the reading.

In contrast with The Ascending Approach, The Descending Approach is defined as a series of operations or steps to follow that are initiated with the hypothesis formulation that the student reader makes about the meaning of the text and then confirm or reject as a final result the analysis made to the information given on text. In other words the process will be initiated is the student readers mind and will conclude when they finish the reading.

Besides these two previous approaches is found at last The Interactive Approach which explains that the reconstruction on the text meaning during the reading is the result of the interaction of the two previous type of information. At this point The Reading Comprehension Process takes place when the students finally construct in their minds the ideas taken from the text. Is important to remark that from the three Approaches of Reading Comprehension, we can say that The Interactive Approach is the one that involves the whole process and bring to the students a great variety of skills that will allow them to comprehend the text and also English language in an easier way. Therefore the student after processing the information could acquire the ability or aptitude to invent, interact and react in front of / facing/ to the text using the English language.