The Process of Teaching English (5th 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 to this reality. This process of changing is understood as a teaching method that the students must pass through to achieve effective English apprenticeship. One of the most used skill in this process of teaching English is “Reading Comprehension”, and it is for that reason that during the time of teaching English it is very important to develop this skill. Regarding the teaching process orientation about reading comprehension, there are three approaching groups which are established depending on the way that the students process the information during the reading: The Ascending Approach, The Descending Approach and The Interactive Approach.

According to Rivera S., Forteza and Rivera I., say that, the Ascending Approach explains the process of reading as the execution of a series of operations which are initiated with the perception of the visual stimulus that appear on the reading and that it is concluded when the students reconstruct in their minds what the author wants to transmit. At this point the visual stimulus becomes equally important because it allows the students to develop the process of making the general ideas of what they have read in a visual way. They also explain that “a visual stimulus is a reaction that an object in a passive way produces over a subject that is in front of this”. The descending approach is characterized for giving more importance to the visual perception process during the reading. It is for that reason that this approach is taken as important for the process of learning English, besides 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. The ascending approach contributes to generate a visual recreation of the text; the advantage of this is that a student, like a university student can take a whole idea of what he or she is reading to later conclude the text with a general perception of this.

On the other hand Rivera S., Forteza and Rivera I., explain that the Descending Approach is defined as a series of operations or steps to follow that are initiated with the hypothesis formulation that the students make about the meaning of the text and then confirm or reject as a final result of the analysis made to the information given on the text. In other words the process will start in the students mind and will conclude when they finish the reading. This approach assists the students to comprehend the text, but taking into account that the hypothesis that they has made about the text gave them the exact kind of knowledge they were looking for on it. For example, a student of English would look in a vocabulary book some unknown English words. Using the Descending Approach he will confirm or reject if the book provided him the information he was looking for.

The authors previously mentioned also propose another approach, named the Interactive Approach which explains that the reconstruction of the text meaning during the reading is the result of the interaction of the two previous types of approaches. At this point the reading comprehension process takes place when the students finally construct in their mind the ideas taken from the text. Also it is important to say that from these three approaches of reading comprehension, the Interactive Approach is the most useful of them, since it involves the whole process of reading comprehension and give to the students the tools to find the information that they are looking for. That will allow them to comprehend the text and also the English language in an easier way. Therefore the students, after processing the information, could acquire the ability to react in front to the text using the English language.

To conclude, it is said that these three approaches allow the students to establish general ideas about the text they are reading. Those approaches are conciousness process that they set up before start a reading what during the moment of walking through the text will let them to find the information that they are looking for on it. Those approaches also help them to recreate their mental processes. It would be ideal if the university professors apply these methods in order to help their students to comprehen better the texts that they read, and also it makes easier their own process of learning English.