COMPREHENSION DIFFICULTIES OF AUTHENTIC READING IN TEACHING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (FLT) IN KAZAKHSTANI CONTEXT

This article will concentrate on questions of methodology, namely comprehension difficulties of authentic texts. Over the past three years we had the benefit of continuing discussions with the staff and students of the Foreign Language Teacher Training Faculty at Almaty and most of what is worthwhile in this article derives directly or indirectly from them. This article is an attempt to explore certain difficulties in authentic reading that seems to us to arise from adopting a communicative approach to the teaching reading. It is the purpose of this article to reveal the reasons and causes that make reading hard and analyze the nature of errors. We must accept the commitment to propose a preparation and exploited exercises and the practical consequences of applying them as a teaching aim. The methods of the research include literature review, analysis of research cards, questioners, survey. In the study difficulties are classified into six groups according to their linguistic, semantic, syntactic, conceptual, extra linguistic features. They can be summarized as follows: a general lack of awareness about the principles of affixation, the use of expressions in a figurative sense, poor realization of metaphorical meanings of familiar words and phrases. The main aim of this article is to suggest basic rules and guidelines on avoiding errors in foreign language reading. The task before the teacher, then, is to help students change their reading habits by teaching them efficient reading strategies. An effective way to do this is through guided reading.  For example, word-attack skills. These skills enable the reader to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words and phrases without looking them up in the dictionary. Here are two useful word attack skills: using context clues, and using structural information. Using context clues, includes using the meanings of other words such as synonyms and antonyms in the same sentence or paragraph, or the meaning of the sentence or paragraph as a whole, to deduce the possible meaning of unfamiliar words and phrases. Using structural information, this refers to word formation. An analysis of the stems and affixes of words can help our students get the meaning of many unfamiliar words. The meaning of the whole word can be worked out by analyzing its component parts. Reading in meaningful units, students should be able to read in meaningful units instead of isolated words. A useful way to train students to read in meaningful units is to break up a sentence into sense groups and have students focus their eyes on the middle of each sense group arranged in separate lines and try to see words on each side of the middle line.  The transition of knowledge-based paradigm to competent based paradigm changed the aims and method of teaching reading. In competence-based approach which nowadays presents an innovative process in FL Education and corresponds to the general conception of educational standards found in many countries. Comprehension of authentic reading suggests the presence of certain competences, as readiness and abilities to fulfill tasks. In this connection the meaning is not in the text, it is in the mind of the reader. Meaning is created depending on the background knowledge, experience of the reader and schemata. It goes without saying that reading comprehension largely depends on the technique of reading. However FL reading comprehension as a complex psycho –physiological process of cognitive activity should be regarded in the framework of Intercultural Communicative competence as the final goal of FLE outlined by many scholars (Canale and Swain, Savingon, S.S.Kunanbaeva) which involves different interpretations of the phenomenon and its structural components.