Approaches to developing reading skills of learners’ of English

Conclusion
Students today are faced with ever increasing demands to read and read well. The importance of teaching reading as a process and that strategy instruction has been found to impact students’ appreciation of reading as a process, the goal of which is to understand what is being read. But the ultimate objective of comprehension instruction should be student ownership of the strategies and skills, knowing when comprehension breaks down and how to address the problem and repair the breakdown. Teaching students to use a repertoire of comprehension strategies and skills can set them securely on the path to becoming lifelong readers. Many opportunities to read independently allow students to begin to coordinate the strategies they have learned; to adjust, modify, or change strategies and skills until they are able to make sense of text. The higher order thinking of strategic readers also enhances their reading experience and responses to literature and informational text. And once students take ownership of the process, they take it one step further—they take what they know, apply it to the unknown, and become creative thinkers who are able to assess problems from the comfortable position of knowing they have the skills and can acquire the knowledge they need to solve any problem with which they are faced. In examining the various theories of reading comprehension one is struck by the proliferation of different terms, and what superficially appear to be different theories. There seems to be a tendency for
researchers to coin a new term whenever they propose a new perspective on the reading comprehension process, leaving it up to the reader to discern whether and how this is different from or similar to other theories. We are beginning to integrate the reading process into larger theories of cognitive development and learning. The importance of background knowledge is especially salient in the age of Common Core. To meet the demands of these new standards, children will be expected to develop knowledge through text, both narrative and informational, within specified difficulty ranges at each grade level. Informational text, in particular, is likely to have a greater density of conceptual language and academic terms than typical storybooks or narrative texts. Consequently, these texts will place increasing demands on children's prior knowledge, further attenuating other risk factors. Without greater efforts to enhance background knowledge, differences in children's knowledge base may further exacerbate the differences in children's vocabulary and comprehension. The imperative to foster children's background knowledge as a means for providing a firm foundation for learning, therefore, is greater than ever.