As Francis Bacon said, “Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man”, the world of knowledge is expressed through written form. It needs creative and analytical reading skills to comprehend the written form. Reading requires one to think, feel and imagine. It is an important activity that requires interpretation of ideas symbolised by written or printed language. Students of government high schools of Mahaboobnagar district in Telangana state lack English Reading skills. They cannot understand, skim, scan, and decode English passages, lessons etc. They need some play-way methods to improve their reading skills. Hence, this article focussed on understanding the problems of teachers in improving the reading skills of their students and applying play-way reading methods to improve the reading skills of the government high school students. For this purpose, a structured questionnaire was administered to 100 government high school teachers. The responses were analysed, interpreted, and presented in the findings section. A one-week training programme was designed for the teachers of English to show the effectiveness of play-way methods in improving the reading skills. The training made a great impact on the teachers of English.
Key Words: Reading skills, skim, scan, play-way methods, structured questionnaire, training programme
