teaching reading to children: methods and techniques

the essential role of reading can be overlooked neither in the native nor in the second or foreign language. reading skill is an important asset in the process of literacy as well as a means of extending one's knowledge, however, teaching reading involves unique problems and challenges at all conceivable levels of instruction. focusing on teaching english to children, practitioners complain of deficiency of children in reading. this can be due to the method applied, materials, techniques, and procedures. this article reviews the different methods of teaching reading to children and tries to highlight the shortcomings of each one of them, while the main concern is to introduce some of the techniques that are useful for teaching reading to children at different age groups in an efl situation.