Reading Skills

READING STRATEGIES Lic. Magda Castro [email_address]

READING STRATEGIES

TASK 1. Individually, answer the following questions:

What material do you ask your ss to read?

Why do your ss need to read?

How do they read the following? Quickly, slowly, at their own pace? Why?

A novel: …………

A newspaper: …………….

A telephone directory: ………………

A short text in a language they do not know: ………

TASK 2 In pairs, compare your ideas with your partner. Any extra comments?

TASK 3 First individually, answer questions A and B. Then share your views with your partner and clarify your ideas if it is necessary.

A. What is reading comprehension for you?

B. Match the definitions on the right with the words or phrases on the left. For example 5-c.

a. Skimming

b. Scanning

c. Intensive reading

d. Extensive reading

e. Deducing meaning

1. Quickly running one’s eyes over a text to get the gist.

2. Reading longer texts usually for one’s pleasure. This is a fluency activity, mainly involving global understanding.

3. Quickly going through a text to find a particular piece of information.

4. Understanding unknown words because of contextual clues.

5. Reading shorter texts to extract specific information. This is more of an accuracy activity involving reading for detail.

WHAT GOOD READERS DO

BEFORE READING:

Form hypotheses about the author’s purpose for writing.

Make predictions based on illustrations, charts and subheadings.

They consider what they already know about the topic or the genre.

Set purposes for reading.

Establish goals to help them pace their reading.

Their teachers model the process of reading, which allows the ss to build a repertoire of useful strategies.

During reading:

Sort relevant and irrelevant information, they organize data to find the gist , or main idea.

Selectively use the three cueing systems: graphophonics (print- sound relation ships), semantic (meaning) cues, and syntax (language structure).

Use decoding (graphophonics) and context (semantics and syntax to construct meaning.

semantics syntax graphophonics M E A N I N G

After reading:

Reflect on what and how they have read.

Posing questions, evaluating strategies, confirming or adjusting predictions and hypotheses.

Writing or discussing responses, and summarizing.

Use of metacognitive strategies after reading signals readers that thinking about their thinking is important.

The ideas they bring to a text are just as important as the text itself.

Teachers have included the use of graphic organizers.

All readers can benefit form:

Instruction that makes the invisible processes of reading and thinking visible by using

Direct instruction and modeling.

Teacher ensure that students become aware of the need to monitor themselves.

Immersion in good literature, instruction and modeling, and attention to special needs.

READING SKILLS

1. PREVIEWING

a. Making predictions:

Say what will the text be about before actually reading it.

b. Anticipation:

- The ability of activating prior knowledge in order to help the text become comprehensible.

2. Inferring :

Understand a certain aspect of the text based on the meaning of the rest of the information.

It is necessary to use ideas stated in the text plus your personal experience.

You go farther than the text itself.

3. Context clues:

When you have to infer the meaning of a new word you may take into account the context in which it appears.

It might be the external context or the internal structure of the word.

4. Predicting outcomes:

- Consists of establishing the end of an incomplete fragment based on the sequence of events.

5. Cause – effect relationships

- The ability of finding the reasons or motivations why an event takes place or the consequence of an action. They might be stated or not.

Task 4.

Choose one of the reading texts and create more activities to be developed with your students, taking into consideration the reading skills. Work in groups.

READ WHY? READ WHAT? PLEASURE SURVIVA L WORK STUDY Forms, official notices, bills and receipts, labels, directions, bus and train timetables. Magazines, holiday brochures, letters. Dictionaries Text books index, abstracts Reports articles Catalogues Workshop manuals Notice boards

A DIFFICULT TEXT?