Reading is a conscious
and unconscious thinking process.
The reader applies many strategies to
reconstruct the
meaning that the author is assumed to have intended.
The
reader does this by comparing information in the text
to his or her
background knowledge and prior experience.
All reading is culture
conditioned, constructed by the
reader. The teacher must never forget
the different
cultural background when using English texts.
The different types of reading skills are:
Decoding. Decoding is the ability to sound out words
children have heard before but haven't seen written out.
Phonics. ...
Vocabulary. ...
Fluency. ...
Sentence Construction & Cohesion. ...
Reading Comprehension. ...
Reasoning & Background Knowledge. ...
Working Memory & Attention.
Some Enhancements
to improve
reading abilities
Reading Comprehension
If the learner has the alphabets, vocabulary, and fluency skills necessary and still does not
comprehend what he/she reads, then instruction and support are needed
in comprehension strategies.
Please note:
Students
come to Literacy Source with varying levels
of proficiency in each of
these skill areas, and each
student is different!
As a tutor or
instructor, you are able to observe students as they read, see where
they are stronger and where they have gaps, and help them grow in the
areas where they are weaker!
In order to read well in English
students need to do the following:
1.
Develop a schema of the reading process that includes
the idea that
reading is more than translating—reading is
thinking.
2. Talk about
their reading, and explain how they make
sense of a text.
3.Read
extensively for pleasure in English, and discuss
their reading with
someone who can model the literate
behaviors expected in an
English-language context.
4. Break the habit of reading every word by
reading faster.
5. Learn to vary their reading rate to suit their
purpose in
reading.
6. Employ top-down processes effectively by learning
to
make connections between what they already know and
what they are
reading.
7. Learn reading and thinking skills that fluent readers of
English employ unconsciously to strengthen both
top-down and bottom-up
processing abilities.
8. Enhance bottom-up processing by acquiring the
most
useful vocabulary and by learning strategies for guessing
meaning
in context.
9. Master the basic 2,000 words that constitute
approximately 80 percent of texts in English.
10. Acquire specific
reading comprehension skills
they can apply strategically
Common approaches to teaching
reading:
1-The
lesson may start out with pr-reading
questions, during which the
teacher taps into
students’ background knowledge and teaches
some key
vocabulary.
Sometimes students are asked to preview the
passage at this
point and predict its contents.
Students often preview by looking at the
title, the
photo and caption accompanying the passage,
and section
headings.
2-Students
are then asked to read the passage on
their own, most commonly at home
but sometimes
in class.
After reading the passage, students almost
always
answer a set of post-reading comprehension
questions (often in
true/false, multiple choice,
fill-in-the-blank, or short answer
formats); complete
vocabulary and/or grammar exercises; and engage
in
what we might call“ personalization ” activities in
written or spoken
form, during which they state an
opinion about the reading or connect
some aspect
of the passage to their own lives.
The teacher and students
go over answers to
comprehension questions, exercises, and activities
.
Then the teacher directs students to the next
chapter, and the cycle
begins again.
3-The
teacher reads the passage aloud in class
(after having assigned it for
homework) while
explaining grammar points and vocabulary items
as they
appear in the text. Students typically listen
passively to the teacher’s
read aloud and
commentary.
Enhance reading:
1. Extensive practice
This
is because because displaying completed class
projects in the form of
wall newspapers, posters,
PowerPoint slides, reports, brochures, and
photo
essays can be motivating for other students
to read as well.
Make age-appropriate print materials available for
students to check
out. Ask school colleagues,
friends in the community, local tourist offices, and,
when appropriate, the families of enrolled students
to
donate English-language materials
(e.g., newspapers, magazines, books)
to the
school. Make them available for students to
check out and read
for pleasure.
2-Building student motivation for
reading:
Strive to make required reading passages
interesting.
Give students some degree of choice. Provide
students with
opportunities to select some of their
own readings, for either in-class
or out-of-class
reading.
Promote cooperation among students.
Include
opportunities for students to work together without
the pressure
of competing with each other.
Set students up for success. When
students
experience reading success and can see their
progress, they
become motivated and engaged.
3. Attention to reading fluency
Repeated oral reading:
Ask students to reread a short passage aloud
(but softly) 2–4 times.
Oral paired rereading:
Ask students to work to reread a text aloud.
Repeated silent reading
with a new purpose:
Before moving onto a new
chapter, ask students to
reread a passage for a new purpose
(e.g., to
prepare for a summary; fill in a graphic
organizer;Echo reading:
Pair
a stronger reader with a
weaker reader.
Ask the stronger reader to
start out by reading 1–2
sentences of a longer passage aloud, after
which the weaker reader reads aloud the exact same text segment.
Buddy reading:
Pair students with similar reading abilities. Ask them to take turns, of reading aloud a longer but easy text.
Teacher read-aloud:
Read a text aloud to students, while students read
along silently.
One-minute reading:
Ask students to reread a text for exactly one
minute, once a week.
4. Vocabulary building
Encourage students to become word collectors.
Following the reading of
a text, ask students to
circle five words that they want to learn.
1•
Ask students to categorize words. Choose a text with many useful vocabulary words and pick 15–20 words for students to work with.
Ask
students to sort the words into 2–4 categories provided by the teacher,
such as (1) adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and verbs;
(2) positive words, negative words, and neutral words; and
(3) medical words, technology words, and solution words.
Guide students in analyzing words. Choose words from students’ texts
with similar prefixes, roots, and suffixes and instruct them to analyze
the words.
4•
Encourage students to use newly learned words.
Write three recently
learned words on the board.
Ask students to choose one and write for one
minute, using the word at least once.
Improve Fluency First
Reading Is Fun.
Do you notice how you stopped every time you saw
the period? Now
imagine reading an entire article or
even book like this, stopping
after every word.
It would be difficult to understand, wouldn’t it?
It’s
hard to form an understanding of what you’re reading when you read
word-by-word instead of in full sentences. That’s why, to improve your understanding, it’s important to improve your
fluency first.
Fluency
is how smoothly you can read. When you
read in your head, you should
have a certain rhythm
to the words.
The words should flow together
naturally, like when
somebody is talking. That’s how to read English
books like a native speaker would.
Improving fluency can be as
simple as choosing
slightly easier texts to read, or it might take some
time and practice. If you take some time to improve
how fluently you
read, though, it will help you in the
future. You’ll improve your reading and even your
speaking. It will also make reading feel more fun
and natural.
What are the five reading skills?
Essential Components of Reading
Overview.
Phonemic Awareness.
Phonics.
Fluency.
Vocabulary.
Comprehension.
Spelling.
Ask Yourself Questions
There are a few things you can do before, during and after reading to help you better understand the text. Before you read, browse the text.
That means you should look over the text quickly
without actually reading every word. Take some time after you read too, to browse again and summarize what you remember.
Try to quickly say or write a few sentences that describe what the text was about.Thinking
about what you read will show you how much of it you really understood, and help you figure out if you still have questions.
Before you read
Here are a few questions you can ask yourself as
you browse,to help you prepare for reading:
Are there any words in bold or italics?
Are there titles or subtitles?
What are some of the names mentioned?
Is there a lot of dialogue?
Are the paragraphs short or long?
After you read
The questions below can be used to help you think
about what you did and did not understand:
What was the text about?
What are the most important things that happened
in the text?
Did anything confuse you?
Did anything surprise you?
Are there any parts you didn’t understand?
You might have some more questions depending on
what kind of text you were reading, but these are
good basic ones to start with.
Reading comprehension skills
Summarizing.
Sequence
Inferencing.
Comparing and contrasting.
Drawing conclusions.
Self-questioning.
Problem-solving.
Relating background knowledge.
Try this:
Many of the
words you find when you’re reading are
actually “sight words.” These are
words that you should know by sight and should not have to think about how to read them.
You can practice sight words very quickly.
Just find a good list of sight words, like this one,
and take about a minute or two every
day to read the words as fast as you can.
If
you don’t know any of the words it’s a good idea
to look them up
beforehand, but remember that this
exercise is about reading faster, not
understanding more. Once you can read at a comfortable speed, you can
focus on understanding.