Teaching Reading Skills

1.      Introduction

Effective reading is essential for success in acquiring a second language. After all, reading is the basis of instruction in all aspects of language learning: using textbooks for language courses, writing, revising, developing vocabulary, acquiring grammar, editing, and using computer-assisted language learning programs. Reading instruction, therefore, is an essential component of every second-language curriculum. Understanding some important facts about reading, literacy, and teaching methods is essential for providing effective instruction in reading.

2.      Reading

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. A reader approaches a text with a huge store of prior knowledge and experience, including preconceptions about the uses of spoken and written language. All of a person’s prior knowledge, experience, and values are organized in categories, or schemata. Each category, or schema, is connected to many other schemata in a complex mental network. As he or she notices particular ideas or facts in a text, the reader matches that information with background knowledge and is able to construct a version of the text’s meaning. Researchers in text comprehension have applied an information-processing analogy to understanding how people think, learn, and remember what they read. When a person reads, two aspects of this “human information processing system” continuously interact. When the reader focuses primarily on what he or she already knows, this is called a concept-driven or “top-down” mode. On the other hand, when the reader relies primarily on textual features and information to comprehend, this is called a data-driven or “bottom-up” mode (Kintsch and van Dijk 1978; Rumelhart and Ortony 1977; Winograd 1977; Rumelhart 1980). In other words, the reader is constantly noticing parts of the text and comparing that sample with what he or she already knows.

3.      Literacy

Literacy is a set of attitudes and beliefs about the ways of using spoken and written language that are acquired in the course of a person’s socialization into a specific cultural context. Language and culture cannot be separated. Language knowledge and thinking patterns are socially constructed within a cultural setting, and each language/culture fosters its own way of understanding the world. In other words, each culture fosters the development of different schemata of the world. That is why readers from two different cultural backgrounds can read the same text and construct very different models of what the text means. They have different schemata (different background knowledge), different expectations about how a text should present information, and different ways of creating meaning.

Consequently, teachers cannot assume that students who are good readers in their native language can simply apply successfully the same skills to reading in English. Reading in English requires a set of thinking skills and attitudes that grow out of the spoken and written use of the English language. Teaching reading in Standard English to second-language learners and other limited English proficient students means helping them acquire the literate behaviors, the ways of thinking about text that is practiced by native speakers of English. In fact, learning to read and comprehend a second language requires learning a secondary literacy: alternative cultural interpretations, cultural beliefs about language and discourse, and culture specific formal and content schemata. It is important to realize that learning to read effectively in a second language literally alters the learner’s cognitive structures and values.

4.      Types of Reading

Reading could extensive or intensive.

a.       Extensive

It’s a type of reading in order to gain a general overview of the contents

b.      Intensive

It is a careful detailed reading of section of a text.

5.      Students’ Needs to read well in a language

In order to read well in English, then, 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.

6.      Why Extensive Reading?

Extensive reading is recommended because it

1.      Develops positive attitude

2.      Motivate to read more

3.      Increases reading fluency

4.      Improvement in writing

7.      Reading Skills

Reading skills are the cognitive processes that a reader uses in making sense of a text. For fluent readers, most of the reading skills are employed unconsciously and automatically. When confronted with a challenging text, fluent readers apply these skills consciously and strategically in order to comprehend.

8.      Teaching Reading Skills

1.      Automatic decoding: Being able to recognize a word at a glance.

2.      Previewing and predicting: Giving the text a quick once-over to be able to guess what is to come.

3.      Specifying purpose: Knowing why a text is being read.

4.      Identifying genre: Knowing the nature of the text in order to predict the form and content.

5.      Questioning: Asking questions in an inner dialog with the author.

6.      Scanning: Looking through a text very rapidly for specific information.

7.      Recognizing topics: Finding out what the text is about.

8.      Classification of ideas into main topics and details: Categorizing words and ideas on the basis of their relationships; distinguishing general and specific.

9.      Locating topic sentences: Identifying the general statement in a paragraph.

10.  Stating the main idea (or thesis) of a sentence, paragraph or passage: Knowing what the author’s point is about the topic.

11.  Recognizing patterns of relationships: Identifying the relationships between ideas; the overall structure of the text.

12.  Identifying and using words that signal the patterns of relationships between ideas. Being able to see connections between ideas by the use of words such as first, then, later.

13.  Inferring the main idea, using patterns and other clues.

14.  Recognizing and using pronouns, referents, and other lexical equivalents as clues to cohesion.

15.  Guessing the meaning of unknown words from the context. Using such clues as knowledge of word parts, syntax, and relationship patterns.

16.  Skimming. Quickly getting the gist or overview of a passage or book.

17.  Paraphrasing. Re-stating texts in the reader’s own words in order to monitor one’s own comprehension.

18.  Summarizing. Shortening material by retaining and re-stating main ideas and leaving out details.

19.  Drawing conclusions. Putting together information from parts of the text and inducing new or additional ideas.

20.  Drawing inferences and using evidence. Using evidence in the text to know things that are unstated.

21.  Visualizing. Picturing, or actually drawing a picture or diagram, of what is described in the text.

22.  Reading critically. Judging the accuracy of a passage with respect to what the reader already knows; distinguishing fact from opinion.

23.  Reading faster. Reading fast enough to allow the brain to process the input as ideas rather than single words.

24.  Adjusting reading rate according to materials and purpose. Being able to choose the speed and strategies needed for the level of comprehension desired by the reader.

9.      Conclusion

Extensive Reading, Comprehension Reading, Reading Fluency, Vocabulary Building are the integral parts of the reading. It is necessary to give attention to all four in order to be a good reader.