Reading is a receptive skill. It involves understanding a text and making sense of it. To do this, it is important that the text has coherence and cohesion. Coherence is the logical flow of ideas, while cohesion is their logical organization. In addition, to read something we need to apply some skills such as:
- Reading for specific information or scanning: read quickly to find specific information.
- Reading for detail: reading every single word to get the meaning of the text
- Deducing meaning from context: to get the meaning of an unknown word based on the words that surround it.
- Understanding text structure: understand the development of different types of text.
- Reading for gist or skimming: reading quickly to get the main idea of the text.
- Inferring: get a conclusion from what you read.
- Predicting: guessing what the text will be about.
- Furthermore, according to Miller (2017) there are 2 ways of reading: extensive and intensive. Extensive reading means to read long texts for pleasure such as stories or articles. On the other hand, intensive reading is to read in detail with the aim of developing tasks or activities to develop reading skills.
Finally,
to help my students acquire reading skills, it is important to remember that
there is a process to follow in order to teach them. It is pre-reading,
while-reading and post-reading. Therefore, in the pre-reading stage I would
make my students predict the content of the text, discuss the topic of the text
or teach the meaning of some vocabulary words through flashcards. Next, in the
while-reading stage I would focus on the comprehension of the text by
developing reading skills, first general understanding and after a more
detailed comprehension of the text. To finish, in the post-reading stage I
would apply activities in order to check understanding. It is make students
talk about the text, give opinions, discuss in pairs or in groups, etc. Another
way to teach this unit to my students would be to apply an "Extensive
Reading Approach" which according to Day & Bamford (1998) it's a way
of encourage students to read in what they are interested and at the same time
develop their reading skills. So I would make my students choose any story they
like, apply the reading stages (pre, while, post) and guide them in all the
process.
Additional information to teach reading:
References:
Day &
Bamford (1998). Extensive reading. Extensivereading.net. Retrieved 16 April 2017, from
http://extensivereading.net/docs/ERChar.html
Miller, K. (2017). Extensive
and intensive reading. Library.tsurumi-u.ac.jp. Retrieved 22 April 2017,
from http://library.tsurumi-u.ac.jp/metadb/up/admin/50_2_03_Miller.pdf
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