Developing Reading Skills
Reading is a complex skill, below are some tips on how to
develop particular reading sub-skills.
- Making use of clues -
learners should be able to use the titles, illustrations and the look of
the text (bold, italics, paragraphing etc.) to decide what kind of text it
is and to start making a few general predictions about its content. The
strategy of predicting is very useful.
- Understanding gist -
this is the ability to form a general overview of a text from just making
use of the clues and a very quick reading. This means that learners should
be skimming texts.
- Understanding relevant
details - learners will be looking for the details that are relevant
to the writer's reason for writing, the subject matter of the text and the
reader's purpose for reading. For example, if someone is looking at a
timetable of all the trains that leave from a particular station, the
relevant information is just the details of the journey the reader wishes
to take. This is called scanning.
- Distinguishing main points
from secondary points - knowing how a paragraph is structured and how
the main point is often made first and then supported by less important
detail could help a learner find the information they need. Interpreting
is a key strategy here.
- Distinguishing fact from
comment - being able to find the comment will help with understanding
the writer's opinions and attitudes and means the reader needs to interpret
the text.
- Identifying relevant
information - this is often done by stopping to think about the text
and discussing the intended audience, the writer's attitudes and opinions,
and the inferences that can be drawn from explicit information in the
text. Again, interpreting is important here.
- Deriving meaning from
texts that contain unknown words and phrases - this requires the
learner to be able to guess meaning from context or ignore a word they
don't know. This is a coping strategy.
- Using appropriate aids
- reference books should be available and learners need to know how to use
dictionaries and grammars etc. These will support their learning even if
there is no teacher around and help the learner be more independent.
Again, this is coping with difficulties and problems when learning.
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