Reading and reading comprehension

Reading and reading comprehension

DOCENCIA DE LAS HABLIDADES RECEPTIVAS DEL INGLÉS

Reading comprehension

Understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible.

What do we read?

*Novels, short stories, tales, other literary texts and passages, plays, poems, limericks, nursery rhymes, letters, postcards, telegrams, notes, newspapers and magazines, specialized articles, reports, reviews, essays, business letters, summaries, accounts, pamphlets, handbooks, textbooks, , etc.

Open Ended

Mention 4 types of texts that we read

Why do we read?

• For pleasure

• For information ( in order to find out something or in order to do something with the information you get)

Open Ended

Why do we read?

How do we read?

• Skimming: quickly running one's eyes over a text to get te gist of it (general information)

• Scanning: quickly going through a text to find a particular piece of information

How do we read?

• Extensive reading: Reading longer texts, usually for one's own pleasure. This is a fluency activity, mainly involving global understanding.

• Intensive reading: Reading shorter texts, to extract specific information. This is more an accuracy activity involving reading for detail

Multiple Select

Way of reading when we read longer texts, usually for one's own pleasure.

• Skimming

• Scanning

• Extensive

• Intensive

Multiple Choice

Way of reading when we quickly go through a text to find a particular piece of information

• Scanning

• Intensive

• Skimming

• Extensive

Multiple Choice

Way of reading when we quickly run one's eye over a text to get the gist of it

• Skimming

• Scanning

• Extensive

• Intensive

Reading skills (1)

• Recognizing the scrip of a language

• Deducing the meaning and use of unfamiliar lexical items

• Understanding explicitly stated information

• Understanding information when not explicitly stated

Reading skills (2)

• Understanding the communicative value (function) of sentences and utterances.

• Understanding relations within the sentence

• Understanding relations between the parts of a text through lexical cohesion devices

• Understanding conceptual meaning

Reading skills (3)

• Interpreting text by going outside it

• Recognizing indicators in discourse

• Identifying the main point or important information in a piece of discourse

• Distinguishing the main idea from supporting details

• Skimming

Reading skills (4)

• Extracting salient points to summarize (the text, an idea etc)

• Selective extraction of relevant points from a text

• Basic reference sills

• Scanning to locate specifically required information

• Transcoding information to diagrammatic display

Open Ended

Mention 3 reading skills

Types of exercises to develop reading skills.

• Questions to clarify the organization of the passage

• Questions to clarify the contents of the passage

• 
  

Clarify the organization of the passage

• The function of the passage

• The general organization (argumentative)

• The rhetorical organization (contrast, comparison)

• The cohesive devices (link-words)

• The intrasentential relations (derivation, morphology, hyponymy)

Clarify the contents of the passage

• Plain fact (direct reference)

• Implied fact (inference)

• Deduced meaning (supposition)

• Evaluation

Multiple Select

They are reading exercises to clarify the organization of the passage, except

• The rhetorical organization

• Plain fact

• The function of the passage

• The cohesive devices

• Evaluation

Multiple Select

They are questions to clarify the contents of the passage, except

• Plain fact

• Implied fact

• Deduced meaning

• The function of the passage

• The general organization

Assumptions when producing or using reading comprehension exercises (1)

• Not only sentences or unit smaller are part of materials, but also the paragraph or the whole text must be understood

• One should start with global understanding and move towards detailed understanding

• It is important to use authentic texts whenever possible

Assumptions when producing or using reading comprehension exercises (2)

• Reading comprehension should not be separated from other skills

• Reading is an active skill

• Activities should be flexible and varied

• The aim of the exercises must be clearly defined and a clear distinction made between teaching and testing

Open Ended

Mention one assumption when producing or using reading comprehension exercises

Classroom procedures

Practising reading in the classroom is a silent activity. Students may find reading aloud extremely difficult . This reading activity tends to prevent the students from developing efficient reading strategies

Example 1

• Consider the text as a whole, its title , accompanying picture(s), diagrams, the paragraphs, the typeface, guessing about the text.

• Skim through the text a first time to see if your hypotheses were right. Then ask yourself a number of questions about the contents of the text

• Read the text again, more slowly and carefully this time, trying to understand as much as you can and trying to answer the questions you asked yourself.

Multiple Choice

The step 2 of the procedure is

• Skim through the text

• Consider the text as a whole

• Read the text again

Example 2

• Silent reading followed by an activity which each students does on his own.

• The students now work in pairs, each one trying to justify his answer. The group should try to agree on one answer or interpretation

• A general discussion involving the whole class may follow

Multiple Choice

The step 3 of the procedure is

• Silent reading

• Justify answer in pairs

• General discussion

• Compare results

When to use reading comprehension exercise

Reading can be done as a class activity or to work at home.

You can divide exercises (depending on the difficulty) to work in class and at home

References

Grellet, f. (1981) Develop Reading Skills. Cambridge, Uk