Essential Academic English Reading Skills

Essential Academic English

Reading Skills 101

What is reading?

A receptive skill - through it we receive information

The complex process of reading also requires the skill of speaking - can pronounce the words that we read

Reading is also a productive skill - involving both receiving information and transmitting it

Why read?

Reading has additional important benefits that can help learners learn the language faster and more completely apart from open up their world view

Contd.

When your reading skills improve, your listening, speaking and writing skills improve too

Multiple Choice

Reading is receptive and informative

• True

• False

Multiple Choice

Reading is productive because of receiving and transmitting information.

• True

• False

Some reading tips:

• Read at a level slightly lower than what you understand. You should not have to look up a lot of words

• Understand what you'll be tested on reading skills - there may be specific formats such as identifying main idea or any specific details

Contd.

• Read what interests you

• Visualize what you are reading - try to imagine that you are reading an interesting story or seeing a how-to video.

Some specific reasons why learners are encouraged to read in English:

• Constant repetition of words and patterns in reading helps you learn and remember vocabulary and grammar structures

• Reading helps you become familiar with the rhythm of English - over time you will start to feel natural and notice when a sentence or phrase does not seem right

Contd.

• Good reading skills can improve your other language skills - learn to read before you can write

• Reading is the best way to learn and remember the proper spelling of words the language structures.

Multiple Select

We should learn reading because:

• it develops interest

• it improves our vocabularies

• it helps to remember grammatical structure

• it relates to other language skills

Reading For Test/ Exam

If you are taking a standardized English test, here are things to do in a reading test:

Contd.

• Find the gist or main idea - write (or say) one sentence that explains what the reading is about

• Locate details - what specific information that is provided in the text

• Understand inferences - make assumptions based on information given in a text

Contd.

• Make predictions : guess what a reading will be about and what will happen next

• Paraphrase : rewrite the text in your own words

• Identify genre and style : name the type or category of writing that you read.

Multiple Choice

In English reading test these are aspects that will be asked except

• main idea

• genre

• specific details

• making inferences

• author's style

Reading Strategies

• Skim: read for the brief idea or overview.

• Scan: read for specific details or a specific reason.

• KWL: determine what you Know about the topic, what you Want to know, and what you Learned.

 Skimming

is the ability to read a text quickly and understand what the general meaning (gist) is.

This gives you a mental “map” of the text, so you can quickly find the information required in the questions. 

Scanning

is searching a text for key words which help you to answer the question, but without reading the text for meaning. 

A good way to approach scanning is to look at a point in the middle of the text and scan from there.

KWL - Know- What- Learn

• The KWL technique - readers are first asked to consider what they already know about the subject before they read the mater

• Then move on to the "what" column - they write down what they hope to learn about the subject from the passage

• For "learn" - they summarize what they learned from the reading. 

Multiple Choice

This technique is applied to look for specific answer.

• KWL

• Skimming

• Scanning

• Reading

Types of reading

• Intensive reading

• Extensive reading

Intensive reading

is when we read and want to fully understand every aspect of what we are reading

An intensive reading text should be fairly short, and also at the correct level.

Contd.

• This is the type of reading we do when studying or answering comprehension questions in class.

• It focuses on understanding vocabulary and also looking at structure of the text. 

• Intensive reading is also about developing strategies for dealing with unknown words, phrases or grammar.

Extensive reading

is reading widely, but not worrying about understanding everything that we read.

Contd.

• Extensive reading is simply reading as much as possible to develop reading comprehension skills and the reading speed

• Extensive reading also help you to build your word recognition - when you do not have to think about a word, but just see it as a whole

Combining both types of reading

helps you to build your English knowledge from the bottom up (intensive reading) and from the top down (extensive reading).

Multiple Choice

If read to understand it is called ______ reading.

• intensive

• extensive

Multiple Choice

To enhance your English via top down method, it requires

• intensive reading

• extensive reading

Reference

• https://www.englishclub.com/reading/guide.php

• https://corkenglishcollege.wordpress.com/2014/07/19/skills-reading-developing-your-english-reading-skills/

• https://www.verywellfamily.com/kwl-what-is-kwl-2162741