Developing reading skills Factors involved in effective reading Prepared by: Najah Abdullah Albelazi

Outline What is reading? What are the kinds of reading skill? The role of the teacher in extensive and intensive reading. Reading lesson sequences. The vocabulary question. Letting the students in. Effective and ineffective reading strategies.

What is reading? Reading is an important part of learning English. This guide to how to improve your reading skills will help you improve reading by using skills you use in your own language. Reading skills refer to the specific abilities that enable a person to read with independence and interact with the message. Students at the university do a lot of reading unlike in secondary school. Some tips to help in having good reading skills are active reading and styles of reading.

The types of reading skill Extensive reading. Intensive reading. Receptive reading. Skimming. Scanning.

Extensive reading In extensive reading, the teacher encourages students to choose for themselves what they read and to do so pleasure and general language improvement. It is important for the development of students' word recognition and for their improvement as readers overall.

Extensive reading materials One of the fundamental conditions of a successful extensive program is that the students should be reading material which they can understand. Written materials for extensive reading are often referred to as graded readers or simplif-ied readers. They can take the form of original fiction and non-fiction books as well as simplifications of established works of literature.

Extensive reading materials Such books succeed because the writers or adaptors work within specific lists of allowed words and grammar.

The role of the teacher in extensive reading Crucial: Teachers need to promote reading and by their espousal of reading as a valid occupation, persuade students of its benefits. Part organizer/part tutor: Teachers can explain how students make choise of what to read. teachers can suggest that they look for books in agenre that they enjoy, and that they make approperiate level choices.

Extensive reading tasks Because students should be allowed to choose their own reading texts, following their likes and interests, and because teachers want to promote students to keep reading, teachers should encourage them to report back on their reading in anumber of ways: Students can tell their classmates about books they found them enjoyable and noticeably awful. Students can also write short book reviews for the class noticeboard. At the end of a month, students can vote on the most popular book.

Intensive reading It is often teacher-chosen and directed. It is designed to enable students to develop specific receptive skills such as: Reading for gist(or general understanding-often called skimming). Reading for specific information(often called scanning). Reading for detailed comprehension or reading for inference(what's behind the word) and attitude.

The role of the teacher in intensive reading Organizer: Teachers need to tell students exactly what their reading purpose is, give them clear instructions about how to achieve it and explain how long they have to do it.

The role of the teacher in intensive reading Observer: While students are reading, teachers can observe their progress, this will give teachers valuable information about how well students are doing individually and collectively.

The role of the teacher in intensive reading Feedback organizer: When students have completed the task, teachers can lead a feedback session by asking where in the text they found relevant information. Teachers may start by having them compare their answers in pairs then ask for answers from the class in general or from pairs in particular. It is important to be supportive when organizing feedback after reading.

The role of the teacher in intensive reading Prompter: When students read a text, teachers can prompt them to notice language features within it. Controller: Teachers direct students to certain features, classifying ambiguities and making them aware of issues of text structure which they had not come across previously.

The other kinds or styles of reading Receptive reading: The emphasis is on the informational content. This is sometimes referred to extensive reading, although the term “extensive” can be misleading as it implies the use of long texts, complete texts or series of texts.

The other kinds of reading Scanning: It is a visual skill more than interpretive one. “Readers” look quickly through a text to find words (shapes) which match a mental template of what they are seeking.

The other kinds of reading Skimming: It involves looking through a text quickly to derive the gist of something. It involves a degree of inference and interpretation.

Intensive reading: the vocabulary question Teachers encourage students to read for general understanding without understanding every word on first or second read-through. Then, depending on what is going to be done, students should be given a chance to ask questions about individual words or to look them up.

How can the teachers limit the amount of time spent on vocabulary checking? Time limit: teachers can give a time limit of, e.g. five minutes for vocabulary enquiry. Word/phrase limit: teachers can only answer questions about five or eight words or phrases. Meaning consensus: teachers can get students to work together to search for and find word meanings.

Intensive reading: letting the students in Students are responding to what someone else has asked them to find out, but they are far to be engaged in a text. The ways of letting students in: Letting them give voice to their feelings about what they have read. Allowing them to create their own comprehension task.

Reading lesson sequences Teachers use intensive reading sequences in class for a number of reasons: Having students practice specific skills such as skimming or scanning. Getting students to read texts for communicative purposes. Identify specific uses of language.

Effective and ineffictive reading strategies Effective reading strategies: Looking for a topic sentence in paragraphs. Trying to use the context to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words. Trying to identify implicit logical relationship between sentence and sentence,..etc. Trying to distinguish between major and subordinate assertions. Ineffictive reading strategies: Mouthing the words. Mentally translating everything. Using a dictionary to find the meaning of all new words.

References Parrott, M. (1993). Tasks for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harmer, J. (2007). The Practice of English Language Teaching. Pearson: Longman.