Unit 5 Reading

 

Unit 5

Reading

(Taken from: https://pixabay.com/photos/knowledge-book-library-glasses-1052010/)

Reading is a receptive skill. It involves understanding a written text and making it meaningful. In order to do this, the text must have two important characteristics, namely coherence and cohesion. Coherence is the logical organization and flow of thoughts in the entire text, meanwhile cohesion is the logical organization of the entire text.

Reading is a complex process that involves the use of different skills. It depends on the purpose of reading, which is why teachers must use them to promote learning. According to Spratt, Pulverness, & Williams (2011), in order to read something, we need to apply some subskills, such as scanning, skimming, reading for detail, inferring, deducing meaning from context and predicting.

In order to read a text and just find specific information we use a subskill called scanning.  On the other hand, skimming is a sub skill that involves reading for general understanding. A third sub skill is reading for detail that involves browsing the text to get an estimate of ​​its meaning. Inferring is another subskill used to get meaning from text. Readers can use other skills like deducing meaning from context that involves getting the meaning of unknown words based on surrounding words.

Additionally, according to Miller, (2017) there are 2 ways of reading: extensive reading and intensive reading. On one hand, extensive reading means the pleasure of reading long articles. On the other hand, intensive reading is reading for learning purposes, the purpose is to develop tasks or activities to develop reading skills. In order to apply this kind of reading knowledge to teaching, we must follow a process to teach. It is pre-reading, while reading and post-reading. In addition, readers need to distinguish between text types. Some of these text types are letters, postcards, articles, books, stories, poems, etc. Each text type has a different layout, theme and language usage.

Thanks to this unit, we were able to refresh our knowledge about reading and how to develop different reading subskills. We were able to use the key concepts and interpret it in examples, since as future teachers it is important to be able to teach how to develop the reading skill.

As future teachers, we can teach the reading skill in different ways, for example:

1. To apply different activities in order to develop the reading comprehension, for example students can make mind maps to summarize a reading in a creative way.

2. To apply reading tests to students to evaluate their reading comprehension in order to know if they need to review and to develop the reading subskills before mentioned.

In conclusion, it is important to learn and to teach reading because as future teachers the best thing we can do is to encourage students to read in what they are interested in and at the same time develop their reading skills by using reading strategies in class.

Bibliography:

Spratt, M., Pulverness, A & Williams, M. (2011). The TKT course. Cambridge, U.K.:         Cambridge University Press.

Miller, K. (2017). Extensive and intensive reading. Library.tsurumi-u.ac.jp. Retrieved       from http://library.tsurumi-u.ac.jp/metadb/up/admin/50_2_03_Miller.pdf

Extra material:

Didier, J. C. (s.f.). Strategic Reading (Bulding Effective Reading Skill). cambridge University .

Moreillon, J. (s.f.). Collaborative Strategies for Teaching Reading Comprehension:. Retrieved from google books: https://books.google.com.ec/books?id=VXnzdJxLp0YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=books+teaching+reading+strategies&hl=es&sa=X&ei=YGRBVY3eA4HRgwTTvYDoDQ&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=books%20teaching%20reading%20strategies&f=false