EN 1202:
Advanced Reading Skills II
Reading skills: previewing and predicting
· Make predictions
based on the title, sub-titles, students’ knowledge of the topic, the
linguistic context, non-linguistic context such as diagrams, graphs, pictures,
maps etc.
· Encourage to predict
before reading, while reading, and after reading (a useful skill to increase
students’ reading speed and enhance their comprehension of the text).
Text attack skills
a) Interpreting lexical cohesion-synonyms,
related words
b) Interpreting discourse markers
Provide students
with activities to learn about the following.
· How the writer
uses lexis or vocabulary to achieve cohesion
- Use of synonyms to avoid repetition. e.g. the
writer might use ‘house’, ‘home’, ‘dwelling’, and ‘residence’ to refer to the
same building.
- Use of related words: selecting two lexical items
that are closely related. Interpretation of the second will depend on the
first. e.g. She was seated under a huge mango tree. A leaf fell on
her and then another. The interpretation of ‘leaf’ depends on ‘mango
tree’.
· Identifying
discourse markers (conjunctions) which help to achieve cohesion in a text and
understanding their function. e.g. words such as but, although, and, then,
after
· Types of
activities: Rearranging jumbled texts
Making inferences - understanding indirectly stated ideas and
information
· Students are
required to interpret or ‘read between the lines’ in order to make inferences.
It involves students combining their literal understanding of the text with
their personal knowledge and intuitions.
· Types of
activities: what do you think? e.g. What kind of person wrote this article? Why
do you think so? What evidence is there in the passage for the following
statements?
Understanding the organization of the text
· Focus: practice in
recognizing how sentences are joined together to make paragraphs, how
paragraphs form the passage, and how this organization is signified.
· Types of
activities:
- In the passage, a number of sentences are missing.
Read it through and decide where the sentences given below should go.
- The following sentences are taken from 4 brochures
of exhibitions. Separate the 4 texts and match them with the brochure titles.
· Discuss common
organizational patterns providing sample texts. e.g. cause-effect, sequence of
events, describing a process, analogy and contrast, classification,
argument and logical organization etc.
· Types of
activities:
- Identify textual connectors in different texts,
e.g. cause (e.g. was caused by) effect (e.g. led to)
- Sequencing expressions: at first, then, as soon as,
when, an hour later
Reading skills: understanding complex
sentences
· Focus: practice in
seeing how long sentences which have a complicated style (e.g. a main clause
and a number of subordinate clauses) can be simplified
· Types of
activities:
- Look at the following sentences and punctuate them.
Read them to another student, pausing in suitable places. Then answer the
questions (wh-questions on each sentence)
- Identify the clauses and phrases in a complex
sentence.
Critical reading to evaluate a text
· This includes
literal comprehension and interpretation but it goes beyond both. The reader
has to consider what, why and for whom the author has written. The reader also
has to recognize the strengths and weaknesses, distinguish opinion from facts,
evaluate and pass personal judgment on the quality, the value, the accuracy and
the truthfulness of what is read.
· Text types:
political and academic essays, advertisements, news items, editorials, cartoons
etc.
