According to Oscar Wilde,
"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use
in reading it at all."
Reading is an essential
part of language at every level of learning because it supports us in multiple
ways. Often students rely on their linguistic knowledge, a bottom-up strategy.
Bottom-up processing starts with the words in the text and builds up meaning
from this linguistic input (Gough 1972, in Bruce 2011:142). Nevertheless, students
should focus on top-down strategy to adjust their reading behavior to deal with
different situations, types of input, and reading purposes.
As a matter of fact, we
need complete and explicit reading in any context and principally in an
academic context at any rate.
Reading to learn the language: Students need a variety of materials to read. Teachers should provide proper vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, discourse structure within the authentic
context. Students gain the capability of how to convey meaning.
Reading for content information:
Students' purpose of reading is generally gathered the information about the
subject, language, and learning classroom as well.
Reading for cultural
knowledge and awareness: Students can insight into the different lifestyles and
worldviews by reading materials. Nowadays, students have to access the
newspaper, magazines, and websites which expose the culture.
Learning a discipline
involves developing familiarity with the ways of being, thinking, writing, and
seeing the world of those experts in the discipline. Reading academic texts
published by those disciplinary experts permits students to immerse in the
culture of the discipline and facilitates learning its conventions, discourse,
skills, and knowledge (Erickson, Peters & Strommer, 2006, p.122).
Critical reading or
academic reading should involve presenting a reasoned argument that analyses
and evaluates what you have already read. Being critical means understanding the
context thoroughly and thinking critically, not dismissing or closing off the
learning. EAP students are at the center of this reading-learning process and
EAP teachers must have to construct the student-centered approaches and
materials.
A surface approach to
reading is the tacit acceptance of information contained in the text. Students
taking a surface approach to reading usually consider this information as
isolated and unlinked facts. This leads to superficial retention of material
for examinations and does not promote understanding or long-term retention of knowledge
and information. In contrast, a deep approach to reading is an approach where
the reader uses higher-order cognitive skills such as the ability to analyze,
synthesize, solve problems, and thinks meta-cognitively in order to negotiate
meanings with the author and to construct new meaning from the text. The deep
reader focuses on the author’s message, on the ideas she is trying to convey,
the line of argument, and the structure of the argument. The reader makes
connections to already known concepts and principles and uses this
understanding for problem solving in new contexts. Simply put, surface readers
focus on the sign, i.e., the text itself, while deep readers focus on what is
signified, i.e., the meaning of the text (Bowden & Marton, 2000, p. 49).
Of course, teachers need to teach
the proper reading strategies to help students use a deep approach in reading
academic context. There are lots of strategies that can help students read more
quickly and effectively. The six key strategies help students to develop their
reading skill in an academic context prominently.
First of all, the
strategy is vocabulary and language development. Teachers can introduce new
concepts or ideas by discussing new key vocabulary words through this strategy.
It helps to build the students' background knowledge.
Second strategy is the guided
interaction. Teachers have to structure the lessons in a particular way so that
students work together to understand what they read. As well as, learners need
to focus on listening, speaking, reading, and writing collaboratively in the
academic context.
Third strategy is the meta-cognition
and authentic assessment. Generally, students memorize information. Teachers
have to teach thinking skills or help to create the meta-cognitive ability.
Fourth strategy is the explicit
instruction. It upholds the direct teaching of concepts, academic language, and
reading comprehension as strategies which needed to complete classroom tasks.
Fifthly, the strategy is
the use of meaning-based context and universal themes. It refers to something
meaningful from everyday's life and applying it to academic concepts. However,
students are able to connect their lives or cultural background to something
interesting and consequently, they get highly motivated. In that case, their
learning progress is satisfactory.
Lastly, the key
strategy is the use of modeling, graphic organizers, and visuals. The use of a
variety of visual aids, including pictures, diagrams, and charts are benevolent
for students, especially ELL students. Visual communication is impactful, in
order to effectively deliver a meaningful message. The language and the content,
both become accessible to students through visuals.
Moreover, some other strategies
instructors can adapt to teaching reading skill and students can follow those
to improve reading in academic context.
Previewing: It is
important to reviewing the titles, section headings, and photo captions to get
a sense of the structure and content of a selective reading.
Predicting: It is an
interesting strategy, using knowledge of the subject matter to make predictions
about content and vocabulary and check comprehension; using knowledge of the
text type and purpose to make predictions about writing style, vocabulary, and
content.
Skimming and scanning:
Most prominent strategy which is a quick survey of the text to get the main
idea. It identifies text structure, confirm or question predictions thoroughly.
Guessing from context: It
priors the knowledge of the subject and the ideas in the text as clues to the
meanings of unknown words. For instance, Context Clues.
Paraphrasing: At the end
of a section, need to check comprehension by restating the information and
ideas in the text.
However, context clues can
significantly increase reading comprehension and therefore helps consistently
read academic context. Even, students should reconsider the different types of contextual
clues, such as synonyms, antonyms, definitions, examples, and experiences
whilst reading thoroughly the text. Students need re-read for better
understanding or better learning.
Finally we can say that, strategies to improve
reading skill in academic context may vary from teacher to teacher or teacher
to student or student to student. A boring and tiresome strategy can waste all
the energy or enthusiasm of readers. Teachers need to follow the strategies which
are applicable for all the students in the classroom. Teachers must have to
aware of class environment, students’ capabilities and interests. Teachers
should encourage to academic reading and motivate students at their level best.
References
& Citations:
1. Bailey, E. (n.d.). How
Context Clues Can Help Students With Dyslexia. Retrieved December 08, 2017,
from https://www.thoughtco.com/context-clues-improve-reading-comprehension-3111170[i]
2. Teaching Reading
Strategies for Developing Reading Skills. (n.d.). Retrieved December 8, 2017,
from http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/reading/stratread.htm
3. Six Key Strategies for
Teachers of English-Language Learners. (2005, December). Retrieved from https://uteach.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/files/SixKeyStrategiesELL.pdf
4. EdD, M. %.
(n.d.). EFFECTIVE TEACHING STRATEGIES FOR IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION
IN K-3 STUDENTS. Retrieved from http://s3.amazonaws.com/ecommerce-prod.mheducation.com/unitas/school/explore/literacy-for-life/white-paper-ocr-effective-strategies-for-improving-reading-comprehension.pdf
5. Hermida, Dr.
Julian, The Importance of Teaching Academic Reading Skills In First-Year
University Courses (June 14, 2009). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1419247 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1419247
6. Chazal. E.D. (2014). English for Academic purposes,
Oxford University Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment