Teaching Reading Skills of English Text
Reading and writing proficiency means the ability to identify, understand, express, create and interpret concepts, feelings, facts and opinions, orally and writes it.
Whenever you pick up a book on “Teaching reading skill of English text”, you will come across such theme:
1. Skimming
2. Scanning
3. Previewing
4. Predicting
5. Anticipation
6. Silent reading
7. Reading in chunks
8. Guessing the meaning of unfamiliar words
All these techniques train you in acquiring fluency in reading as well as accuracy in reading. Let us see what these terms explain.
1. Skimming: it means reading a text quickly in order to get the gist of the text. The reader is just concerned with the main idea and leaves the other minor or supporting details. Skimming is a useful reading technique especially in extensive reading.
It is useful when a reader doesn`t have much time to go through the whole text in detail. So, skimming enables us to read just the relevant parts in a book which might interest us.
2. Scanning: it means reading a text quickly in order to look for specific piece of information. This reading skill is very useful in our daily life when we are looking for a telephone number in a telephone directory or searching for the meaning of some unfamiliar word in a dictionary. Therefore, instead of going through the whole directory or dictionary we just settle for the specific areas where we can find that particular information.
3. Previewing: this gives us the first impression about a book. We can have fair idea about the book by looking at:
a) The title
b) The blurb or back titles
c) Reviews
d) The foreword or preface
e) The contents page, and
f) The index
4. Predicting: this is a kind of guessing game. The reader is utilizing his previous knowledge of language and subject, and is looking forward to reading what he predicts will be in the book.
5. Anticipation: Anticipation in reading means guessing about the text in a global level or at an overall level. Anticipation means the reader is constantly anticipating what the next line or page would bring. The difference between the anticipation and prediction is that anticipation is global at the entire book level, while prediction is local or at a sentence level.
6. Silent Reading: as we know that reading is a cognitive activity. The imagination of a reader is all the time playing an active role where he is thinking, rethinking, giving pauses, referring back, sometimes even skipping certain lines or pages. Silent reading is a reader’s private activity and unlike reading aloud when the reader is deprived of this privilege.
7. Reading in Chunks: Williams says that “the reader isn`t simply a passive object fed with letters, words and sentences, but is actively working on the text and is above to arrive at understanding without looking at every word……”this reading technique once again enables us to avoid unnecessary concern about individual letter or word which can slow down our reading speed, instead, we look for the general idea or message of the book or the writer. Giving too much importance on individual word and its meaning, a reader is likely to miss the overall message or meaning of the text.
8. Guessing The Meaning of Unfamiliar Words: AS mentioned in reading in chunks, competent reader is the one who doesn`t stop over a particular word and look up for meaning in the dictionary but is able to guess the meaning of that unfamiliar word with the help of the context. Suppose your task is to teach a novel to your Bachelor degree students. You can actually start a discussion on the author of the book and the book itself, so that your students will form an idea about the book and of course their interest is also aroused.
