Unit – 7
Reading skills
We should make our pupil an efficient reader. An efficient reader is like a bus driver who knows when to go slow, when to accelerate speed, how to negotiate hair-pin bends on ghat roads etc. An efficient reader knows there are different levels of comprehension too as these are different reading materials. To become an efficient reader, one should be able to employ different study techniques Reading is an act of communication between writer and reader. It is an act in which the reader grasps the information the writer passes on to him.
Comprehension is the correct association of meanings with word symbols. It is the selection of the correct meaning suggested by the text It is a thinking process. It is thinking through reading. Students should lead and get complete meaning. There are two situations that arise while reading a passage. The pupils may find a reading comprehension passage difficult for them. The teacher should know about the difficulties beforehand and prevent their occurrence.
Some common difficulties are:
Reading for the main idea:
Pupils should develop skills to identify the main idea or the central idea in what they read. This skill is necessary to get the main idea, identify the theme and get the implied meanings of the paragraph.
Activities to identify the main idea:
Reading for detains:
Along with reading for and stating the main idea the pupils must learn to read for details.
Activities to accomplish reading for details ask the pupils to;
Reading for organization:
Good readers will understand the organization of what is being read. They arrange the ideas in logical order. The key helps to recall the information is organization. Reading the content areas depends upon proficiency in organization skills. A Good reader knows how paragraphs are organized.
Activities that help pupils learn in a logical order what they are reading:
Reading for summarizing and outline:
Summaries help to pressure the essential facts and ideas in capsule form. They retain important information. So, the pupils should develop summarizing skill. Outlining is another way of organization. It is closely related to summarizing activities to develop summarizing skills. Summaries a message to be sent as a telegram. Selecting the main idea from the choices you give them. Do exercise for writing an outline. Read a small poem and select the best summary from the choices you give them.
Example for the Reading comprehension:
Read the following comprehensions and answer the questions:
In the 16th century, an age of great marine and terrestrial searching, Ferdinand Magellan led the first journey to sail around the world. As a young Portuguese noble, he worked for the king of Portugal, but he became involved in the quagmire of political conspiracy at court and lost the king’s good deed. After he was removed from service by the king of Portugal, he started to serve the future Emperor Charles V of Spain.
A papal decree of 1493 had allocated all land in the New World west of 50 degrees W longitude to Spain and all the land east of that line to Portugal. Magellan afforded to provide evidence that the East Indies fell under Spanish power. On September 20, 1519, Magellan set sail from Spain with five ships. More than a year later, one of these ships was searching the landscape of South America looking for a water route across the continent. This ship sank, but the outstanding four ships searched along the southern peninsula of South America. Lastly, they found the passage they wanted near 50 degrees S latitude. Magellan called this passage the Strait of All Saints, but today it is recognized as the Strait of Magellan.
One ship abandoned while in this passage and came back to Spain, so fewer sailors were advantaged to look at that first panorama of the Pacific Ocean. Those who stayed back crossed the meridian now identified as the International Date Line in the early spring of 1521 after 98 days on the Pacific Ocean. During those long days at sea, many of Magellan’s men died of hunger and disease.
Later, Magellan became worried in an insular disagreement in the Philippines and was murdered in a tribal battle. Only one ship and 17 sailors under the authority of the Basque navigator Elcano survived to finish the westward voyage to Spain and thus show once and for all that the world is round, with no cliff at the border.
1. The 16th century was an age of large ______ exploration.
2. Magellan lost the favor of the king of Portugal when he became involved in a political ________.
3. The Pope separated New World lands between Spain and Portugal along with their location on one side or the other of a made-up physical line 50 degrees west of Greenwich that extends in a _________ direction.
4. One of Magellan’s ships searched the _________ of South America for a passage across the continent.
5. Four of the ships sought after a passageway along a southern ______.
6. The passage was found near 50 degrees of ________.
7. In the spring of 1521, the ships crossed the _______ now called the International Date Line.
Phonetic sound in reading:
The main focus of phonics teaching is to assist beginning learners understand how letters are linked to sounds (phonemes) to form letter-sound correspondences and spelling patterns and to assist them study how to relate this information in their reading.
Phonics teaching may be provided methodically or while are on the subject. The characteristic of an organized phonics approach or agenda is that a chronological set of phonics fundamentals is delineated and these fundamentals are taught along an aspect of explicitness depending on the type of phonics method employed. On the other hand, with incidental phonics teaching, the educator does not pursue an intended series of phonics elements to direct teaching but high lights meticulous basics opportunistically when they come into view in textbook.
Types of phonics instructional methods and approaches:
This essay depicts some unusual types of phonics instructional approaches that differ along with the unit of study or how letter-sound combinations are represented to the student. For instance, in synthetic phonics approaches, students are trained to connect an individual letter or letter mixture with its suitable sound and then merge the sounds to form words. In logical phonics, students are first taught whole word units followed by methodical teaching linking the exact letters in the word with their particular sounds.
Phonics teaching can also differ with respect to the explicitness by which the phonic elements are trained and experienced in the analysis of text. For instance, several synthetic phonics approaches use straight teaching in educating phonics components and offer opportunities for applying these skills in decodable text formats characterized by a prohibited vocabulary. Conversely entrenched phonics approaches are classically less unambiguous and use decodable text for apply less often, though the phonics concepts to be educated can still be accessible methodically.
Educating students unknown words by analogy to recognized words (e.g., identifying that the rime segment of an unknown word is equal to that of a common word, and then joining together the famous rime with the new word onset, such as understanding brick by recognizing that -ick is restricted in the acknowledged word kick, or reading stump by analogy to jump).
Instructing students to study letter-sound connections in formerly well-read words to avoid pronouncing sounds in segregation.
Instructing students’ phonics skills by embedding phonics teaching in text analysis, a more understood approach that relies to some degree on incidental knowledge.
Training students to segment words into phonemes and to choose letters for those phonemes. (i.e., instructing students to spell words phonemically).
Training students clearly to change letters into sounds (phonemes) and next combine the sounds to form familiar words.
Findings and determinations:
The meta-analysis exposed that methodical phonics teaching produces important reimbursement for students having complexity learning to read. The capability to read and spell words was improved in kindergartners who received orderly beginning phonics teaching. Regular synthetic phonics teaching had an optimistic and important outcome on disabled readers' comprehension skills.
These students enhanced considerably in their capability to read words and showed important, albeit small, gains in their talent to practice text as a result of organized synthetic phonics teaching. This type of phonics teaching offers both students with understanding disabilities and slow learners who are not disabled. Furthermore, methodical synthetic phonics training was extensively more effective in improving low socioeconomic status (SES).
Across all score levels, organized phonics training enhanced the aptitude of high-quality readers to spell. For slow learners, the impact of phonics teaching on spelling was small, possibly shimmering the reliable finding that disabled readers have difficulty in learning to spell.
The NRP examination indicated that organized phonics teaching is ready for accomplishment in the classroom. Findings of the Panel concerning the efficiency of explicit, regular phonics training were resulting from studies conducted in many classrooms with distinctive classroom teachers and archetypal American or English-speaking students from various backgrounds and socioeconomic levels.
Thus, the results of the study are analytic of what can be gifted when clear, methodical phonics programs are implemented in today's classrooms. Organized phonics teaching has been used extensively over a long time with optimistic outcome, and various methodical phonics programs have confirmed efficient with students ‘socioeconomic background.
Intonation in paragraph reading:
In ordinary words, Intonation refers to the rise and fall of pitch and tone of a speaker to give stress to the pertinent words so as to make his speech extra efficient.
Many of us have congested paying notice to the tone overall while others have really taken time out to consider over it a bit. Since no matter what is the form of communication, significance of intonation is tough to be unnoticed. Therefore, there is only one answer left to this, a banter for real.
What exactly is Intonation and how is it crucial in paragraph reading:
Without intonation, our voices are flat and monotone. There is little interest generated in the audience. As a listener, the voice is bland to listen to. You tune it out. You may even fall asleep. Even if the speaker has great content, there is little desire to listen or to get passionate about the speaker’s message.
Without intonation, you cannot comprehend the speaker’s approach and the speaker’s attitudes. Are they in fact content or are they very irritated? Is there something thrilling occurrence or perchance a shock of some sort? Is the person sure in what they think or say, or are they hesitant of what they are thinking or saying?
Here are few things that are to be remembered during the paragraph reading:
Whereas a number of people in nature have superior voices than others, and women have a tendency to speak in an advanced pitch than men, we do have a tendency to change our pitch to express emotions.
This is how fast or slow your speech is. Whereas fast reading may specify that the presenter is tensed or agitated, a stable pace shows self-confidence, or expresses a topic of a more solemn character.
This shows where you lay the stress in a sentence, and can modify the meaning of your reading completely. For instance, take the sentence “I didn’t say your cooking was bad!”, in the way where you set the stress in this sentence, you can draw out a totally different reaction.
Tone is the easiest giveaway when it comes to emotion. We frequently consider of verbal tones as being warm or cold. For instance, the expression “see you later” spoken in a warm tone implies enthusiasm at the imminent gathering, while spoken in a cold tone it could be a sign that the speaker isn’t mainly eager on seeing you after all!
Whether you observe news/ movie/ documentary on TV or just pay attention to a discussion on FM you can watch the modulation in people’s voice and make a decision for yourself whether it actually makes a distinction or not. It is simple for all of us to speak about the reality that approximately all of us know someone who makes us laugh just since the way he/she express humorous thing (intonation- getting used to the fullest) and on the other hand the humorous jokes can’t get us to even understand (No intonation or improper use).
References:
1. R.P. Bhatnagar and Rajul Bhargava; English for competitive Examinations, Revised Edition.
2. Dr. Evangelin Arulselvi, Teaching of Special English, 2009.
3. Krishna Mohan and Meera Banerji, Developing communication Skills, 1990.
