Suggestions of Reading Activities I . Three【T1】______phase

Suggestions of Reading Activities
    Good morning, everyone. Last class we discussed some of the shifts and trends in theories relating to reading. This time we will examine tips which will help to develop our abilities as learners in reading classes.
     (1)These tips can be viewed in three consecutive stages: before reading, during reading, and after reading. For instance, before starting to read a text it is natural to think of the purpose of reading the text. As an example of the during-reading techniques, re-reading for better comprehension can be mentioned. And filling out forms and charts can be referred to as an after-reading activity. These tasks and ideas can be used to enhance reading comprehension.
    First of all, I will introduce to you some pre-reading tips. Before the actual act of reading a text begins, some points should be regarded in order to make the process of reading easier.(2)It is necessary to find the necessary background information to facilitate comprehension. In addition, pre-reading discussion activities can lighten learners’ cognitive burden while reading because prior discussions will have been incorporated. Some key vocabulary and ideas in the text should be acquired beforehand, including key concepts, important vocabulary, and appropriate conceptual framework.
    The teacher may lead a discussion in which he/she draws out the information you already have and interjects additional information deemed necessary to an understanding of the text to be read. Moreover, the teacher can make explicit links between prior knowledge and important information in the text. Therefore, involve yourselves in this part.
     (3)It is also necessary for you to become aware of the purpose and goal for reading a certain piece of written material. At the beginning stage this can be done by the teacher, but as you become more mature, this purpose, i. e. awareness-raising strategy, can be left to yourselves. For instance, you may be guided to ask yourselves, "Why am I reading this text? What do I want to know or do after reading?"
    One of the most obvious, but unnoticed points related to reading purpose is the consideration of the different types of reading skills. Skimming is reading rapidly for the main points: scanning is reading rapidly to find a specific piece of information: extensive reading is reading a longer text, often for pleasure with emphasis on overall meaning:(4)intensive reading is reading a short text for detailed information. However, the four skills are often subsumed into one—intensive reading. The most frequently encountered reason is that when you study a foreign language, you feel the urge to look up every word you don’t understand and to pinpoint on every structural point you see unfamiliar. To be aware of the different types of reading, ask yourselves about the types of reading you do in your first language.
    What’s more, you must become familiar with the fact that texts may take on different forms and hold certain pieces of information in different places.(5)Thus, it is necessary to understand the layout of the material being read in order to focus more deeply on the parts that are more densely compacted with information. Even paying attention to the year of publication of a text, if applicable, may aid you in presuppositions about the text as can glancing at the name of the author.
    The tips I mentioned in pre-reading will not take a very long time to carry out. The purpose is to remind you to overcome the common urge to start reading a text closely right away from the beginning.
    After learning about the pre-reading tips, of course we will move to the during-reading tips.
     (6)What follows are tips that encourage active reading.(7)They consist of summarizing, reacting, questioning, arguing, evaluating, and placing a text within one’s own experience. These processes may be the most complex to develop in a classroom setting, the reason being that in English reading classes most attention is often paid to dictionaries, the text, and the teacher. The teacher may interrupt this routine and encourage you to talk about what you are reading. I suggest the following strategies. ① Make predictions as to what is going to happen next in the text and be able to integrate and combine what has come with what is to come: ② Readers who are more proficient read selectively, continually making decisions about their reading.(8)③ The prior knowledge that has been activated in the pre-reading section should be called upon to facilitate comprehension. ④ Concentrate on significant pieces of information while skipping insignificant pieces.(9)⑤ Make use of context or guessing. You are not encouraged to define and understand every single unknown word in a text. Instead you should learn to make use of context to guess the meaning of unknown words.(10)⑥ Break words into their component parts to keep the process of comprehension ongoing. Efficient readers break words into their affixes or bases. These parts can help you guess the meaning of a word.(11)⑦ Read in chunks: to ensure reading speed, you should get used to reading groups of words together. This act will also enhance comprehension by focusing on groups of meaning-conveying symbols simultaneously. ⑧ Learn to pause. Good readers will pause at certain places while reading a text to absorb and internalize the material being read and sort out information.(12)⑨ Paraphrase: while reading texts it may be necessary to paraphrase and interpret texts subvocally in order to verify what was comprehended.
    Finally, I will give you several after-reading tips. It is necessary to state that post-reading activities almost always depend on the purpose of reading. Doing post-reading exercises first checks your comprehension and then leads you to a deeper analysis of the text. In the real world the purpose of reading is not to memorize an author’s point of view or to summarize text content, but(13)rather to see into another mind, or to mesh new information into what one already knows. Group discussion will help you focus on information you did not comprehend, or comprehended incorrectly. Accordingly, attention will be focused on processes that lead to comprehension or miscomprehension.(14/15)Generally speaking, post-reading can take the form of various activities such as discussing the text, summarizing, making questions, filling in forms and charts, writing reading logs, role-playing and so on.
    I hope these suggestions can be helpful during your reading. See you next week.