Reading
a. Approaches to Reading
A
reading approach is a way to start teaching beginning readers.
This introduction to reading skills is best discussed and worked through with
two or three colleagues. It aims to generate discussion on the key issues in
reading we need to consider as well as giving readers the opportunity to pick
one another’s activity closets for those real gems we all have tucked away
Reading is an active skill which involves inference, guessing,
predicting etc. It also has, more often than not, a communicative function. We
rarely answer questions after reading a text except in a language class, but we
do write answers to letters, follow directions, choose restaurants and
holidays, solve problems and compare the information to our previous knowledge
or the knowledge of others.
b. Reading methods
Four main methods used to teach students how to read are explained below. This
is a guide only and you must work out which methods suit you and your students.
You may like to try each one for a few weeks and record the results or you can
combine two or more methods together like the ‘phonics’ and the ‘look and say’
method. Whichever way you choose be patient, consistent and above all creative.
Creativity is very important to keep any child’s interest and enthusiasm at all
times. If you are not sure what you should be teaching at which level, check
out the year guide
Method 1:
PhoneticThe phonics method is probably the best known and widely used method to
teach reading and writing in the English language. It relies on children being
taught the alphabet first. They learn the names of the letters and the sounds
they make. Once they have learnt the letter sounds they will begin to blend two
letters together to make simple words then three letters, then four and so
forth.
Method 2:
With the ‘look and say’ method children learn to recognize whole words or
sentences rather than individual sounds. Your student will look at a word which
you sound, and in turn will repeat the sound (the word). Flashcards with
individual words written on them are used for this method often accompanied
with a related picture.
If you don’t use a picture with the word the child will probably make a wild
guess as to what it says trying to remember what sound you made previously.
This is not a good method if you don’t include pictures.
It is also recommended with this method to use whole short sentences rather
than individual words. Write a short sentence representing the picture
displayed. Say the sentence and ask the child to repeat it while pointing and
looking at each individual word as he/she repeats what you said.
Method3:
The language experience approach is the third method you may like to use. This
particular method actually uses student’s own words to help them read. Your student
may draw a picture of Dad in the car. In that case you would write underneath
the drawing; Dad is in the car.
You continue to collect drawings your student makes and write a short sentence
underneath each drawing. A picture of a playground would read; We went to the
park or playground.
Method 4:
When your students are just learning to read it is important to choose books
that really interest them. If boys like cars, choose a book with pictures and
simple words about cars. This will keep their interest and they will enjoy
learning with you. If girls like dolls, obtain a book with doll pictures and
simple words. Again it will encourage enthusiasm because they are actually
looking at something they can relate to
Some books are especially written to support this method of learning. You will
find a longer sentence on one side of the page while the other side has a
single word or maybe two to three words for your student to read. You will read
the longer sentence while your student reads the simpler version.
c. Reading Techniques
Throughout your career as a Curtin student you will be required to read a
variety of texts and to gather material from them for assignments. Here are
some guidelines for effective reading.
Reading Techniques.
1. Preview
Preview the text to be read by skimming it. Skimming is the technique of
allowing your eyes to travel rapidly over a page, stopping here and there to
register the main idea. When skimming, you should follow the procedure below,
adapting it to your purpose
• Read the title.
• Note the writer’s name.
• Note the date and place of publication.
• Read the first paragraph completely.
• Read sub-headings and first sentences of remaining paragraphs.
As you read, pick up main ideas, key words (words that tell you who, what, when,
where, how many, and how much), and transition markers (words like ‘however’,
‘alternatively’, ‘additionally’, and so on), which suggest the direction of
ideas in the text.
2. Question
Effective reading is active reading. To turn reading from a passive into an
active exercise, always ask questions.
To do this, you must be clear about the purpose of your reading. If you are
reading a text which you will be critiquing in detail, your questions will be
different from those you would ask if you were reading a number of texts for
background information. The object of the preview and questioning steps is to
determine the writer’s thesis, that is, her/his main idea and purpose in
writing.
3. Take notes
Some reasons for taking notes are:
• to maintain attentiveness as you read,
• to focus your attention,
• to familiarize yourself with primary and secondary material on a given
subject,
• to analyze the assumptions and rhetorical strategies of the writer,
• to provide you with a summary of the material.
Some hints for taking notes:
• Always record bibliographical details of the text from which you are taking
notes.
• Write on one side of the paper only.
• Leave a wide margin for comments and cross-references.
• Use headings, subheadings, and diagrams.
• Keep notes brief but full enough to still make sense to you in six months’
time. Make sure they’re legible.
4. Summaries
A summary is a collation of your notes, recording the main points the writer
makes. Making a summary from your notes has two main benefits.
• It allows you to test yourself on your understanding of the material you have
been reading – sometimes it is only when you try to put the writer’s ideas into
your own words that you uncover difficulties.
• It provides you with a compact account of the text for further reference.
5. Review and reflect
To capitalize fully on the time you’ve spent reading an article or chapter,
it’s important to review and reflect upon what you’ve read. This enhances your
understanding and helps you to commit important facts and ideas to your
long-term memory.
Here are some review and reflection exercises you may find useful:
• Test your understanding of the material by trying to answer your preview
questions without referring to your notes.
• Write down the meaning and usefulness the material has for understanding
other concepts and principles. Indicate what other ideas the material
substantiates, contradicts, or amplifies.
• Evaluate the text in terms of its in formativeness, soundness of argument,
relevance, and so on. If you are gathering material for an essay or report,
decide which points you want to use and think about how you can use them.
• Start a reading journal in which you keep all reading, review, and reflection
notes.
d. Reading Strategies
- Transfer: This means using ideas that you already have to make learning
easier. For example, if you know that a paragraph (like a hamburger) usually
has an introduction, a middle containing supporting detail, and a conclusion,
you can use this knowledge to skim (read very quickly, by missing out
non-important information, to understand the general topic) a text because you
know that you only have to read the introduction and conclusion of both the
whole text and the paragraphs.
- Translation: You can read a story in a newspaper in your own language first,
and then read the same story in an English newspaper. Most of the story will
probably be the same, so the story in your own language will help you to
prepare for reading in English. For example, it will give you vocabulary, and
when you read the English story and there is some vocabulary that you don’t
know, and then you can use your knowledge of the story to guess what the new
vocabulary is.
- Inferencing: You can also use the strategy of reading a newspaper story in
your own language first for prediction. You can predict the contents of the
same story in an English newspaper. Reading to confirm your predictions is
easier than reading with no background information. Click here for more
information on reading newspapers.
- Prediction: As well as predicting from newspaper stories in your own
language, you can predict from your knowledge of the world, you knowledge of
how people think, write and talk, and your knowledge of what the writer is
like. For example, if you are reading a book it is a good idea to read about
the author and the contents (on the cover or at the front of the book) to help
you make predictions about what he or she believes
1.
Listening
a.
Approach for Listening
The Listening Skills Assessment helps people see that their preferred listening
approach may not be appropriate to every situation.
Effective listening approach
The listening approach I recommend is generally known as ‘active listening’.
When we provide training or consulting services, we remind people that they
learn far more with their ears open than with their mouth open. We encourage
people to ask questions, after all the only dumb questions are the ones you
don’t ask.
In effect, active listening requires holding on to your own self-control and
focusing on what other parties are saying. Don’t sit there fuming waiting for a
chance to zap them when they finally shut up. Paying attention to their points
and emphases gives you a clearer idea of what is really important to them, what
their interests are.
b. Methods of Listening
Modern methods of teaching listening skills encompass everything from
interactive exercises to multimedia resources. Listening skills are best
learned through simple, engaging activities that focus more on the learning
process than on the final product. Whether you are working with a large group
of students or a small one, you can use any of the following examples to
develop your own methods for teaching students how to listen well.
Audio Segments
o You can also teach listening skills through audio segments of radio programs,
online podcasts, instructional lectures and other audio messages. You should
model this interactive listening process in class with your students, and then
instruct them to repeat the exercise on their own. First, instruct students to
prepare for listening by considering anything that they will want to learn from
the content of the audio segment. Once they have written down or shared these
ideas, then play the audio segment, allowing the students to take notes if
helpful. Once they have gained confidence and experience, repeat this activity
but instruct students to not take notes until the completion of the audio
segment. You can use shorter or longer audio segments, and you can choose more
accessible or more challenging material for this type of exercise.
Video Segments
o Another helpful resource for teaching listening skills are video segments,
including short sketches, news programs, documentary films, interview segments,
and dramatic and comedic material. As with audio segments, select the portion
and length of the video segment based on the skill level of your students. With
your students, first watch the segment without any sound and discuss it
together. Encourage the students to identify what they think will be the
content of the segment. Then, watch the segment again, this time with sound,
allowing students to take notes if helpful for their skill level. After the
completion of the video segment, you can have students write a brief summary of
the segment, or you can take time to discuss as a group how the segment
compares with the students’ expectations.
c.
Techniques for Listening
Effective
Listening
Effective listening can be defined as the process, in which a person understands,
interprets and analyzes the information received through hearing. Effective or
active listening skills are not only useful in understanding verbal speech, but
also enable a person to derive conclusions from the speaker’s body language.
Such type of effective listening in the workplace helps in reducing conflicts
and develops an atmosphere where cooperation is possible. Let us have a look at
the effective listening activities which help in improving the communication.
Read more on active listening activities.
Effective
Listening Techniques
Effective listening skills/techniques include four basic activities viz.,
encouraging, paraphrasing, reflecting feelings, and summarizing. Let us
understand in detail the importance of these effective listening activities.
Encouraging
It is the technique through which the speaker is encouraged to continue
talking. The expressions like “I see” are generally used in this activity. The
technique of ‘encouraging’ is an effective way to reinforce the speaker’s
belief that one is listening to him keenly. It also helps the speaker
understand which part of his speech is being appreciated and helps him
elaborate on that particular topic.
Paraphrasing
In this process, the words spoken by the speaker are presented by the listener
in different words. The benefit of paraphrasing is that the speaker gets
positive feedback and ensures that whatever he has spoken is being understood
by the listener. This prompts the speaker to proceed further and stops him from
repeating the same statement more than once.
Reflecting
the Feelings
The activity of reflecting the feelings is similar to paraphrasing. In
paraphrasing feedback about the meaning of words is given, while the feelings
underlying the words are reflected in this activity; identification and sorting
of the speaker’s feelings is carried out in this process. If one is listening
to a client, reflecting the feelings helps the speaker understand that one
empathizes with his feelings; it encourages the speaker to proceed.
Summarizing
As the name suggests, this activity involves summarizing the sentences of the
speaker. It is somewhat similar to paraphrasing except for the fact that
summarizing provides a complete and comprehensive feedback.
d.
Listening Strategies
-Physical Response: You can listen to instructions about how to do something,
and follow the instructions. Relating sounds to movements helps you remember
the sounds. So does listening to the sounds many times and repeating the
movements. For example you can buy an English fitness video and listen and
follow the instructions, and get fit at the same time.
- Prediction: You can predict what someone is going to say by the topic of the
conversation and your knowledge of that person’s opinions. Listening to confirm
what you predict is easier than listening and trying to understand everything.
- Preparation: you can listen to the news in your own language, then listen to
it in English. Listening in your own language will help to predict what topics
and vocabulary will be in the English news. Click here for the BBC news in
English.
- Motivate yourself: for example if you like movies or music, you can practise
listening to
Practice – Watch and listen to video clips of Goldsmiths lectures to practise
your listening and note-taking skills.
Listening for Meaning
To extract meaning from a listening text, students need to follow four basic
steps:
• Figure out the purpose for listening. Activate background knowledge of the
topic in order to predict or anticipate content and identify appropriate
listening strategies.
• Attend to the parts of the listening input that are relevant to the
identified purpose and ignore the rest. This selectivity enables students to
focus on specific items in the input and reduces the amount of information they
have to hold in short-term memory in order to recognize it.
• Select top-down and bottom-up strategies that are appropriate to the
listening task and use them flexibly and interactively. Students’ comprehension
improves and their confidence increases when they use top-down and bottom-up
strategies simultaneously to construct meaning.
• Check comprehension while listening and when the listening task is over.
Monitoring comprehension helps students detect inconsistencies and
comprehension failures, directing them to use alternate strategies.
1. Indented style
KETERANGAN:
1. Letter Head
2.
Reference Line
3.
Date Line
4.
Inside Address
5.
Attention Line
6.
Salutation
7.
Subject Line
8.
Body
9.
Complementary Close
10. Name And Signature
11. Enclosure
12. Copy Carbon Natation
13. Postscript
Format paragrafnya
sama dengan Semiblock style, yang berbeda penulisan alamat dengan surat
lainnya, cara penulisan alamat
pada Indented style
diletakan di sebelah kanan, seperti yang terlihat pada gambar. Bentuk semacam
ini cocok untuk surat yang
alamat tujuannya
singkat.
2. Fullblock style
KETERANGAN:
1. Letter Head
2.
Reference Line
3.
Date Line
4.
Inside Address
5.
Attention Line
6.
Salutation
7.
Subject Line
8.
Body
9.
Complementary Close
10. Name And Signature
11. Enclosure
12. Copy Carbon Natation
13. Postscript
Mempunyai bentuk lurus
penuh, yaitu rata pada sisi kiri, dan juga style yang sering digunakan dalam
menulis surat bisnis.
Jarak baris pada sisi
surat diberi jarak satu baris, dan dua baris untuk jarak paragraf. Bentuk surat
seperti ini adalah bentuk
surat yang paling
mudah dari gaya surat lainya.
3. Block style
KETERANGAN:
1. Letter Head
2.
Reference Line
3.
Date Line
4.
Inside Address
5.
Attention Line
6.
Salutation
7.
Subject Line
8.
Body
9.
Complementary Close
10. Name And Signature
11. Enclosure
12. Copy Carbon Notation
13. Postscript
Yang membedakan surat
ini dengan surat Fullblock style adalah penempatan tanggal, tanda tangan, serta
beberapa bagian
surat lainnya
ditempatkan di sebelah kanan. Pada umumnya bentuk semacam ini banyak digunakan
di perusahaan
15:18
The King
