Unit 5: Reading


Reading is a receptive skill in which we don’t produce any language at all. The main objective of reading is to perceive the meaning of written text and analyze it for different purposes. Jons (2016) said that if you want to be a successful reader, you have to determine, decide, and deduce.
One of the things I have learned from this unit is that discourse is connected by three important parts: grammar, vocabulary, and our knowledge of the world. A well-written text for reading must have two important features: a good usage of the grammatical structures (cohesion), and a good connection between ideas (coherent). In order to have better results while reading, we can use the different subskills that reading has. If you need to get the general idea from the text, you can apply the reading for gist or skimming subskill. If you need to find specific information such as dates or names, you can apply scanning in order to find the information that you are interested in. Other reading subskills that we can use are reading for detail/intensive reading (meaning of every word), inferring (interpreting the opinion of the writer), deducing meaning from context (thinking about the situation that the word is been used in), and predicting (using giving clues to get the main idea from the text).
The most important thing that I would teach to my students in class is to have reading fluency. According to Kamei and Ansari, (2015) “A student who is a fluent reader is able to orally read connected text accurately and automatically with appropriate prosody, or natural expression”. So that means if students become fluent readers, they will also develop higher thinking skills.
Bibliography
Jones, D. (2016). Painless reading comprehension Retrieved from ProQuest Ebook Central: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uta-ebooks/reader.action?ppg=1&docID=4544690&tm=1524139873824

Kamei-Hannan, C. & Ricci, L.  (2015). Reading connections : strategies for teaching students with visual impairments Retrieved from ProQuest Ebook Central: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uta-ebooks/reader.action?ppg=175&docID=4727804&tm=1524139996220

Lipthratt, B. (2017, March 5th). What Makes a Good reader? [Video file] Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTD3mQs6O4A


Comentarios

Publicar un comentario

Entradas populares de este blog

Unit 6: Writing

Imagen
Writing is one of the productive skills . It is a process in which you transmit your thoughts and ideas through a written text. According to Pontecorvo (1997), many people have a misconception about it because they think that it is only the representation of speech and that is only related to education. Even if we don’t write an essay or a composition, we are still producing written texts at the moment of making a grocery list, or by giving someone an address in a piece of paper; all of these are called text types. I learned that each type of text has its own characteristics: the use of appropriate words ( formality ), the different options to organize the information ( layouts ). The levels of register and grammar complexity depend on the receptor of the written text. A good piece of writing also needs to have accuracy in it (using the correct forms of language). Accuracy also involves the following subskills of writing: spelling correctly , forming letters correctly, w
Leer más

Unit 7: Listening

Imagen
Listening , in similitude to reading, is a receptive skill because you receive the information from a recording , a song, a movie, etc. According to Usó, E & Martinez, A. (2008) “of the four skills , listening is the one that has historically been the most neglected and misrepresented in the second language ( L2 ) classrooms, and hence, has been the skill which has been the least well taught”. There are some differences between written language (what we read) and the spoken language (what we listen to). In written language, the information does not disappear after being checked, in contrast to spoken language, where the information disappears as soon as it is spoken. While spoken language indicates the meaning of sentences or group of words through stress and intonation , written language uses punctuation and capitalization . Listening also contains utterances (incomplete sentences) and we make sense of them using our knowledge of the world. It is the duty of the tea
Leer más

Unit 4: Functions

Imagen
A function is a reason why humans communicate. It does not matter if we communicate with a friend, a relative, a teacher, or anyone in the world; we do it for a reason. Like other living creatures human beings interconnect with each other (Finnegan, 2004). I learned that the language we use in order to express a function is called an exponent. These are a few examples of a function and its exponents: Function: making a suggestion Exponent: “We can go to the park tomorrow” Function: Asking for clarification Exponent: “Sorry, could you repeat that please?” The different exponents demonstrate different levels of formality according to the function they are fulfilling. Formal language is commonly used in situations where people are getting to know each other for the first time. In contrast, informal language is used when people already know each other and has developed a certain level of trust between them. They usually use colloquial functions and don’t pay attention to
Leer más