UNIT 5 ACADEMIC READING

Lesson 5: Developing language skills (Developing Reading Skills –

Types and examples of Reading)

Introduction:

This lesson introduces the student teachers to different types of reading that may occur in a classroom- intensive reading, extensive reading, skimming and scanning. It also discusses different strategies and techniques that are used for different types of reading tasks in an academic context.

Definition of academic Reading

Teaching reading in the classroom needs special attention because enhances language acquisition, provides a good model for writing, and stimulates discussion. It also helps learners improve their vocabulary (Grabe, 2002). Generally, reading improves students’ overall language proficiency and academic performance.

Academic Reading:

Reading in an academic context is different from everyday reading. Reading is integral to the process of understanding your topic, finding research materials, and developing your ideas. Academic reading involves layers of asking questions and reflecting on relationships among parts of the text. According to Kurland (2000a), Critical reading refers to a careful, active, reflective, analytic reading, which involves reflecting on the validity of what one has read in light of his prior knowledge and understanding of the world. One purpose of academic readings is to give students exposure to different viewpoints and ideas. Academic texts are written by professionals in a given field and edited by the authors’ peers and often take years to publish, while non-academic texts are written for the mass public and published quickly and can be written by anyone.

Some examples of academic texts are:

• Articles: (An academic text that offers results of research and development that can either affect the academic community or provide relevance to nation building)
• Conference paper: (Papers presented in scholastic conferences and may be revised as articles for possible publication in scholarly journals).
• Reviews (An academic text that provides evaluation or reviews of works published in scholarly journals)
• Theses/Dissertations (These are personal researched written by a candidate for a college of university).

Fundamental of Academic Reading

Full concentration and comprehension are required for you to understand key ideas, information, themes or arguments of the text. The following are some fundamental issues about academic reading:

• Determine which type of academic text you are reading
• Determine and establish your purpose of reading
• Identify the author’s purpose for writing
• Predict or infer the main idea or argument of the text based on its title
• State what you already know and what you want to learn about the topic

Content and Style of Academic Text:

Authors of academic texts:

• Raise abstract questions and issues.
• Present facts and evidence to support their claims.
• Use logic to build their arguments and defend their positions.
• Conform to a clearly defined structure.
• Choose their words carefully to present their arguments as effectively as possible.
• Try to convince us to accept their positions.

Types of academic reading

Intensive Reading

Intensive reading is used to teach or practice specific reading strategies or skills. The text is treated as an end in itself. It is reading for a high degree of comprehension and retention over a long period of time. Brown (1989) explains that intensive reading calls attention to grammatical forms, discourse markers, and other surface structure details for the purpose of understanding literal meaning, implications, rhetorical relationships, and the like. He draws an analogy to intensive reading as a “zoom lens” strategy. Intensive Reading, which is sometimes called “Narrow Reading”, may involve students reading selections by the same author or several texts about the same topic. Middleton (2011) describes intensive reading as the practice of reading short-to-medium length passages with the aim of focusing on specific text-based elements, as comprehension, vocabulary, etc.

Advantages of intensive reading

1. It provides a base to study structure, vocabulary and idioms and a base for students to develop a greater control of language.
2. It also provides for a check on the degree of comprehension for individual students.

Limitations of intensive reading

1. There is little actual practice of reading because of the small amount of text.
2. In a class with multi-reading abilities, students may not be able to read at their own level because everyone in the class is reading the same material.
3. The text may or may not interest the reader because it was chosen by the teacher.
4. There is little chance to learn language patterns due to the small amount of text.
5. Because exercises and assessment usually follow intensive reading, students may come to associate reading with testing and not pleasure.

Extensive reading

Extensive reading involves reading of large quantities of material, directly and fluently. It is treated as a means to an end. It may include reading simply for pleasure or reading technical, scientific or professional material. This later type of text, more academic, may involve two specific types of reading, scanning for key details or skimming for the essential meaning. Brown (1989) explains that extensive reading is carried out “to achieve a general understanding of a text”, while Long and Richards (1971, p.216) identify extensive reading as “occurring when students read large amounts of high interest material, usually out of class, concentrating on meaning, “reading for gist” and skipping unknown words.” The aims of extensive reading are to build reader confidence and enjoyment. Extensive reading is always done for the comprehension of main ideas, not for specific details.

Characteristics of Extensive Reading

Day and Bamford (1980) have identified ten characteristics of Extensive Reading Programs.

They are:

1. Students read as much as possible.
2. A variety of materials on a range of topics is available.
3. Students select what they want to read.
4. The purposes of reading are usually related to pleasure, information and general understanding.
5. Reading is its own reward.
6. Reading materials are well within the linguistic competence of the students in terms of vocabulary and grammar.
7. Reading is individual and silent.
8. Reading speed is usually.
9. The teacher is a role model of a reader for the students.

Advantages of Extensive Reading

1. Students develop a “reading habit”
2. Students gain more confidence in reading
3. Students attitudes towards reading is improved and they become more motivated to read
4. Students feel more autonomous over their own learning and more likely to take more initiative
5. Students become more aware of what’s available to them to read and how to access materials
6. It expands students’ sight vocabulary

1. It helps students acquire “incidental” grammatical competence – that is, it may be acquired even though it was not directly taught
2. It increases reading comprehension
3. It improves students’ overall language competence
4. Students become more prepared for further academic courses because they have read large quantities

Challenges of Extensive Reading

1. May be costly and time consuming if materials are already not available

1. It may be difficult to keep students challenged to read more difficult texts as the program continues
2. Reading each student’s journals and reports can be very time-consuming for   teachers.
3. Some teachers may feel that time spent on Extensive Reading will take away from time that could be spent on learning language skills.

Scanning

Scanning is a quick reading, which focuses on locating specific information. Scanning involves quick eye movements, not necessarily linear in fashion, in which the eyes wander until the reader finds the piece of information needed. It is used when a specific piece of information is required, such as a name, date, symbol, formula, or phrase, is required. The reader knows what the item looks like and so, knows when the reader has located what /she was searching for. Very little information is processed into long-term memory. The objective is simply matching.

Scanning is a quick reading, which focuses on locating specific information. Scanning involves quick eye movements, not necessarily linear in fashion, in which the eyes wander until the reader finds the piece of information needed. It is used when a specific piece of information is required, such as a name, date, symbol, formula, or phrase, is required. The reader knows what the item looks like and so, knows when the reader has located what /she was searching for. Very little information is processed into long-term memory. The objective is simply matching.

Role of the Student in Scanning

1. The student forms questions before reading. What specific information are they looking for?
2. The student looks for contextual clues. The student tries to anticipate what the answer might look like and what sorts of clues would be useful.
3. The student is aware of the graphic form that the answer may take, such as a numeral, a written number, a capitalized word or a short phrase that includes key words.

Skimming

Skimming is a quick reading to get to know the general meaning of a passage to know how the passage is organized, that is, the structure of the text, to get an idea of the intention of the writer. Skimming is a more complex task than scanning because it requires the reader to organize and remember some of the information given by the author, not just to locate it. Skimming is useful when your goal is to preview the text to get a better idea of what it’s about. It will help prepare you for deeper learning.

This strategy makes it much easier to recall what you’re about to read.

1. Look at the table of contents first.
2. Review the subheadings in each chapter
3. Quickly read the first paragraph in that section
4. Check out anything in your text that is in bold or italics
5. If there is a chapter summary, now is a good time read it.

Role of the student in Skimming

1. Students read through the text in the following manner:
2. Read the title if any.
3. Read the introduction or the first paragraph.
4. Read the first sentence of each of the following paragraphs.
5. Read any headings or sub-headings.
6. Look at any pictures or phrases that are in boldface or italics
7. Read the summary or last paragraph.

Activities in a Skimming Lesson

1. Students must locate facts that are expressed in sentences, not single words.
2. Although speed is essential and the teacher often sets a time limit to the activity, skimming should not be done competitively. Students should be encouraged individually to better themselves.

1. To improve skimming, readers should read more and more rapidly, to form appropriate questions and predictions and then read quickly.