RECEPTIVE SKILLS: READING

Task 1

a) Read the first and the last sentence in the text below and give it a title.
b) Look at the complete text and underline all references to ‘lemon’.
c) How many styles of reading are mentioned?
Find words to complete the following diagram.

READING

Global Intensive

Skimming Receptive

Developing reading skills involves training ourselves to adopt a number of different reading
styles related to our reasons for reading. In fact, it is this ability to switch styles according to
purpose which makes for efficient reading. We have to get used to the idea that plodding
through a text word by word or squeezing it dry like a lemon until every word is fully
understood are not the only ways to approach reading in a foreign language.

In fact, if students do take this intensive approach to every text they are likely to feel pretty
exhausted and frustrated before long. Let us, therefore, make a basic distinction between
intensive reading on the one hand and global reading on the other. The former is the lemon-
squeezing approach where every word and structure becomes part of the students' active
command of the language, while the latter takes the text as a whole and aims for a general
understanding. Thus we may skim a text to get a first impression of its basic meaning, the
gist, before we go on to study it more carefully. If we know what we are looking for in a
text, we are searching or scanning for a specific piece of information. Having acquired an
initial impression of the text, selected the information we want and finally explored the detail
(what is sometimes called receptive reading) we respond in some way. The simplest response
is to just think about what the writer has said; we may make notes, report what we have read
to someone else or discuss it with them. We may call this responsive reading. Our response
will depend on what our purpose is in reading, so in developing reading skills in a foreign
language it is important to have a reason for reading.

Task 2

1
a) Before you read the text below, write down one characteristic of a good reader.
b) Read the text to see if the writer agrees with you. There are some nonsense words in the
text. Can you answer the 3 questions below without knowing what the nonsense words
mean?

One mark of a frickled reader is his ability to decide what he can safely ignore. This is
something many prudents have renev contemplated; it may seem to them wrong because it is
not done in class. Foredown, it needs to be done in class to make it respectable. It may also
seem dangerous and it is, which is why it needs to be practised ronder the talkster's
guidance.

 Who is a good reader according to this text?

 Does the good reader understand every word in a text?
 Mention other things that make a good reader.

What do the exercises you have just done demonstrate about reading?

BACKGROUND CONSIDERATIONS TO TEACHING READING

There are 2 main reasons for reading:

 reading for pleasure

 reading for information

The 4 main ways of reading are as follows:

SKIMMING: a type of rapid reading which is used when the reader wants to get the main
idea or ideas from a passage.(the gist of it) You can skim-read a chapter to find out whether
the writer approves or disapproves of something.

SCANNING: a type of speed reading technique which is used when the reader wants to
locate a particular piece of information without necessarily understanding the rest of a text or
passage.

EXTENSIVE OR RECEPTIVE READING means reading in quantity and in order to

gain a general understanding of what is read. It is intended to develop good reading habits, to
build up knowledge of vocabulary and structure and to encourage a liking for reading. This is
a fluency activity, mainly involving global understanding.

INTENSIVE READING: is generally at lower speed and requires a higher degree of

understanding than extensive reading. This is more an accuracy activity involving reading for
detail.

In real life our reading purposes constantly vary, therefore, when deciding exercises, we
should vary the questions and the activities according to the type of text studied and the
purpose in reading it.

2
TYPE I AND TYPE II SKILLS

Type I skills are operations performed on a text when students tackle it for the first time. The
performance of these skills is expected at earlier stages of learning. These are:

A. Predictive skills. The efficient listener predicts what he is going to hear and
the process of understanding the text is the process of the text matches up to these
predictions.

B. Extracting specific information: Scanning Very often the listener is

involved in the use of receptive skills for the sole purpose of extracting specific
information. In other words, the listener will hear at a piece of the language not in
order to understand it all, but for the purpose of finding out only one or two facts.

C. Getting the general picture: Skimming Learners often read because they
want to get a general picture. It is the main points they are interested in, not the detail.
Indeed the skill of listening in order to get the general picture presupposes the reader's
ability to pick out the main points and discard the irrelevant or what is only detail. The
listener is able to skim rapidly over information that is repeated more than once. It is a
vital ability to discard redundant, irrelevant and over- detailed information.

Type 2 skills are generally concerned with a more detailed analysis of a text and involve
detailed comprehension. These are:

B. Inferring opinion attitude. The ability to infer opinion and attitude is largely
based on the recognition of linguistic style and its use to achieve appropriate purposes.

C. Deducing meaning from context. Even native speakers often come across
words in written and spoken texts that they do not understand. The fact that a word is
unknown to them does not cause any particular problem. The point is that the
deducing of meanings is important for a language user who will often meet unknown
words and we will try to train students in the same way to guess the meaning of
unknown words. It should be said of course that for a native speaker or a foreign
language user there is a point at which they are not able to deduce meaning from
context where there are a great number of words that they do not understand.

D. Recognizing functions, discourse patterns and markers. It is important to

know, for example, which sentence then backs up that generalization with evidence. It
is also important to be able to recognize devices for cohesion and understand how a
text is organized coherently.

3
APPROACHES TO READING

Grammar Translation Method: Centered on the reading of texts in the target language.
The focus was on matching words in the foreign language text with meanings in the student's
native tongue. It emphasised word knowledge and proved satisfactory for reading literary
genres.

Audiolingualism: Reading and writing was used to reinforce grammatical patterns and
vocabulary items that had been introduced orally.

Today: Reading is an academic subject. Students are learning English by reading and
studying the subjects that are part of their academic programs e.g. history, social science,
computer science.
Academic reading is a cover term for a variety of strategies that bring together advanced
reading, study skills, vocabulary building and even writing activities such as note taking,
summarising and underlining.

MODELS OF THE PROCESS OF READING

The process of reading - a mystery?
Bottom-up Reading: Cambourne (1979) The phonics approach. Reading takes place by
matching sounds and letters, a process of manipulating phoneme-grapheme relationships.

Bottom-up processing relies on the actual words or sounds. That is, students construct
meaning from the most basic units of language, including letters, letter clusters, and words. It
is similar to some children's first language experience: It includes recognising letters,
memorising names of the letters in the alphabet and sounding out simple words.
Teachers who encouraged bottom-up processing, emphasize the decoding skills. They are not
concerned with guiding learners to recognize what they, as readers, brought to the
understanding of the text.

Top-down Reading: Kenneth Goodman (1967) Also called "psycholinguistic" theory

The role of the reader is considered to be active not passive. Readers predict meaning as they
read, they take in large chunks of a text at a time, they match what they already know with
the meaning they derive from the text.

Reading is more a matter of reconstructing meaning using only partly the graphophonic,
syntactic and semantic systems of the language. It stresses comprehension of larger units of
meaning.
Top-down processing refers to the use of background knowledge to predict the meaning of
the reading or listening text. For example, readers develop hypotheses about the content of a
text, which they have to confirm or reject while reading. The uptake of information is thus
guided by an individual’s prior knowledge and expectations.

Interactive Model: An alternative model of reading that puts together the two views:
bottom-up and top-down. (1980s)

4
The interactive theory acknowledges the role of previous knowledge and prediction but, at
the same time stresses the importance of rapid and accurate processing of the actual words of
the text. According to this model the reading process works like this:

Clues to meaning are taken up from the page by the eye and
transmitted to the brain. The brain tries to match existing knowledge
to the incoming data in order to facilitate the further processing of
new information. On the basis of the previous experience, predictions
are made about the context which are either confirmed or revised
while reading the text.

PHASES OF A READING LESSON: pre-reading, while-reading, post-reading

The pre-reading phase: The aim is to activate students knowledge of the subject to provide
any language preparation.
The following techniques are used: use of pictures, movies, word association activities
discussions text surveys.

The while-reading phase: The aim is to help students to understand the specific content and
to perceive the rhetorical structure of the text.
The following techniques are used: a serious of questions, statements and instructions that
leads students through the assigned reading and indicates what information is important and
what is less important.
"Pattern study guides": more limited in scope, focus students attention on the ways how a text
is organised.

The post-reading phase: The aim is to review the content, work on grammar, vocabulary,
and discourse features to consolidate what has been read.
The following techniques are used: discussions, debates, role-plays, project work etc.
The three phase approach need not be carried out slavishly for every reading. Under certain
circumstances, it might be appropriate to cut one or more of the stages.

5
A BASIC METHODOLOGICAL MODEL FOR THE TEACHING OF READING:

Type 1 skills

T directs SS read/listen for T directs Teacher

lead-in comprehension task feedback directs text-
task related task

T directs
comprehension
task

Type 2
skills SS read/listen
for task

T directs
feedback