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CHAPTER 2: READING TECHNIQUES

A.) ANALYZE LITERARY TEXT USING THE READING TECHNIQUES PRESENTED.

B.) CREATE SENTENCES WITH FIGURES OF SPEECH.
C.) USE IDIOMS IN CREATING AN ESSAY.

COMPREHENSION: THE GOAL OF READING

Comprehension, or extracting meaning from what you
read, is the ultimate goal of reading. Experienced readers
take this for granted and may not appreciate the reading
comprehension skills required. The process of
comprehension is both interactive and strategic. Rather
than passively reading text, readers must analyze it,
internalize it and make it their own.
In order to read with comprehension, developing readers
must be able to read with some proficiency and then
receive explicit instruction in reading comprehension
strategies (Tierney, 1982).
General Strategies for Reading Comprehension
The process of comprehending text begins before children can read, when someone reads a picture
book to them. They listen to the words, see the pictures in the book, and may start to associate the
words on the page with the words they are hearing and the ideas they represent.
In order to learn comprehension strategies, students need modeling, practice, and feedback. The key
comprehension strategies are described below.
Using Prior Knowledge/Previewing
When students preview text, they tap into what they already know that will help them to understand the
text they are about to read. This provides a framework for any new information they read.
Predicting
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When students make predictions about the text they are about to read, it sets up expectations based
on their prior knowledge about similar topics. As they read, they may mentally revise their prediction as
they gain more information.
Identifying the Main Idea and Summarization
Identifying the main idea and summarizing requires that students determine what is important and then
put it in their own words. Implicit in this process is trying to understand the author’s purpose in writing
the text.
Questioning
Asking and answering questions about text is another strategy that helps students focus on the meaning
of text. Teachers can help by modeling both the process of asking good questions and strategies for
finding the answers in the text.
Making Inferences
In order to make inferences about something that is not explicitly stated in the text, students must learn
to draw on prior knowledge and recognize clues in the text itself.
Visualizing
Studies have shown that students who visualize while reading have better recall than those who do not
(Pressley, 1977). Readers can take advantage of illustrations that are embedded in the text or create
their own mental images or drawings when reading text without illustrations.
Strategies for Reading Comprehension: Narrative Text
Narrative text tells a story, either a true story or a fictional story. There are a number of strategies that
will help students understand narrative text.
Story Maps
Teachers can have students diagram the story grammar of the text to raise their awareness of the
elements the author uses to construct the story. Story grammar includes:
✓ Setting: When and where the story takes place (which can change over the course of the story).
✓ Characters: The people or animals in the story, including the protagonist (main character),
whose motivations and actions drive the story.
✓ Plot: The story line, which typically includes one or more problems or conflicts that the
protagonist must address and ultimately resolve.
✓ Theme: The overriding lesson or main idea that the author wants readers to glean from the
story. It could be explicitly stated as in Aesop’s Fables or inferred by the reader (more common).
Retelling
Asking students to retell a story in their own words forces them to analyze the content to determine
what is important. Teachers can encourage students to go beyond literally recounting the story to
drawing their own conclusions about it.

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Prediction
Teachers can ask readers to make a prediction about a story based on the title and any other clues
that are available, such as illustrations. Teachers can later ask students to find text that supports or
contradicts their predictions.
Answering Comprehension Questions
Asking students different types of questions requires that they find the answers in different ways, for
example, by finding literal answers in the text itself or by drawing on prior knowledge and then inferring
answers based on clues in the text.

Strategies for Reading Comprehension: Expository Text

Expository text explains facts and concepts in order to inform, persuade, or explain.
The Structure of Expository Text
Expository text is typically structured with visual cues such as headings and subheadings that provide
clear cues as to the structure of the information. The first sentence in a paragraph is also typically a
topic sentence that clearly states what the paragraph is about.
Expository text also often uses one of five common text structures as an organizing principle:
✓ Cause and effect
✓ Problem and solution
✓ Compare and contrast
✓ Description
✓ Time order (sequence of events, actions, or steps)
Teaching these structures can help students recognize relationships between ideas and the overall
intent of the text.
Main Idea/Summarization
A summary briefly captures the main idea of the text and the key details that support the main idea.
Students must understand the text in order to write a good summary that is more than a repetition of
the text itself.
K-W-L
There are three steps in the K-W-L process (Ogle, 1986):
1. What I Know: Before students read the text, ask them as a group to identify what they already know
about the topic. Students write this list in the ―K‖ column of their K-W-L forms.
2. What I Want to Know: Ask students to write questions about what they want to learn from reading
the text in the ―W‖ column of their K-W-L forms. For example, students may wonder if some of the
―facts‖ offered in the ―K‖ column are true.

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3. What I Learned: As they read the text, students should look for answers to the questions listed in the
―W‖ column and write their answers in the ―L‖ column along with anything else they learn.
After all of the students have read the text, the teacher leads a discussion of the questions and answers.

SKIMMING & SCANNING

Skimming and scanning are reading techniques that use rapid eye movement and keywords to move
quickly through text for slightly different purposes. Skimming is reading rapidly in order to get a general
overview of the material. Scanning is reading rapidly in order to find specific facts. While skimming tells
you what general information is within a section, scanning helps you locate a particular fact. Skimming
is like snorkeling, and scanning is more like pearl diving.
Use skimming in previewing (reading before you read), reviewing (reading after you read), determining
the main idea from a long selection you don't wish to read, or when trying to find source material for a
research paper.
Use scanning in research to find particular facts, to study fact-heavy topics, and to answer questions
requiring factual support.
Skimming to Save Time Skimming can save you hours of
laborious reading. However, it is not always the most
appropriate way to read. It is very useful as a preview to a
more detailed reading or when reviewing a selection
heavy in content. But when you skim, you may miss
important points or overlook the finer shadings of
meaning, for which rapid reading or perhaps even study
reading may be necessary.
Use skimming to overview your textbook chapters or to
review for a test. Use skimming to decide if you need to
read something at all, for example during the preliminary
research for a paper. Skimming can tell you enough about
the general idea and tone of the material, as well as its
gross similarity or difference from other sources, to know
if you need to read it at all.
To skim, prepare yourself to move rapidly through the pages. You will not read every word; you will pay
special attention to typographical cues-headings, boldface and italic type, indenting, bulleted and
numbered lists. You will be alert for key words and phrases, the names of people and places, dates,
nouns, and unfamiliar words. In general, follow these steps:
1. Read the table of contents or chapter overview to learn the main divisions of ideas.
2. Glance through the main headings in each chapter just to see a word or two. Read the headings of
charts and tables.

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3. Read the entire introductory paragraph and then the first and last sentence only of each following
paragraph. For each paragraph, read only the first few words of each sentence or to locate the main
idea.
4. Stop and quickly read the sentences containing keywords indicated in boldface or italics.
5. When you think you have found something significant, stop to read the entire sentence to make sure.
Then go on the same way. Resist the temptation to stop to read details you don't need.
6. Read chapter summaries when provided.
If you cannot complete all the steps above, compromise: read only the chapter overviews and
summaries, for example, or the summaries and all the boldfaced keywords. When you skim, you take
a calculated risk that you may miss something. For instance, the main ideas of paragraphs are not
always found in the first or last sentences (although in many textbooks they are). Ideas you miss you
may pick up in a chapter overview or summary.
Good skimmers do not skim everything at the same rate or give equal attention to everything. While
skimming is always faster than your normal reading speed, you should slow down in the following
situations:
✓ When you skim introductory and concluding paragraphs
✓ When you skim topic sentences
✓ When you find an unfamiliar word
✓ When the material is very complicated
Scanning for research and study
Scanning, too, uses keywords and organizational cues. But while the goal of skimming is a bird's- eye
view of the material, the goal of scanning is to locate and swoop down on particular facts.
Facts may be buried within long text passages that have relatively little else to do with your topic or
claim. Skim this material first to decide if it is likely to contain the facts you need. Don't forget to scan
tables of contents, summaries, indexes, headings, and typographical cues. To make sense of lists and
tables, skim the first to understand how they are organized: alphabetical, chronological, or most-to-
least, for example. If after skimming you decide the material will be useful, go ahead and scan:
1. Know what you're looking for. Decide on a few key words or phrases–search terms, if you will. You
will be a flesh-and-blood search engine.
2. Look for only one keyword at a time. If you use multiple keywords, do multiple scans.
3. Let your eyes float rapidly down the page until you find the word or phrase you want.
4. When your eye catches one of your keywords, read the surrounding material carefully.
Scanning to answer questions
If you are scanning for facts to answer a specific question, one step is already done for you: the question
itself supplies the keywords. Follow these steps:

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1. Read each question completely before starting to scan. Choose your keywords from the question
itself.
2. Look for answers to only one question at a time. Scan separately for each question.
3. When you locate a keyword, read the surrounding text carefully to see if it is relevant.
4. Re-read the question to determine if the answer you found answers this question.
Scanning is a technique that requires concentration and can be surprisingly tiring. You may have to
practice at not allowing your attention to wander. Choose a time and place that you know works for you
and dive in.
Critical Reading
Learning how to read critically involves becoming actively engaged in what you read by first developing
a clear understanding of the author’s ideas, then questioning and evaluating the arguments and
evidence provided to support those arguments, and finally by forming your own opinions. Reading this
way requires that you develop skills that aren’t necessary for more passive forms of taking in
information. However, it also allows you to get more from what you read.
Steps in critical reading:
✓ Before you read
Scan the piece to get an idea of what it is about and what the main argument is.This may include
reading an introduction, if there is one, or the subheadings.
✓ While you read
Keep a running dialogue with the author through annotation by recording your thoughts, ideas, and
questions. Underline, highlight, or circle important parts and points, and write comments in the margins.
✓ After you have read
Look over your annotations to get an overall idea of the text. You may also choose to write a summary
to solidify your understanding.
✓ Responding to the text
After you have developed a clear sense of the author’s argument and line of reasoning, you are able
to analyze the author’s argument and methods. Then, you can develop your own ideas—perhaps into
an essay of your own.
Making Inferences
Making inferences is a comprehension strategy used by proficient readers to ―” read between the
lines”, makes connections, and draw conclusions about the text’s meaning and purpose.
You already make inferences all of the time. For example, imagine you go over to a friend’s house and

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they point at the sofa and say, ― “Don’t sit there, Cindy came over with her baby again.” What could
you logically conclude?
First, you know there must be a reason not to sit where your friend is pointing. Next, the reason not to
sit there is related to the fact that Cindy just visited with her baby. You don’t know what exactly
happened, but you can make an inference and don’t need to ask any more questions to know that you
do not want to sit there.
Practice Making Inferences
Imagine you witness the following unrelated situations—what can you infer about each one?
1. You see a woman pushing a baby stroller down the street.
2. You are at a corner and see two parked cars at an intersection, and the driver in back starts honking
his horn.
3. You are walking down the street, and suddenly a dog comes running out of an opened door with its
tail between its legs.
For the first, you probably came up with something simple, such as there was a baby in the stroller.
For the second, you might have inferred that the first car should have started moving, or was waiting
too long at the corner and holding up the second car.
For the third, you could reasonably guess that the dog had done something wrong and was afraid to
get punished.
You do not know for 100% certainty that these inferences are true. If you checked 100 strollers, 99
times you would find a baby, but maybe one time you would find something else, like groceries.
Making Inferences as You Read
To make inferences from reading, take two or more details from the reading and see if you can draw a
conclusion. Remember, making an inference is not just making a wild guess. You need to make a
judgment that can be supported, just as you could reasonably infer there is a baby in a stroller, but not
reasonably infer that there are groceries, even though both would technically be a ―guess.” When you
are asked an inference question, go back over the reading and look for hints within the text, such as
words that are directly related to the question you may be asked (Such as for a multiple-choice test) or
words that indicate opinion.
FIGURES OF SPEECH

A figure of speech is a rhetorical device that achieves a special effect by using words in a distinctive
way. Though there are hundreds of figures of speech, here we'll focus on 20 top examples.
For example, common expressions such as "falling in love," "racking our brains," and "climbing the
ladder of success" are all metaphors—the most pervasive figure of all. Likewise, we rely on similes

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when making explicit comparisons ("light as a feather") and hyperbole to emphasize a point ("I'm
starving!").
Using original figures of speech in our writing is a way to convey meanings in fresh, unexpected ways.
They can help our readers understand and stay interested in what we have to say.
Alliteration
The repetition of an initial consonant sound.
Example: She sells seashells by the seashore.
Anaphora
The repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or verses.
Example: Unfortunately, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time on the wrong day.
Antithesis
The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases.
Example: As Abraham Lincoln said, "Folks who have no vices have very few virtues."
Apostrophe
Directly addressing a nonexistent person or an inanimate object as though it were a living being.
Example: "Oh, you stupid car, you never work when I need you to," Bert sighed.
Assonance
Identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighboring words.
Example: How now, brown cow?
Chiasmus
A verbal pattern in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first but with the
parts reversed.
Example: The famous chef said people should live to eat, not eat to live.
Euphemism
The substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered offensively explicit.
Example: "We're teaching our toddler how to go potty," Bob said.
Hyperbole
An extravagant statement; the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened
effect.
Example: I have a ton of things to do when I get home.

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Irony
The use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning. Also, a statement or situation where
the meaning is contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea.
Example: "Oh, I love spending big bucks," said my dad, a notorious penny pincher.
Litotes
A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its
opposite.
Example: A million dollars is no small chunk of change.
Metaphor
An implied comparison between two dissimilar things that have something in common.
Example: "All the world's a stage."
Metonymy
A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated;
also, the rhetorical strategy of describing something indirectly by referring to things around it.
Example: "That stuffed suit with the briefcase is a poor excuse for a salesman," the manager said
angrily.
Onomatopoeia
The use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.
Example: The clap of thunder went bang an d scared my poor dog.
Oxymoron
A figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side.
Example: "He popped the jumbo shrimp in his mouth."
Paradox
A statement that appears to contradict itself.
Example: "This is the beginning of the end," said Eeyore, always the pessimist.
Personification
A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstraction is endowed with human qualities or
abilities.
Example: That kitchen knife will take a bite out of your hand if you don't handle it safely.
Pun

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A play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the similar sense
or sound of different words.
Example: Jessie looked up from her breakfast and said, "A boiled egg every morning is hard to beat."
Simile
A stated comparison (usually formed with "like" or "as") between two fundamentally dissimilar things
that have certain qualities in common.
Example: Roberto was white as a sheet after he walked out of the horror movie.
Synecdoche
A figure of speech in which a part is used to represent the whole.
Example: Tina is learning her ABC's in preschool.
Understatement
A figure of speech in which a writer or speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less important or
serious than it is.
Example: "You could say Babe Ruth was a decent ballplayer," the reporter said with a wink.

IDIOMS
English idioms, proverbs, and expressions are an important part of
everyday English. They come up all the time in both written and spoken
English.
Because idioms don't always make sense literally, you'll need to familiarize
yourself with the meaning and usage of each idiom. That may seem like a
lot of work, but learning idioms is fun, especially when you compare English
idioms to the idioms in your own language.

The most common English idioms

These English idioms are extremely common in everyday conversation in the United States. You will
hear them in movies and TV shows and can use them to make your English sound more like that of a
native speaker.

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https://www.google.com/search?q=Reading+techniques&sxsrf=ALeKk03TSrH_g6cy

zWGnltaLqhdhO5tyLw%3A1629523179555&ei=64wgYZKfIY7U0gSa-
amIBQ&oq=Reading+techniques&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAMyBQgAEMsBMgUIABD

LATIFCAAQywEyBQgAEMsBMgUIABDLATIFCAAQywEyBQgAEMsBMgUIABDLATIFCAA
QywEyBQgAEMsBOg4ILhCABBCxAxCDARCTAjoLCAAQgAQQsQMQgw E6CAgAEIAEEL
EDOhEILhCABBCxAxCDARDHARDRAzoFCAAQgAQ6BAgAEENKBAhBGABQ3zVYiFFgml
doAHACeACAAZICiAHiFZIBBjAuMTYuM5gBAKABAcABAQ&sclient=gws
http://www.butte.edu/departments/cas/tipsheets/readingstrategies/skimming_sca
nning.html
https://www.esc.edu/online-writing-center/resources/critical-reading
writing/general-reading/critical-reading/
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/developmentalreading/chapter/making-
inferences/
https://www.thoughtco.com/top-figures-of-speech-1691818
Knowledge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3F8pQLtY_Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h_G EwJQlXY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvsopmnMfg8

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