Characteristics Of Good Readers

Characteristics Of Good ReadersI cig artte remember those days viewly. As a student in English Teaching major(ip), I perpetually so had problems with English literature and it was hard for me to finish interlingual rendition an English bol iy uniform elephants like pureness hills with step to the fore trouble and difficulty. Once our literature instructor was asking students comments and suggestions intimately English literature and it was a good m for me to talk or so my horrors and troubles with English literature. Whenever Im infering an English invention or poem, a sense from deep inside my heart tells me that extend it up You dont subscribe to to shoulder this heavy burden I said. While he had a smile on his face, our dear master answered me buzz off you ever seen people who ar waiting for sunrise in a dessert to see the violator of twilight? Do you know that their tolerance is rewarded by the most beautiful scene they wad go through in tout ensemble their lives? This statement was so masterly stated that forced me to think of the out of sight part of the iceberg So instead of giving up this beauty of twilight, I tried to develop familiar with antithetical cultivation skills and unlike edgees affecting it and manold age the hard task of information. In fact, admiting is a complex skill and good readers should approach fosterage from third major points of view From inculcateing point of view, from different strategies motivati cardinald, and from different processes required for the excerpt of materials.Primarily, reading is a skill which is mostly required in academician institutions. To analyze reading from teaching point of view, you should have a clear definition of reading. Different writers and different researchers have different definitions for reading. Christine Nuttall (1996) has given three groups of motifs for reading definition (p.2). The first group deals with reading as a decoding, deciphering, and identi fying process. The fleck one sees it as an articulation, speaking, and pronunciation. The third one has more or lesswhat ideas like understanding, responding, and gist for reading. We can see that this group of ideas deals with some loaded cognitive processes for reading and it is somehow related to the definition of reading by Perfetti (1984) who defines reading as thinking guided by print (qtd. in Chastain 216). more(prenominal) or little people think that reading is a passive skill, beca determination at that attitude is no production from the readers side, but Chastain (1988) is against this kind of definition and opposes this groups ideas by stating thatReferring to reading as a passive skill perpetuates a misconception that can only misguide students and harm their perceptions of what their rule in their reading process is. Reading is a receptive skill in that the reader is receiving message from a writer. In the past various writers have to a fault referred to readi ng as a decoding skill. This depotinology derives from the idea of lyric poem as a code, one which moldiness be deciphered to arrive at the meaning of the message. Although this term points out the active role the reader must p posture in reading describe the reading process in a manner that implies active reader intent upon using background noesis and skills to indemnify the writers intended meaning (p.216).Sengupta(2002) in her longitudinal study tracing abstract change in developing academic reading at ordinal level has given an interactive model for academic reading in which the readers background knowledge, his risk-taking, and meaning making finished this interaction argon of primeval importance in academic reading. Figure 1 clearly illustrates this relation.HM.A1st sem researchtahririindex_filesfigure1.gifUndoubtedly, in order to be able to read in a alien spoken communication, forwards anything, one has to be familiar with the distinguishs and sign systems of th at foreign language. Like the children nicety their first languages signs, a person who essentials to read in a foreign language has to know for example what an X sign stands for. But we should have in mind that children go under some(prenominal) preparatory processes before being able to read a text edition or a story. To get familiar with some of these multilevel processes, smith and Elley (1997) conducted a study on teaching reading for children in modernistic Zealand and they reported thatChildren are prepared for reading at an early age by dis backening to stories, being read to, and interacting with adults and others nearly the stories they hear. This is through non with the main purpose of preparing a child for reading but as a style that parents and others interact with, show affection for, and entertain and direct children. The interaction involves asking questions about what is going to happen in the story, acquiring the child to complete sentences in a kn avow story, talking about the interesting and scary parts of the story, and cosmopolitanly having fun (qtd. in people 3).As you can see in this example, children primarily pay watchfulness to the meaning the sentences have and the form and pronunciation of the sentences whitethorn be of itsy-bitsy concern for these little children. This awareness of sentence meaning and the techniques employ to teach reading mystify believes this kind of reading interaction macroly meaning-focused and Nation (2009) states that it includes share reading, guided reading and independent reading. In shared reading, the learners gather some the teacher and the teacher reads a story to the learners from a very large blown-up take hold while showing them the pictures and the create verbally delivery. The second subject is Guided reading which can be done silently or with a child reading aloud to a friend, parent or teacher. Before the reading the learner and teacher talk about the book (pp. 3-4) . Several researches have shown the effectiveness of this kind of reading. One of them is the research done by Wong and McNaughton (1980)Research by Wong and McNaughton (1980) showed that for the learner they studied, pre-reading discussion resulted in a sweller parcel of words initially correct, and a greater percentage of errors self-corrected. The teacher and the learner advert at the title of the book and make sure that all the words in the title are known. therefore they talk about the pictures in the story and make predictions about what great strength happen in the story and talk about any knowledge the learner already has about the topic. Important words in the story are talked about but carry not be pointed to in their written form. So, before the learner actually starts to read the story, the ideas and cardinal words in the story are talked about and clarified. Then the learner begins to read (qtd. in Nation p.4).The third kind of meaning-focused reading is the ind ependent reading in which the learner chooses a book to read and quietly gets on with reading it. During this quiet period of class time, the teacher may also read or may use the time as an opportunity for individual learners to number up to read to the teacher (Nation, 2009, p. 5).As you saw, learning to read in the first language seems quite easy, but the way in which you learn reading in second language has its own problems. Taken from Nation (2009), some of these problems are illustrated in table 1(p.7) hedge 1.1 L1/L2 Differences for an Individual Beginning to ReadCharacteristicsGeneral effectsParticular effectsL1 beginning readers alreadyknow a lot of the languagethey are beginning to read(sounds, vocabulary,grammar, dis telephone line). L2learners do not.Learning to read an L2involves a great deal oflanguage learning.L2 learners get verycontrolled texts.L2 learners need a greateramount of pre-readingactivities.L2 beginners can already readin their L1.L2 beginners have generalcognitive skills.They have preconceptionsand attitudes to reading.They have languagespecific skills.There impart be interferenceand facilitation effectsbetween the L1 and L2L2 beginners do not needto learn what they cantransfer from the L1.They may need to changetheir attitudes to reading.Learners may have tolearn a different writingsystem.L2 beginners are normallyolder than L1 beginners.L2 learners have greatermetalinguistic andmetacognitive awarenessIt is easy to transfer L1skills.L2 learners can use moreexplicit approaches andtools like dictionaries.This table has been kept unsubdivided by focusing on only one learner who is nevertheless beginning to read. It is more complicated if you have several learners with different L1s, different L2 proficiencies, different L1 reading proficiencies, and different motivations for reading.Reading also requires having different strategies. These reading strategies are grouped into different categories, according to the preference of their writers. For example, www.readinga-z.com (n.d), has given the list of hobby strategiesMaking PredictionsVisualizingAsking and Answering QuestionsSkimming and ScanningRetelling and SummarizingConnecting the text to Life Experiences, Other Texts, or Prior KnowledgeWord-Attack StrategiesThe first one is making predictions. By making predictions, you can make the reading more interesting. Incorrect predictions can signal a misunderstanding that needs to be revisited (www.readinga-z.com).In making predictions, you should have these points in your mindLook at the pictures, table of contents, chapter headings, maps, diagrams, and features. What subjects are in the book?Write down predictions about the text. During reading, explore for words or phrases from those predictions.While reading, revise the predictions or make new ones (www.readinga-z.com).The second strategy is visualizing. In visualizing, the reader uses his mental position effectively and using shapes, spatial relatio nships, movement, and colors can benefit greatly from this strategy. This strategy also requires having the spare-time activity points in mind judge a fiction story taking vex as if it were a movie. Imagine the characters features. Picture the plot in time and space.Imagine processes and explanations happening visually. employ nouns, verbs, and adjectives to create pictures, diagrams, or other mental images.Use graphic organizers to lay out information. Make sk and so ones or diagrams on scrap paper (www.readinga-z.com).Lets go to the third strategy which is asking and answering questions. Using this strategy you have to ask different questions from yourself while reading and then by answering these questions you can direct your reading. Like the guidelines given in the previously summonsed strategies, readinga-z.com gives the following guidelines to usBefore reading, think about the subject based on the title, chapter heads, and visual information. Make ancestry of anything yo u are curious about.While reading, soften and write down any questions. Be sure to ask questions if there is confusion.Look for the answers while reading. Pause and write down the answers.Were all the questions answered? Could the answers come from other sources? Then we come to the skim and scanning. Lindsay and Knight (2006) give honorable mention to these skills by saying that the ability to read something quickly and efficiently is an important skill for learners to acquire. Skimming and scanning are two of this (p.71).They define skimming as the reading for gist without trying to understand everything in it. In this process, you read through the text to get a general idea of what it is about, while in scanning you want to find out about something specific, for example get a particular piece of information from a text (Lindsay and Knight, 2006, p.72).The next reading strategy is Retelling and Summarizing during which you have to paraphrase the written materials and summarize i t and be able to discriminate between main ideas and forgivable details (readinga-z.com). In this strategy, readinga-z.com recommends us to pay anxiety to the following pointsDuring reading, note the main ideas or events. Put a check mark in the book or write a note to point out a main idea.At the ends of chapters or sections, review the information or story. Note main ideas or events and the details that support them.After reading, replicate or summarize the text. Focus on the important points, and support them with applicable details.Refer to the book to check the retelling or summarization. The last point to mention in the reading strategies refers to the use of word-attack strategies which servicing students decode, pronounce, and understand foreign words. They help students attack words piece by piece or from a different angle (readinga-z.com).Using word-attack skills, you can reduce the difficulties of reading process. minify the scale of the problem by ignoring inessen tial words is the first step. Next, students must require strategies for dealing with lexical items that rattling block comprehension (Nuttall, 1996, p.69). here(predicate) we shall discuss three kinds of them the first is the interpretation of morphological clues by sounding at the position of a word in a sentence, evidence from context is the next which is a skill we have in our L1 and for less fluent students conscious use of it is valuable. By using it, they can get a meaning not necessarily completely accurate, but copious for their purpose (Nuttall, 1996, pp.69-72).Using a dictionary is the last skill the use of which is both discouraged and encouraged. It is discouraged because of the usual tendency to use them off the beaten track(predicate) too often (Nuttall, 1996, p.76). I think there is no need to explain wherefore a dictionary is encouraged.For using a dictionary, Nuttall (1996) emphasizes the instruction execution of the following stepsThe first step towards using the dictionary as a tool instead of a crutch is to decide which word to look upand to accept that they should be as few as possible. Having decided to look up a word, we want to do it quickly and to make the outflank use of the information in the dictionary (p.76).It is necessary to have repetitive insistence on the use of this skill. This means you should make frequent use of the dictionary in class (even though it is quicker to give the meaning yourself) and that it should be the student who select the appropriate definition (Nuttall, 1996, p.76).Among the others, Krashen and Terrell (1983) outline the following communicative reading strategy1. Read for meaning2. Dont look up every word3. Predict meaning4. Use context (qtd. in Chastain 225)Finally, we come to the selection of materials for reading. Selection of appropriate reading materials is a life-and-death component in the establishment of a productive reading course of instruction (Chastain, 1988, p.231). Defending the place of the selection of the materials, Doff(1988) has given some factors for the selection of materials to requireIn normal life, we do not normally read because we have to but because we want to. We usually have a purpose in reading there is something we want to find out, some information we want to check or clarify, some opinion we want to match against our own, etc. We also have a purpose in reading when we read stories for pleasure we want to find out how the story develops, what happens next (p.170).As we can infer from the given text, it is the learners interests and needs which initially shapes the selection of materials, so the first factor to consider in the selection of the appropriate reading materials can be the interests and goals of the learner. Chastain (1988) emphasizes the importance of this point more than linguistic complexness by stating thatWith the advent of the concept of reading as taking place within the readers head as he interacts with the words on the page, the readers willingness to pertain the process of recreating meaning until the authors message is understood becomes central to reading process. and so interest in the content rises to a level of importance higher(prenominal) than that of linguistic complexity because no reading will take place if readers are not interested enough to continue reading. However, if they are really interested in knowing what author has to say, they will make every effort to understand the reading (p.231).Here Chastain (1988) raises a question students interests cover an enormous range of topics, trying to satisfy all would be unsufferable (p.231). Then, what would we do in selecting materials while at the same time we are going to consider the students interests? The answer is so simple. We can use a variety of procedures to select the reading materials from among the students interests. For example, they (the teachers) can choose readings with which students have some familiarities, or they can use prereading activities to generate interest and even ardor for the content of selected reading. They can even survey the students interests later in the course and attempt to incorporate into the course reading on some of the mentioned topics (Chastain, 1988, p.231).The second factor in selecting the reading materials is the factor of readability which is determined through linguistic analysis of the authors language (Chastain, 1988, p.232).Nuttall (1996) defines readability as combination of structural and lexical difficulty and further explains that since the language of a text perchance difficult for one student and easy for another, it is necessary to assess the proper level for students you teach (p.174). It is obvious that if the text would be beyond the readers power of comprehension, soon he will be frustrated and he may put it aside and, like what I did with the the hills like white elephants So the text should be analyzed through the factor of readability be fore being processed by the reader. Readability of a text can be analyzed from many ways. For example computer programs and the way they process the data you when you give the sample from the text. Some readability indexes like Harrison 1980 and Chall 1984 are frequently used to calculate readability (Nuttall, 1996, p.175).As you pay attention to the level of readability of the text, you should also be aware of the other disadvantage of reading comprehension Syntactic simplicity.Bernhardt (1948) points out that syntactic simplicity may decrease text cohesion and thereby hinder comprehension (qtd. in Chastain 232).Now, we shall go to the last factor in selecting the reading materials which is the use of the dependable materials. Nuttall (1996) comments that they can be motivating because they are proof that the language is used for real life purpose by real people (p.172). Chastain (1988) defines dependable materials as follows Generally, any text that an author writes to be able to communicate some message is authoritative because it has an authentic purpose and it conforms to authentic language use (p.233).This definition of the authentic materials is different from the definitions given by some other authors who define authentic materials as those texts written for use by the foreign language community, not for language learners (Nuttall, 1996, p.177). Byrnes (1985) clearly explains the reason why some people only label the texts written by primal speakers as authentic materials Due to the problems students have with such texts because they are unfamiliar with the culture, one may think of material written by inwrought speakers for language users as being authentic (qtd. in Chastain 232).Chastain (1988) comments on which types of authentic materials are good for L2 readers specially for students and which types are not by stating thatSupervisors and teachers of language courses may choose more academic types of reading such as articles, essays, short st ories, plays, and novels, and these works certainly are important. One purpose of education is to expose students to high quality writing and to stimulating intellectual ideas from the cultures writers. However, never being exposed to some of the more common types of reading that they do in their native culture such as advertisements, notices, TV schedules, bulletins, manuals, programs, newspapers, and menus may result in students who are unable to read things they will need most to be able to read in the foreign culture (p.233).In this paper, we looked at reading from three major viewpoints and the impact they could have on improving the reading. I often use the reading strategies exactly mentioned in this paper, but whenever a story like elephants like white hills wants to irritate me, a sense from deep inside my heart tells me that give it up