READING SKILLS

ACTIVE READING
Effective reading is an active process. It has to be
linked to what you know already and you must always
assess your purpose for reading and then structure your
reading techniques accordingly.
In addition to reading actively, it is just as important to
read efficiently, i.e. to adopt the appropriate strategy to
obtain the information you want as straightforwardly as
possible. This means, for example, varying your
techniques of reading to suit your purpose or goal,
developing strategies for dealing with unfamiliar
grammar or vocabulary.
 READING SKILLS
0. PREDICTION = anticipating what is to come next in a
passage.
1. EXTENSIVE READING or SKIMMING = getting a
general understanding or an overall impression of a
text.
2. INTENSIVE READING or SCANNING = locating
particular details of a text or a single piece of
information. Look at the grammar (verb tenses,
prepositions, articles etc.) – e.g. underline the main verb
tenses used. Examine which words are commonly
used together (e.g. noun/adjective combinations). The
use of layout, headings, supporting ideas, expansions,
word combinations, affixes, connectives, punctuation
and keywords can help locate relevant information.
 READING NEWSPAPERS
News style or news writing: particular prose
style used for news reporting as well as in news
items that air on radio and television (not only
vocabulary and sentence structure, but also
relative importance of news items, tone, and
intended audience).
Expository writing mode and style, i.e. the
author is to inform, explain, describe, or define
his or her subject to the reader.
 FEATURES OF NEWSWRITING
News writing tends to be:
• impersonal to make it appear objective (to
distance the reporter from the story), therefore it
should be written in the third person
• use of direct speech or indirect speech which is
attributed to someone other than the reporter.
• some use of passive verbs but usually only when
someone who is being quoted wants to distance
themselves from an issue and to show their objectivity
about an issue.
 FEATURES OF NEWSWRITING
• simple and clear: relatively short sentences
and words.
• catchy - it must grab the reader's attention so
often uses:
• short rather than long words, sentences, paragraphs
• active verbs
• concrete rather than abstract vocabulary
• sometimes emotive and colourful vocabulary
• some use (but not overuse) of adjectives
 FEATURES OF NEWSWRITING
• but also relatively formal therefore:

• no use of contractions
• sentences written in full (no elision)
elision or eliptical
sentences
 NEWS TEXTS
• Event story: describes what happened in the
event of some action or happening - typically
some accident, natural disaster, act of violence,
crime, economic setback etc.
• Issue Report: acts typically describes the
criticisms, accusations, demands, warnings,
discoveries or announcements of some
authorised source such as a politician,
community leader, lobbyist, professional expert
or scientific researcher.
 NEWS TEXTS
• Event/Issues’ hybrids: (material
happening + statements, opinions, etc)
more frequent in the domain of political
reporting.
• Hard news report: mere report of the
material actions of others.
 NEWS TEXTS
• Editorials, media commentary or opinion piece:
‘subjective’ interpretations and explicit value judgements,
aesthetic evaluations, theories of cause-and-effect etc.
Different papers mark the editorial as opinion or comment
with different headlines:
• The Sun: “The Sun says”
• The Express: “Opinion”
• Daily Mirror: “Comment”, “Voice of the Mirror”
• The Independent on Sunday: “Comment and analysis”
• The Observer: “Comment”
 SKIMMING NEWS ARTICLES
Any good news article will provide answers to the
5Ws and the H (who did what, when, where, why
and how).
Here you find a possible procedure to skim an
article.
Read the headline and the first few paragraphs.
Then answer these questions:
•Who or What is the article about?
•Where did the events take place?
•When did the events take place?
 SKIMMING NEWS ARTICLES
Now skim the rest of the article.
• What additional facts did you learn about the
subject?
• If you hadn’t looked at the rest of the article,
what information would you have missed?
• Usually your past knowledge about a topic in the
news helps you understand the article. What
past knowledge did you have about the topic
that helped you understand it?
 ANALYZING
BUSINESS ARTICLES
Here you find a possible procedure to analyse a business
article:
•What’s the headline? How does it help you predict the
content and viewpoint of the article?
•What is the purpose of the article (e.g. to report conditions
of a company, new products, trends in the stock market,
experts’ opinion on economic conditions and so on)?
•What is the main idea of the article?
•Does the article make a prediction about the future? If so,
what is the prediction?
•Does the article give any advice? If so, what is it?
WRITING
 WRITING CRITERIA
• Range, i.e. field, domain
• Content, i.e. main topic and related info
• Accuracy, i.e. checking that the text is
factually and grammatically correct, but also
that all the style guidelines have been
adhered to.
• Register, i.e. the most suitable ‘level’ and
variety of language for a given
communicative act, with variations in lexico-
grammar as well as in style.
 WRITING CRITERIA
1. Cohesion, i.e the use of repetitions
and linking words (however, thus,
therefore), and other devices such as
cohesive cues (personal pronouns,
demonstrative pronouns and words
such as the same, both, respectively)
to guide readers and show how the
parts of a text relate to one other
 WRITING CRITERIA
2. Organization, i.e sentence structure,
paragraph structure, text structure

3. Target reader, i.e the (implied)

audience.
 WRITING TIPS
• Do not translate literally from your own
language into English. Try instead to
remember English sentence patterns you
have read and re-use them in your writing.
• Write short sentences (at most 2/3 lines).
• Do not mix a formal with an informal style.
 TRANSLATING
SCOPE AND PURPOSE
Translating a text means to transfer a
“meaning” from one linguistic code to
another, in order to obtain the closest
natural equivalent to the message of the
source language, firstly in meaning and
secondly in style.
 TRANSLATING
The process of translation is not merely
automatic substitution of linguistic
structures. Literal translation can only be a
first, ”pre-translation” stage to be
abandoned as soon as possible in favour
of a communicative one. Communicative
translation tries to produce on its readers
an effect as close as possible to that
obtained on the readers of the original.
 REFERENCES
• Bell A. (1991), The Language of News Media,
Blackwell, Oxford.
• Clark Caroline M. de B. (2006). Views in the
News. Milano: Led.
• Fowler, R. (1991; 2003), Language in the News,
New York, Routledge.
• Reah D. (1998), The Language of Newspapers,
Routledge, London.
• Van Dijk, T.A. (1988), News as Discourse,
Hillsdale, N.J., Lawrence Erlbaum Rea Danytah.