Effective Reading Skills

Development

Chapter: Effective Reading Skills

Development
Instructor: Ayesha Zareef
Lecture Date: 11/19/2017

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 What is Effective Reading?
• Reading for academic study can be different from reading for
leisure. When reading a novel you would read the book from
cover to cover but academic reading can be more of a
selective process. You will often only read the chapters or
pages that are relevant to the subject you are researching.

• By reading effectively you will learn to question and survey

the text you are reading to gain a better understanding of
your subject. By improving your reading skills you can
reduce unnecessary reading time and this will enable you to
read in a more focused manner.
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 Why Reading is Important?

• Reading is an important way to gain information

and will underpin much of your academic study
including researching and writing assignments,
revising for exams and following up on
information taught in lectures. Most academic
reading is motivated by the need to find and
understand information and develop ideas and
arguments.
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 Before you start reading

• Before you start reading it is important to

consider how much detail is required and the
amount of time you are able to dedicate to the
task. This will help you set realistic goals of
what you can accomplish within a given time. It
is helpful to approach reading by developing a
basic understanding of the topic before studying
it in depth.
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SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read, Recall
and Review).
This is a useful technique that will help you read purposefully.

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"Reading for learning requires a conscious effort
to make links, understand opinions, research and
apply what you learn to your studies. "

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Strategies that can help students read more quickly
and effectively include:

1. Previewing
2. Predicting
3. Skimming and scanning
4. Guessing from context
5. Paraphrasing

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 Strategies
• Previewing:
reviewing titles, section headings, and photo captions to get a
sense of the structure and content of a reading selection
• Predicting:
• using knowledge of the subject matter to make predictions
about content and vocabulary and check comprehension.
• using knowledge of the text type and purpose to make
predictions about discourse (dissertation, speech, dialogue)
structure.
• using knowledge about the author to make predictions
about writing style, vocabulary, and content.
• Skimming and scanning: using a quick survey of
the text to get the main idea, identify text structure,
confirm or question predictions
• Guessing from context: using prior knowledge of
the subject and the ideas in the text as clues to the
meanings of unknown words, instead of stopping to
look them up
• Paraphrasing: stopping at the end of a section to
check comprehension by restating
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Reading is an essential part of language instruction at
every level because it supports learning in multiple
ways:
• Reading to learn the language
• Reading for content information
• Reading for cultural knowledge and awareness

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• Reading to learn the language
Reading material is language input. By giving students a variety
of materials to read, instructors provide multiple opportunities
for students to absorb vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure,
and discourse structure as they occur in authentic contexts.
Students thus gain a more complete picture of the ways in which
the elements of the language work together to convey meaning.

• Reading for content information

Students purpose for reading in their native language is often to
obtain information about a subject they are studying, and this
purpose can be useful in the language learning classroom as well.
Reading for content information in the language classroom gives
students both authentic reading material and an authentic purpose
for reading. 11
• Reading for cultural knowledge and awareness

Reading everyday materials that are designed for native

speakers can give students insight into the lifestyles and
worldviews of the people whose language they are studying.
When students have access to newspapers, magazines, and
Web sites, they are exposed to culture in all its variety, and
monolithic (uniform) cultural stereotypes begin to break
down.

A stereotype is any thought widely adopted about specific types of individuals or

certain ways of behaving intended to represent the entire group of those individuals
or behaviors as a whole.
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When reading to learn, students need
to follow four basic steps:

• Figure out the purpose for reading.

• Attend to the parts of the text that are relevant to
the identified purpose and ignore the rest.
• Select strategies that are appropriate to the
reading task and use them flexibly and
interactively.
• Check comprehension while reading and when
the reading task is completed.
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• Figure out the purpose for reading.
Activate background knowledge of the topic in order to
predict or anticipate content and identify appropriate
reading strategies.

• Attend to the parts of the text that are relevant to the

identified purpose and ignore the rest.
This selectivity enables students to focus on specific items
in the input and reduces the amount of information they
have to hold in short-term memory.

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• Select strategies that are appropriate to the reading task
and use them flexibly and interactively.
Students comprehension improves and their confidence
increases when they use top-down and bottom-up skills
simultaneously to construct meaning.

• Check comprehension while reading and when the

reading task is completed.
Monitoring comprehension helps students detect
inconsistencies and comprehension failures, helping them
learn to use alternate strategies.

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