Reading Skills and its Sub-skills
Posted on Sunday, 30 June 2013
|
No Comments
Reading involves a number of sub-skills.
1. Global Comprehension
In reading a text for meaning, it is desirable to go from the ‘whole’ to the ‘parts’, and not vice versa, as unskilled readers tend to do. A poor reader will pick up information from the text in small bits and pieces, as he/she reads from one word or one sentence to the next, and try to assemble the bits together. An efficient reader, on the other hand, will first try to form an over all ‘picture’ of the entire text.
‘Global Comprehension’, or the ability to get ‘over-all’ meaning from a text, requires the sub-skill of skimming i.e. reading through the text at high speed in order to identify and pick up the main idea or ideas in the text while ‘filtering out’ the unnecessary details.
2. Understanding the Plan of the Text
A good reader usually reads a text more than once in order to understand it adequately. The first reading is done at speed, with the intention of making a ‘general survey’ of the text. Then the reader returns to the text as many times as needed in order to fill in the details.
Efficient readers are able to form a ‘plan’ of the text that is being read, which helps them to recover meaning from it. Most texts – unless they are badly written – possess unity of thought. There is generally one central idea or ‘theme’ in the text, which is most prominent. There may be other ideas as well, but they are usually introduced in order to provide support for the main idea. The reader’s mental plan helps him/her to ‘navigate’ through the text confidently instead of groping about blindly.
3. Making Predictions and Informed Guesses
An unskilled reader plods through a text laboriously, trying to get the meaning of every word. The skilled reader, after reading a few sentences, paragraphs or pages, is able to form a fairly accurate picture of what the author is trying to say, and is able to ‘hop’ and ‘skip’ through the text, omitting quite substantial portions of it without missing important information. Most writers have a tendency to repeat themselves in irder to ensure that their readers do not miss the significance of what they are saying; good readers are aware of this and know that portions of the text can be safely omitted.
Making reliable predictions about what is likely to be found in the text is an important sub-skill of reading.
4. Local Comprehension
After reading through the text quickly to form an overall impression, one should focus on the details of the information provided by the writer, which will generally be located in different parts of the text.
A reader begins by gathering the ‘facts’ presented by the author in the text. The term ‘factual comprehension’ refers to the ability to absorb and retrieve factual information contained in the text – i.e., information which has been explicitly stated by the writer and is directly available in the text. Factual comprehension must come before deeper and more thorough understanding of the text; unless one understands the ‘plain sense’ of the text, one cannot reach the other levels of comprehension.
Inferential comprehension refers to the reader’s ability to ‘read between the lines’. The reader has to understand not just what the writer has said but also what he/she might have said but has chosen to leave unsaid. This is done on the basis of clues provided in the text as well as the reader’s own background knowledge.
Evaluative comprehension requires the reader to make a considered judgment on the truth and the value of what the writer is trying to say, and how far he/she has succeeded in saying it. This is a more sophisticated skill than the two previously referred to since the author has to respond to the text more critically to identify, among other things, the writer’s bias, force and accuracy of argument and the effectiveness of what he/she is trying to say.
5. Guessing the meanings of Unfamiliar Words
Good readers tackle unknown words in a text by trying to guess their meanings from the context. It is not possible to look up the meanings of all unknown words in the dictionary. If the reader attempts to do that the flow of reading is interrupted. However, this is possible only when the text does not have too many difficult words.
6. Skimming an Scanning
'Skimming' a text means going through it quickly to get an overall idea of the content. We are not interested in details or any specific information while skimming.
'Scanning' on the other hand , involves searching the text for specific piece of information in which the reader is interested.
7. Understanding Discourse Markers
Discourse markers are ‘signposts’ provided by the writer. These are used in a text to indicate sequence of ideas and signal the writer’s point of view. Understanding the writer’s use of discourse markers is an important sub-skill of reading. These signposts are helpful because they indicate to the reader the relationship between two parts of the text.
8. Understanding the Organization of a Text
Every text contains a number of different ideas, which are presented in different parts of the text. The manner in which different ideas are related to each other in a text is referred to as the structure or organization of a text. This is controlled by the topic, the writer’s purpose and the audience that he/she has in mind. A good reader should be able to trace the organizational pattern in the text.
Once readers understand how a text is organized, they are better able to get meaning from a difficult text.
9. Note-Making
Note-making is a sub-skill of reading that is highly useful for study purposes. It involves understanding the organization of the text and being able to identify the main points and the supporting details, in skeleton or outline form.
1. Global Comprehension
In reading a text for meaning, it is desirable to go from the ‘whole’ to the ‘parts’, and not vice versa, as unskilled readers tend to do. A poor reader will pick up information from the text in small bits and pieces, as he/she reads from one word or one sentence to the next, and try to assemble the bits together. An efficient reader, on the other hand, will first try to form an over all ‘picture’ of the entire text.
‘Global Comprehension’, or the ability to get ‘over-all’ meaning from a text, requires the sub-skill of skimming i.e. reading through the text at high speed in order to identify and pick up the main idea or ideas in the text while ‘filtering out’ the unnecessary details.
2. Understanding the Plan of the Text
A good reader usually reads a text more than once in order to understand it adequately. The first reading is done at speed, with the intention of making a ‘general survey’ of the text. Then the reader returns to the text as many times as needed in order to fill in the details.
Efficient readers are able to form a ‘plan’ of the text that is being read, which helps them to recover meaning from it. Most texts – unless they are badly written – possess unity of thought. There is generally one central idea or ‘theme’ in the text, which is most prominent. There may be other ideas as well, but they are usually introduced in order to provide support for the main idea. The reader’s mental plan helps him/her to ‘navigate’ through the text confidently instead of groping about blindly.
3. Making Predictions and Informed Guesses
An unskilled reader plods through a text laboriously, trying to get the meaning of every word. The skilled reader, after reading a few sentences, paragraphs or pages, is able to form a fairly accurate picture of what the author is trying to say, and is able to ‘hop’ and ‘skip’ through the text, omitting quite substantial portions of it without missing important information. Most writers have a tendency to repeat themselves in irder to ensure that their readers do not miss the significance of what they are saying; good readers are aware of this and know that portions of the text can be safely omitted.
Making reliable predictions about what is likely to be found in the text is an important sub-skill of reading.
4. Local Comprehension
After reading through the text quickly to form an overall impression, one should focus on the details of the information provided by the writer, which will generally be located in different parts of the text.
A reader begins by gathering the ‘facts’ presented by the author in the text. The term ‘factual comprehension’ refers to the ability to absorb and retrieve factual information contained in the text – i.e., information which has been explicitly stated by the writer and is directly available in the text. Factual comprehension must come before deeper and more thorough understanding of the text; unless one understands the ‘plain sense’ of the text, one cannot reach the other levels of comprehension.
Inferential comprehension refers to the reader’s ability to ‘read between the lines’. The reader has to understand not just what the writer has said but also what he/she might have said but has chosen to leave unsaid. This is done on the basis of clues provided in the text as well as the reader’s own background knowledge.
Evaluative comprehension requires the reader to make a considered judgment on the truth and the value of what the writer is trying to say, and how far he/she has succeeded in saying it. This is a more sophisticated skill than the two previously referred to since the author has to respond to the text more critically to identify, among other things, the writer’s bias, force and accuracy of argument and the effectiveness of what he/she is trying to say.
5. Guessing the meanings of Unfamiliar Words
Good readers tackle unknown words in a text by trying to guess their meanings from the context. It is not possible to look up the meanings of all unknown words in the dictionary. If the reader attempts to do that the flow of reading is interrupted. However, this is possible only when the text does not have too many difficult words.
6. Skimming an Scanning
'Skimming' a text means going through it quickly to get an overall idea of the content. We are not interested in details or any specific information while skimming.
'Scanning' on the other hand , involves searching the text for specific piece of information in which the reader is interested.
7. Understanding Discourse Markers
Discourse markers are ‘signposts’ provided by the writer. These are used in a text to indicate sequence of ideas and signal the writer’s point of view. Understanding the writer’s use of discourse markers is an important sub-skill of reading. These signposts are helpful because they indicate to the reader the relationship between two parts of the text.
8. Understanding the Organization of a Text
Every text contains a number of different ideas, which are presented in different parts of the text. The manner in which different ideas are related to each other in a text is referred to as the structure or organization of a text. This is controlled by the topic, the writer’s purpose and the audience that he/she has in mind. A good reader should be able to trace the organizational pattern in the text.
Once readers understand how a text is organized, they are better able to get meaning from a difficult text.
9. Note-Making
Note-making is a sub-skill of reading that is highly useful for study purposes. It involves understanding the organization of the text and being able to identify the main points and the supporting details, in skeleton or outline form.
Posts
