Reading is a process of the brain where you look at symbols on a page, and your mind sees the patterns of characters and understands the meaning in them.
Strategies that can help students read more quickly and effectively include
- 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 the content and vocabulary and check comprehension; using knowledge of the text type and purpose to make predictions about discourse structure; using the knowledge about the author to make predictions on 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 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 the information and ideas in the text.
Instructors can help students learn when and how to use reading strategies in several ways.
- By modeling the strategies aloud, talking through the processes of previewing, predicting, skimming and scanning, and paraphrasing. This shows students how the strategies work and how much they can know about a text before they begin to read word by word.
- By allowing time in class for group and individual previewing and predicting activities as preparation for in-class or out-of-class reading. Allocating class time to these activities indicates their importance and value.
- By using cloze (fill in the blank) exercises to review vocabulary items. This helps students learn to guess meaning from context.
- By encouraging students to talk about what strategies they think will help them approach a reading assignment, and then talking after reading about what strategies they actually used. This helps students develop flexibility in their choice of strategies.
When language learners use reading strategies, they find that they can control the reading experience, and they gain confidence in their ability to read the language. Here I include some important reading techniques to develop the reading skill.