Close reading
It is a method to teach comprehension that emphasizes students to draw out meaning from an article by analyzing carefully how language is used in the passage itself (Connor et al., 2016, P.1). close reading aims to involve students in the reading of complex texts.
Below videos provide more information concerning close reading and its strategies for better comprehension of students.
In this video, 11th-grade students in US History closely read the inaugural speech of President Roosevelt. (Frey, 2013
This short clip describes the CLOSE reading process as used in our writing classroom in concordance with Common Core State Standards of Informative Writing. (Hermanson, 2015)
Active and Close Reading Strategies: Strategies for increasing reading comprehension. A synthesis of presentations from a variety of sources. (Gannon University School of Education, 2017)
Fisher et al. (2016, p. 89) in their research “Best Practices in Vocabulary Instruction Revisited. Best Practices in Literacy Instruction” figured out four components to support close reading:
Repeated reading of a brief text
Annotation of the short text to reflect thinking
Teacher’s questioning to guide analysis and conversation
Students’ extended conversation and analytic thinking.
According to Mesmer and Rose-McCully (2017), to have a closer look at the close reading, there is three construction that can affect students reading comprehension. These constructions are Anaphora, Connectives, and Appositives, which are defined below.
2.4.1. Anaphora
When one word or group of words replace with other words within a sentence, it is called anaphora. In another word, the hidden replacement of a word in a text is named anaphoric relationship, and it would be difficult for students to catch the meaning of the sentences. For instance; in a text, the word “cherry trees” might be replaced by “Sakura” which is a Japanese word with the same meaning. Pronouns are simple forms of anaphoric relationships. Below are strategies and steps that can help teachers effectively teach the anaphora relationship:
1) Using a base knowledge of pronoun relationships to support an understanding of noun replacement. E.g; Have you seen my key? Yes, I found it.
2) Tread strategy: teachers write several statements on a paper with the pre-targeted replacement, then s/he will highlight with a different color the proper replaced word to be easy to track for students.
Tread Activity Example:
Damian and Maria were excited about the art show. They had worked hard for many weeks on their projects. The art show required them to identify a theme, find three different art projects to show that theme, gather materials, complete each art project, and organize their projects in a display or portfolio. The process had been hard, and it had taken them many weeks to complete.
3) Anaphora Mad Libs: Mad Libs is a game that students provide a word with a specific part of speech such as nouns, adverbs, and adjectives to complete a blank.
Example:
Sheila, Jasmin, and Patrice could not wait to get out outside to jump rope. The budding all-stars (They) jumped rope every day on the playground. Sheila always got the jump ropes from Ms. Garcia’s room and always took the frayed and well-loved ropes (them) outside. Jasmin and Sheila always started the ropes turning while Sheila jumped. The team (They) used two ropes and jumped double Dutch.
4) Replacement strategies: it is a group activity; teachers write several simple sentences on the flip chart paper stretching across the room and students in the group are asked to create their novel replacements. For example, “Sheila drove down the highway. She smiled at the beautiful weather. It made her smile.” Students work in groups to create interesting noun replacements for each of the pronouns. (Mesmer and Rose-McCully, 2017).
Example:
Sample Replace Activity, (Mesmer and Rose-McCully, 2017)
Connectives
In the reading and writing the connectives mean a word or phrase that links one clause to another (e.g., and, but, that, which) or connects two adjacent sentences (e.g., however, thus). Different connectives suggest different relationships and are used under different conditions. “Connectives are crucial to understanding within and across sentences because they signal pivotal text-based inferences that readers must make” (Cain & Nash, 2011; Irwin, 2007; Robertson, 1968 as cited in Mesmer and Rose-McCully, 2017).
Clause activities, links, and sentence combining are strategies that teachers can use to improve students’ capacity on sentence connectives.
(Types of Connectives, Mesmer & Rose-McCully, 2017)
An appositive is a noun, noun phrase, or noun clause that is set off by commas and immediately follows a noun.
Like noun and pronoun replacements, appositives can be confusing to inexperienced readers who are trying to track the kernel of a sentiment.
Frequently, students struggle with vocabulary because they miss the contextual cues in the passage that support their understanding
Once taught, identifying appositives in sentences can appear simple when students begin to look for the commas.
However, commas are not required when the appositive gives meaning to a sentence.
For instance, below two sentences composite of the similar words, just due to including a comma they have different meanings.
1- My sister, Fatima likes apples. -------------> it implies that the speaker has one sister
2- My sister Fatima likes apples. -------------> it implies that the speaker has more sisters
Different strategies including blocking out, Different names for me, and appositive poems are the strategies that enable instructors to apply them to their classes to enhance the students’ skills in reading.