Useful reading skills Thursday, December 4, 2008

In yesterday's class we talked about useful strategies when you read a text that you find a bit difficult to get through. Together we came up with the following:

• underline difficult words as you read, but keep reading and look them up after you have finished the chapter. If you get stuck looking up too many words you lose the context and you might get too bored to actually finish the book
• write down difficult words and expressions on a piece of paper and go back to look them up when you have finished reading the chapter
• try to focus on the general ideas in the text, not on the details or individual words
• summarize the most important events of the chapter in your head or in writing in just a few sentences. If you have trouble doing this you need to go back and read some of it again
• use your logic to try to figure out what is important in the text
• focus on one paragraph or one chapter at a time
• be confident and keep reading, many situations will be explained later in the book and you will understand it eventually
• go back an re-read some parts again, sometimes that helps a lot

In today's class I wanted to focus on another very important reading strategy that you all have, but you may not always think about it. That is your ability to predict or to guess what will happen next in the story or in any text, really.

We looked at a simple dialogue in which I had erased a few lines. Drawing on our previous experiences we quickly figured out that the dialogue took place in a restaurant and the two people were a costumer and a waiter. Even though we had very little written information it was easy for us to figure out the context.

We also looked at the opening paragraphs of two stories and we discussed possible scenarios for the next paragraph. We came to the conclusion that we all had different ideas of what would happen next, because we all have different experiences in life. We interpret a story differently and that is a good thing!

We agreed on that some outcomes are more likely than others, and in fact some outcomes are possible, but highly unlikely, both because they are unlikey to happen in real life and because there were no indications of that outcome previously in the text.

The point of the discussion was: make use of the knowledge and experiences that you already have when you are reading a text and try to predict or guess what will happen next. If you practise doing that you will find that reading becomes a lot easier and also more fun.