THE READING PAGE
Reading is an essential skill for anyone who wants to succeed in life, but it is equally important in helping you to develop and reinforce all your other language skills. Reading helps you to improve your vocabulary, writing, grammar, and even reading and listening skills because you are constantly reminded of the vocabulary you know, the sentence structure and language usage and expression.
I have added many links with a a variety of reading activities in the links page on the right hand side of the blog. The easier readings links are at the bottom of the list. The list becomes more challenging as you go up. You will find a wide range of reading materials and activities. Some will help you improve skills such as skimming,scanning, sequencing. Others will help you practice your inference, and critical thinking skills Still others are practice reading tests, or longer readings with questions.
Not all of he reading links focus on "skill based activities. You will also find links to fiction stories, magazine articles to suit almost any interest and news stories. Some of these are specifically designed for ESL readers. Others are designed for more advanced readers.
Make an effort to find some of your own reading material. There are many online magazines, comics, romance stories and novels. You can also takeout simplified novels from your school or local library. The main point is read as much as you can.
Basic Reading Skills
Preview the Passage
Read the title and any subtitles that may be in the passage., If the passage is a short one, read the topic sentences (main idea sentences) of all the paragraphs in the passage. Read the first and last paragraphs. Scan the whole passage (look it over very quickly). Once you have a good general idea of what the passage is all about, you will be much better able to understand what you are reading because you will be able to relate the separate parts to the whole.
Read With a Purpose
Know why you are reading this story, article, passage from a book, or even newspaper article. Ask yourself what you want to get out of it? Write down a few questions you would like to have answered in he reading. When you consciously look for information or ideas, your reading will become much more focused and effective.
Many students think their comprehension will increase if they read slowly and carefully. However, they are wrong. Reading quickly actually improves your comprehension. When you read slowly, word by word, you do not get any sense of the meaning of the passage, but rather a fragmented series of unrelated chunks. When you read more quickly in chunks and without stopping, or going back, you get a much better idea of the bigger meaning of the reading. Skip over words you don't know or guess their meaning from the context. If there are too many words or phrases you don't understand, then look the words up and learn what they mean in this context. Then, after this vocabulary work, read the passage again -- quickly!
Read the Passage More Than Once
Read the article or story again, or even a third time if you have done some vocabulary work, or analyzed some of the sentences for grammar patterns. Write out sentences that strike you as having particularly good vocabulary, a good style, or which demonstrate good language use. ( use of collocations)
Develop Your Knowledge of Vocabulary and Usage
Read Every Day
Read as much as you can every single day. Carry reading material with you. That way you can pull out when you are waiting for a bus, at a supermarket line up, or in a bank line up. Read on the bus, or the sky train. You can read a lot of material in those "spare moments." The other benefit is hat you will no longer be frustrated when the wait is longer than you expected because you have something to do. Don't limit yourself to "academic reading" Read all types of material, fiction (stories or novels) as well as non-fiction. Read newspapers, books and magazines -- you actually remember more from reading printed material than reading something on the Internet. Read for different reasons -- study, work or interests,. Most of all, read for pleasure. You will find that the more you read, the more you will enjoy reading.
Resources To Help You Improve Your Reading
- How to Improve your Reading : (Comprehensive English advice sheets from the Language Center of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.)
READING TEST PRACTICE: :
Diagnostic : How Well Do You Read?
HOW TO:
- Overview: How to Understand What You Read in English (Video)
- Effective Study Reading
- How To Read Difficult Texts
Critical Thinking Skill Reading Practice
Highly recommended for building your critical thinking skills. Do five exercises a day and you will find that your reading improves a lot. Put yourself under time pressure. Take a MAXIMUM of 10 minutes a car. Try to get it down to 5 or 6 minutes.
Skill Based Reading Practice
Vocabulary Questions from Reading Passages
- Words That Sound Alike or Look Alike Study Guide
- Reading Prefixes and Suffixes Study Guide
- Denotation and Connotation Study Guide
Context Clues
Using Context Clues to Understand New Vocabulary in Reading
- Using Context Clues Study Guide
- Defining Vocabulary in Context
- Three Types of Context Clue Power Point with some practice
- Context Clues Tutorial and Practice from Kids Lab
- Online Context Clues Practice
Purpose and Main Idea
Essential Information and Specific Details
Patterns of Organization/Relationships between Ideas
Biographies: - Reading For Essential Information
- Practice Identifying Specific Details
- Main Idea and Supporting Details Practice
- Implied Cause and Effects
- Summarizing Text Study Guide
- Practice Summarizing text
- Distinguishing Between Fact and Opinion
- Practice Distinguishing Between Fact and Opinion
Patterns of Organization/Relationships between Ideas
AMERICA (Some have quizzes. Some do not) These are all intermediate level reading and listening passages. The reading is slowed down considerably.
No comments:
Post a Comment