Reading Is Fun & Easy

READING

A.How can you help your students improve their reading ability?

Reading skills can often be challenging to teach. Some students are natural readers; others need extra help and guidance to improve their reading level. Spending extra time with students one-on-one or in small groups will help you understand their specific needs and personal learning styles. Though your student must be self-motivated and willing to learn, you can do much in your role as teacher to encourage him and help speed the process of improving his reading.

Instructions

1.Choose reading material in a subject that interests your student.

 If he is genuinely curious about the content of what he is reading, he will be more enthusiastic about the process and learn more. Find out something about your student's personality and main interests. Look for articles, short stories, excerpts from biographies or news stories regarding a topic of his choosing.

Make sure the reading level is not too high or too low for your student. If there are too many new and unfamiliar words, she won't understand enough of the passage to comprehend the main points or answer the questions. This will cause her to lose interest and "zone out." However, if your reading material is too simple, she will not be challenged. It may take a few tries to figure out exactly where her level is, so prepare a number of reading materials.

2.Provide your student with a task.

 Give your student a few questions before reading the passage so he is aware of what to look for when reading. If your student is actively looking for the answers to the questions, he will be engaged with the material and have a sense of accomplishment when completing the task.

3.Explain new vocabulary.

You should introduce about five to seven new words per reading passage. You can "pre-teach" new words and then ask your student to identify where and how these words are used in the passage, or you can ask him to look for the words and guess their meaning based on their context in the reading. Ask specific questions about the meanings of the words so you are sure your student understands the exact meaning and appropriate usage of the vocabulary.

B. How to Motivate the Student to Improve Their Reading Ability ?

A positive, safe, loving environment will boost the student's self esteem and motivate her to improve reading ability. Learning to read can be a struggle for some students. Students who have difficulty reading may suffer from low self esteem, which ultimately reduces the pupil's motivation to continue the challenge. Teach the student that he can improve his reading ability through positive re-enforcement and by creating a safe, loving environment. The result will be a confident reader who will continue to improve and strive for reading success.

Instructions :

1.Set realistic reading goals. Students will feel more motivated to reach the next reading level if they can achieve challenging, but realistic goals. If the student is reading at a first grade level, set a goal of reaching grade 1.5.When setting goals, instead of telling the student that she "must" reach a goal, tell her to describe the steps she will take to reach the goal. Give her power of ownership with goal setting which will boost her motivation and self esteem.

2.Provide the necessary tools for reading success. Whether its fluency or comprehension, students must challenge abilities and learn from those challenges in order to improve. One of the best ways to challenge reading abilities is to provide worksheets or activities that pertain to a reading passage. Select a set of worksheets that meets the student's reading level, and then allow the student to choose which worksheet he wants to tackle first. Reading activities can also help improve reading skills. For example, ask the student to write an alternate ending to the story or act out the story.

3.Change your teaching methods from lesson to lesson. Keep students interested in reading by presenting and evaluating reading progress differently from lesson to lesson. For example, have students perform a play based on a book, then ask the other students to answer questions based on the play. The next day, set up a scavenger hunt where students find answers based on reading clues scattered throughout the room.

4.Praise and reward students' reading progress. If the student struggled with the same passage or type of passage and finally mastered it, shower the student with praise and perhaps a small reward.

Although important for overall scholastic measurement, grades can become a source of stress and de-motivation for many students, especially those struggling with reading. De-emphasize the importance of grades and create situations where the student is graded on her reading improvement and progress.

5.Give the student reading assigns on subjects that he is interested in, such as baseball, weather, computers, anything that would appeal to the particular student's interests.

C. What makes a reading text easy or difficult?

There are some factors which make the reading text easy or difficult to understand. The factor that makes the reading text difficult to understand are :

Ø  Illegibility
        A first, obvious difficulty relates to the legibility of a text. The students may have problems that are caused solely by the fact that what they are trying to understand has been poorly printed or copied, is badly set-out or is in a very small type-face.

Ø  Unfamiliar Words
        A written message may be difficult to understand because it contains many words that are unknown to the student. In the following text, for example, the instruction is simple but the language in which it is expressed is not familiar.

The factor that makes the reading text Easy to understand, it is the contrast of the difficulty which make the reading text hard to understand.

Ø  Legibility
           If the printed or the copied of the reading text is good, the type-face easy to read, it will be make the student’s mood nice and they will have more spirit to read it.

Ø  Familiar word
           If the words which content in the reading text easy or familiar with the student, she will have more feeling to read and they will easy to understand the reading text.

Ø  Interesting topic
           By interesting topic can make the student attention focus on reading text. They will easy to understand the main or the point and the story of the reading text about.

Ø  generally, reading texts are easier if :
a. they contain 'simple' language-structure and vocabulary familiar to the students
b. they are short : simple sentences
c. they are clearly organized eg. there is a straightforward storyline or a clearly signposted    argument
d. they are factual
e. they are in standard english with no specialized vocabulary
f. the topic is concrete and familiar
g. there is support in the way of layout, tittles, pictures, graphs, etc

D. What are different ways of reading ?(Skimming , Scanning, Intensive and extensive reading).

A .Skimming refers to the process of reading only main ideas within a passage to get an overall impression of the content of a reading
selection.

How to Skim:

Ø  Read the title.

Ø  Read the introduction or the first paragraph.

Ø  Read the first sentence of every other paragraph.

Ø  Read any headings and sub-headings.

Ø  Notice any pictures, charts, or graphs.

Ø  Notice any italicized or boldface words or phrases.

Ø  Read the summary or last paragraph.

B. Scanning is a reading technique to be used when you want to find specific information quickly. In scanning you have a question in your mind and you read a passage only to find the answer, ignoring unrelated information.

How to Scan:

Ø   State the specific information you are looking for.

Ø   Try to anticipate how the answer will appear and what clues you might use to help you locate the answer. For example, if you were looking for a certain date, you would quickly read the paragraph looking only for numbers.

Ø  Use headings and any other aids that will help you identify which sections might contain the information you are looking for.

Ø   Selectively read and skip through sections of the passage.

C. Intensive Reading is

The work of Palmer (1921) notes that “intensive reading” means that the readers take a text, study it line by line, and refer at very moment to the dictionary about the grammar of the text itself.

 Intensive is about studying minute details and trying to wring absolutely every drop of information out of a section of text. The easy way to compare these two types is reading the same paragraph 100 times (intensive) vs. reading 100 different paragraphs (extensive).

D .Extensive Reading is

It is the view of Palmer (1964) that “extensive reading” is considered as being reading rapidly. The readers read books after books. Its attention is paid to the meaning of the text itself not the language. The purpose of extensive reading is for pleasure and information. Thus, extensive reading is also termed as “supplementary reading”.

 Extensive is when you try to cover vast amounts of materials, but just skip over the parts you don’t know and try to get the general gist of things. It’s all about context and the big picture. Once you get awesome, you can just sit down and read a book and understand everything, and you’re doing an extensive exercise still.

        These two aspects of reading can play off each other. Extensive reading gives you a sense of familiarity, and can help you get curious about the language. You see things many times in different places, and start to wonder about how they work, and you get a mild sense of how they work. You slowly pick up the meanings of hundreds of words in parallel. When you then do some intensive work, you can connect each new word to a lot of dots already from your experience. There’s an existing web in which to place that new word.

E. How can you help students to understand a reading text?

F. Is it useful for the students to read aloud ?

G. Technique of teaching reading

Jadwal