Research on Skills and Strategies in Reading Teaching

【Abstract】： Skills and strategies in this paper are discussed from two perspectives， which are needed to be learned by both language teachers and language learners. On one side， there are teaching methods which value the strategies as something of great importance and promote the teaching of strategies in reading. Students can master some reading skills and strategies. On the other side， the teaching of reading requires the skills and strategies of teachers in carrying out teaching practices. This paper seeks to explore the skills and strategies from these two sides.

【Key words】： reading teaching; reading skills and strategies; teaching skills and strategies

1. Introduction

Broughton （1978） advocates that readers need to be able to understand patterns of relationships between words， to have a clear understanding of the grammatical relationships， to discover the architecture of a passage， to be aware of the author’s attitude and purpose， and to make some kinds of evaluation of the texts one reads. Reading is not a passive process of merely translating the meaning from words to words， sentences to sentences. And different ways of reading such as extensive reading and intensive reading have different functions and require different reading skills and strategies. For example， intensive reading is usually adopted when reading shorter texts or extracting specific information， which is aimed at reading for detail while extensive reading usually involves global understanding. However， different ways of reading are not mutually exclusive. Good readers need to have a grasp of when to use the right strategies and cultivate good reading habits and skills. Good teachers need to be familiarized with these skills and strategies and what’s more， to master the strategies of reading teaching and the skills to teach well.

2. Reading Skills and Strategies

Reading involves a variety of skills. The main ones are listed below， which is taken from John Munby’s Communicative Syllabus Design.

Recognizing the script of a language; deducing the meaning and use of unfamiliar lexical items; understanding explicitly stated information; understanding information when not explicitly stated; understanding conceptual meaning; understanding the communicative value （function） of sentences and utterances; understanding relations within the sentence; understanding relations between the parts of a text through lexical cohesion devices; understanding cohesion between parts of a text though grammatical cohesion devices; interpreting text by going outside it; recognizing indicators in discourse; identifying the main point or important information in a piece of discourse; distinguishing the main idea from supporting details; extracting salient points to summarize （the text， an idea etc.）; selective extraction of relevant points from a text; basic reference skills; skimming; scanning to locate specifically required information; transcoding information to diagrammatic display.

Different kinds of skills perform different functions. The skills can be used to identify the topic; predict and guess. They can serve the function of reading for general understanding; reading for specific information and reading for detailed information.

3. Skills and Strategies in Reading Teaching

3.1 Research on teaching strategies applicable to different circumstances

On new words in reading： While reading， students will naturally come across some new words. When this happens， the teacher should ask them to keep on reading instead of consulting dictionaries right away， for the context might tell what the words mean. This is called a context clue.

On extensive reading： Students should be told to read quickly， without translating the words into Chinese or their mother tongue， so that they can develop the ability to respond automatically to the meaning of the words and phrases they read. In addition， the teacher should teach students to identify the function of sentences in the paragraph.

On dealing with students having low expectations of reading： Sometimes students may feel that they are not going to understand the passage in the book because it is bound to be difficult. Such attitudes are often due to previous unhappy or unsuccessful experiences. When students have low expectation of reading， it will be the teacher’s job to persuade them to change these negative expectations into realistic optimism.

4. Reading Activities

In regards to reading task models， the DART （Directed Activities Related to Text） model was introduced by Davies and Green （1981）. Within this model， there are two different task types， reconstruction activities and analysis activities. Reconstruction activities require the reader to reconstruct a text， such as diagram completion in which students can predict deleted labels using text and other diagrams as sources， and prediction in which students predict what happens next. Analysis activities require the reader to transform the information in the text such as underlying or highlighting in which students search for target words or phrases that relate to one aspect of content. Davies （1995） argues that good reading tasks typically make use of authentic and challenging texts; provide students with a topical framework for processing and analyzing the text; absorb the students in direct analysis of the text instead of indirect question answering; frequently involve the transfer of information from text to a visual or diagrammatic representation. Through active reading tasks， students can make their hypotheses explicit; alternative interpretations of hypotheses can be discussed and evaluated by other students and students can learn to be critical in their reading of a text; students will ask questions about what they do not know instead of answering questions to which they know the answers or which may be seen as irrelevant; if necessary， the teacher can adopt a role of informant rather than inquisitor.

4.1 Three Main Types of Reading Activities

Reading activities can be classified into three subtypes， pre-reading activities， while reading-activities and post-reading activities.

Pre-reading activities are： （1） predicting by the title; （2） predicting through vocabulary; （3） predicting by means of True/False questions; （4） introducing cultural background.

While-reading activities are： （1） skimming; （2） scanning; （3）asking questions; （4）finding out the topic sentence; （5）getting the main idea from the context; （6）making inferences; （7） reading the author’s definition.

Post-reading activities are： （1） discussion; （2） reproducing the text （3） role-play; （4） gap-filling; （5） writing.

Apart from the activities in class， students need to do more outside reading. Computer-assisted testing can be used in reading teaching. There are on-computer test， off-computer test and on-line test. Corpora linguistics can provide us with great help. A corpus is a collection of materials that has been made for a particular purpose， which can be used to analyze linguistic features of textbooks or reading materials. There are some websites in which learners can read on-line newspapers and magazines. There are a lot of literature works available on the Internet. Some of the websites are listed here： Http：//www.cbs.com/navber， http：//bbc.co.uk/worldservice; Http：//eleaston.com/English.html/. We can apply use of the Internet to foreign language teaching and learning for reading.

Bibliography

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