Teaching Reading Strategies

By :

Ekki Saputra
1511204008
Endah Suci Rahayu
1511204011
Asri Az’aliah
1511204016
Muhammad Yani
1511204013

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

LANGUAGE EDUCATION PROGRAM
EDUCATION AND TEACHER TRAINING FACULTY
IAIN SAMARINDA
2017
A. Introduction
Language instructors are often frustrated by the fact that students
do not automatically transfer the strategies they use when reading in their
native language to reading in a language they are learning. Instead, they
seem to think reading means starting at the beginning and going word by
word, stopping to look up every unknown vocabulary item, until they
reach the end. When they do this, students are relying exclusively on their
linguistic knowledge, a bottom-up strategy. One of the most important
functions of the language instructor, then, is to help students move past
this idea and use top-down strategies as they do in their native language.
Effective language instructors show students how they can adjust
their reading behavior to deal with a variety of situations, types of input,
and reading purposes. They help students develop a set of reading
strategies and match appropriate strategies to each reading situation.
B. Discussion
Carrel (1988) and Mikulecky (1990) with all the follower of other
flow say that reading is an interactive process. They argue that reading
includes some skills in the process of teaching can be grouped into three
phases or steps, pre-reading, whilst-reading, and post-reading.
1. Pre-reading activities
Pre-reading strategies are of three types, those that draw attention
to linguistic features of the text, those that prepare students for
conceptual or cultural aspects of the text and those that get students to
activate knowledge or opinions they may have about what will be
presented in the text. For each task, decide which category it belongs
in (it can be more than one).
a. Determine the goal
b. Reading and understanding the title, sub-title, the main paragraph,
and the other important parts.
c. Preview and overview
2. While-reading activities
These strategies, as the name suggests, are employed as the reader
is actually reading throughthe text. They are a bit more problematic to
implement with students as it is hard to monitor what a student is
actually doing while reading (note that reading out loud is not
considered valid reading practice) and there is sometimes a danger that
the use of a strategy will interrupt or hinder the relatively natural flow
of reading that is often so hard for students to achieve. For example,
studies have shown that the most effective readers are those who learn
to gloss over words whose meaning they’re not sure of and continue on
reading through the text. Students often fall into the trap of “tunneling”
where they get overly concerned about the meaning of one word and in
trying to decipher it lose some comprehension of what they have
already read. So, the trick to implementing these strategies is to try not
to hinder optimum reading speed and also not to take the student’s
focus off comprehension of the text as a whole. What has been shown
through studies is that strategies that get the students to interact with
the text greatly improve comprehension. For example, texts with
questions to the reader, even if rhetorical, seem to be understood by
readers more than texts without them. What do you think?
Because of the danger of hindering the flow of reading some of the
tasks below are best done after the initial reading as the aim is not so
much that the students use the strategy to process the particular text
that they are working with but that they practice the strategy with that
text for use while reading other texts in the future. Indentify which
“while-reading” strategies would be best practiced right after the initial
reading.
a. Determine the main idea of the text
b. Classifying the most important supporters of the idea
c. Guess the meaning of difficult words
d. Determine the structure of the development of the text
e. Set the text of the conclusion is read

While reading we can use SQ3R. SQ3R is a five-step study plan to

help students construct meaning while reading. It uses the elements of
questioning, predicting, setting a purpose for reading, and monitoring
for confusion. SQ3R includes the following steps:

a. Survey
1) Think about the title: “What do I know?” “What do I want to
know?”
2) Glance over headings and first sentences in paragraphs.
3) Look at illustrations and graphic aids.
4) Read the first paragraph.
5) Read the last paragraph or summary.

b. Question
 1) Turn the title into a question.

2) Write down any questions that some to mind during the survey.

3) Turn headings into questions.

4) Turn subheadings, illustrations, and graphic aids into questions.

5) Write down unfamiliar vocabulary words and determine their

meaning.

c. Read Actively

1) Read to search for answers to questions.

2) Respond to questions and use context clues for unfamiliar

words.

3) React to unclear passages, confusing terms, and questionable

statements by generating additional questions.

d. Recite

1) Look away from the answers and the book to recall what was
read.

2) Recite answers to questions aloud or in writing.

3) Reread text for unanswered questions.

e. Review

1) Answer the major purpose question.

2) Look over answers and all parts of the chapter to organize

information.
 3) Summarize the information learned by drawing flow charts,
writing a summary, participating in a group discussion, or by
studying for a test

3. Post-reading activities
These strategies are not really drawn directly from strategies used
by native-speaker readers but were created as a means of enhancing a
students involvement with the text, recognizing the experience a
student has with a text is not exactly the same as a native-speaker’s.
However, since studies of effective native-speaker readers
demonstrated that involvement with the text led to increased
comprehension, these post-reading tasks are meant to simulate the
questioning and other means of working with ideas or content that
would take place in the mind of a native speaker reader while reading
the text. Because it’s often too much to expect that a student trying for
comprehension might be effectively able to work with the text while
reading, placing these tasks after the text was seen as the next best
thing – although in many cases native speaker do not use any post-
reading strategies.
These activities are not meant to be confused with while-reading
tasks that are delayed to after the initial reading (see previous section
above) but are tasks that have been added on to increase student
interaction with the text. The most common form of post-reading tasks
- and those that dominate coursebooks – are those that involve
answering questions about the text that were assigned prior to reading.
a. Give the evaluation of the text
b. Formulate a return text content with own words
c. Answer questions

The National Reading Panel (NRP) identified five essential

elements of effective reading instruction, commonly known as the “five
pillars of reading”.
1. Phonemic awareness that students have mastered phonemic awareness,
which is the ability to identify, manipulate, and substitute phonemes.
Through phonemic awareness strategies, student first learn individual
phonemes, and finally build words with phonemes.
2. Phonics is an instructional method that associates written letters and
letter combinations with the sounds of spoken language.
3. Fluency is the ability to read text accurately and quickly, either silently
or orally.
4. Vocabulary is an expendable, stored set of words that students know
the meanings of and use.
5. Comprehension. Reading comprehension is the ability to understand,
remember, and communicate meaning from what has been read.
Strategies that can help students read more quickly and effectively
include
1. Previewing: reviewing titles, section headings, and photo captions to
get a sense of the structure and content of a reading selection
2. Predicting: using knowledge of the subject matter to make predictions
about content and vocabulary and check comprehension; using
knowledge of the text type and purpose to make predictions about
discourse structure; using knowledge about the author to make
predictions about writing style, vocabulary, and content
3. Skimming and scanning: using a quick survey of the text to get the
main idea, identify text structure, confirm or question predictions
4. Guessing from context: using prior knowledge of the subject and the
ideas in the text as clues to the meanings of unknown words, instead of
stopping to look them up
5. Paraphrasing: stopping at the end of a section to check comprehension
by restating the information and ideas in the text

Instructors can help students learn when and how to use reading
strategies in several ways.
1. By modeling the strategies aloud, talking through the processes of
previewing, predicting, skimming and scanning, and paraphrasing.
This shows students how the strategies work and how much they can
know about a text before they begin to read word by word.
2. By allowing time in class for group and individual previewing and
predicting activities as preparation for in-class or out-of-class reading.
Allocating class time to these activities indicates their importance and
value.
3. By using cloze (fill in the blank) exercises to review vocabulary items.
This helps students learn to guess meaning from context.
4. By encouraging students to talk about what strategies they think will
help them approach a reading assignment, and then talking after
reading about what strategies they actually used. This helps students
develop flexibility in their choice of strategies.

When language students use reading strategies, they find that they
can control the reading experience, and they gain confidence in their
ability to read the language.
C. Conclusion
Language instructors are often frustrated by the fact that students
do not automatically transfer the strategies they use when reading in their
native language to reading in a language they are learning.
Reading includes some skills in the process of teaching can be
grouped into three phases or steps, pre-reading, whilst-reading, and post-
reading.
While reading we can use SQ3R. SQ3R is a five-step study plan to
help students construct meaning while reading. It uses the elements of
questioning, predicting, setting a purpose for reading, and monitoring for
confusion. SQ3R is survey, question, read, recite, and review.

Strategies that can help students read more quickly and effectively.
Instructors can help students learn when and how to use reading strategies
in several ways. When language students use reading strategies, they find
that they can control the reading experience, and they gain confidence in
their ability to read the language.