Reading to collect details

Know why you are reading

Make sure you think about what you want to
achieve and keep the purpose in mind as you
read.
Is it for an assignment? (If so, have the
assignment question to hand)
Is it for an exam? If so have you mapped out
which areas of the curriculum you will focus on?
If you are simply working your way through
your study materials, check if there are any
guiding questions or statements for that
particular piece of reading.
 Reading for different
purposes
Reading to search for information
(scanning and skimming)
Reading for quick understanding
Reading to integrate information
Reading to evaluate, critique, and
use
Reading for general comprehension
 Reading to search for
information
Locating specific information
Scan for a piece of information,
locate it and skim through it very
quickly to get an overall
understanding of the concept
Combination of scanning and
skimming
E.g. You are interested in cricket and
want to know what happened in the
match
 Reading for quick
understanding
To determine what the text is about
Should we spend more time on it or
not?
Useful in case of reading a difficult
text (so that you know where you
need to focus on and what sections
you can skip) or you have too many
texts to read (to have a glimpse of a
text and decide whether to read it or
skip it)
 Reading to integrate
information
Read many texts, store information and
recollect it whenever needed
Synthesize information from multiple texts
or bring together details from different
sections/ chapters of a long text/ textbook
Integrate with previous information
Sometimes conflicting details sort out
confusions build your own knowledge
system
 Reading to evaluate
Read a text and make decisions
about its effectiveness or worth
Carefully analyze details presented
and evidences provided to support
claims
Understand purpose and decide
whether the text is successful in
achieving it
Look at use of language and other
devices
Reading for general comprehension

Reading a newspaper article or a

story
For purposes of entertainment, as a
habit or for passing time
Goal is simple understanding of the
text
Reading Skills
 Role of background
knowledge
Reading occurs in a context
We do not find meaning lying in
things nor do we put it into things,
but between us and things it can
happen Buber
The procedure is actually simple. First
you arrange things into different groups
depending on their makeup. Of course,
one pile may be sufficient depending
on how much there is to do. If you have
to go somewhere else due to lack of
facilities that is the next step,
otherwise you are pretty well set. It is
important not to overdo any particular
endeavour. That is, it is better to do too
few things at once than too many
 This passage is about washing
clothes
If you dont know the topic, the
understanding may be limited
The sentences themselves do not
change when you know the topic;
but, the interpretation in our minds
changes
Background knowledge - schema
 Bill had some hamburgers in the
restaurant
What did he do with the hamburgers?
He ate them (because we go to
restaurants to eat)
Did he cook them? No, he didnt
Did he fetch them himself May be/
may not be
Did he pay for them? Yes, he did
most likely.
Bill had a Volkswagen in the USA
 Script for restaurants
We dont need extra details, our
mind automatically supplies the
information
Conflicts between scripts in foreign
travel
Eating snakes, loos for mixed sexes,
tipping in restaurants
 Doctor-patient interaction
English patients prefer to talk to the
doctor informally; expect the doctor
to ask questions
Hmong patients show respect to the
doctor; talk less
 Reading a psycholinguistic guessing
game
 Mary heard the ice cream man
coming down the street. She
remembered her birthday money and
rushed into the house and
 Upon reading just these few lines most readers are
able to construct a rather complete interpretation of
the text
Presumably, Mary is a little girl who heard the ice
cream man coming and wanted to buy some ice
cream. Then she remembered her birthday money
which, presumably, was in the house. So, she hurried
into the house to try to get the money before the ice
cream man arrived
Of course, the text does not say all of this; we readers
are referring a lot of this in giving the text an
interpretation
Other interpretations are also possible. Yet, most
readers will probably retain the above interpretation
unless some contradictory information is
encountered
 Mary heard the ice cream man
coming down the street. She
remembered her birthday money and
rushed into the house and
locked the door!
 Cna Yuo Raed Tihs?
1) A vheclie epxledod at a plocie
cehckipont near the UN haduqertares in
Bagahdd on Mnoday kilinlg the bmober
and an Irqai polcie offceir
2) Big ccunoil tax ineesacrs tihs yaer hvae
seezueqd the inmcoes of mnay pneosenirs
3) A dootcr has aimttded the
magltheuansr of a tageene ceacnr pintaet
who deid aetfr a hatospil durg blendur
 1) A vehicle exploded at a police
checkpoint near the UN headquarters in
Baghdad on Monday killing the bomber
and an Iraqi police officer
2) Big council tax increases this year have
squeezed the incomes of many pensioners
3) A doctor has admitted the
manslaughter of a teenage cancer patient
who died after a hospital drug blunder.
 Why are these versions easier to read? It
seems that when we read, we extract a lot of
information from the contextso
understanding several words in a sentence
can help us guess another one.
We also scan words and pick out markers that
make them easy to identify, such as certain
letter combinations and sounds. These
elements make it easier to infer the word
even when the letters are not in perfect order.
 Garden Path Effect
The horse raced past the barn fell.
Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a
banana.
The complex houses married and single
soldiers and their families.
The old man the boat.
The prime number few.
Fat people eat accumulates.
I convinced her children are noisy.
 The horse (that) raced past the barn
fell.
(Time) (flies) like an arrow (flies);
(fruit flies) like a banana.
The complex houses married and
single soldiers and their families.
(house = V)
The old man the boat. (man = V)
The prime (people) number few.
(number = V)
Fat (that) people eat accumulates.
 Levels of comprehension
Literal comprehension
Drawing inferences - working out the
main idea of the text, looking at the
organisation of the text, determining
the writers attitude to the topic,
interpreting characters, and working
out cause and effect and other
conjunction relationships which
might not be explicitly stated
 Application
Applying ideas from the text to solve
problems, applying the ideas in the
text to personal experience,
comparing ideas in the text with other
ideas from outside the text, imagining
extensions of the text, and fitting the
ideas in the text into a wider field as
in a review of the literature.
 Responding critically to the text.
This involves considering the quality of
the evidence in the text, evaluating the
adequacy of the content of the text,
evaluating the quality of expression and
clarity of language of the text, expressing
agreement or disagreement with the ideas
in the text, and expressing satisfaction or
dissatisfaction with the text.
 Academic reading - Advanced reading
ability in both L1 and L2 is usually required
to extract detailed information from L2
texts on science, technology, and other
subject matter involving both linguistic
and nonlinguistic prerequisite knowledge.
A large recognition vocabulary of both
basic and subject-specific terms, including
their meaning, graphic representation, and
probability of occurrence with other lexical
items.
Complex sentence structures, along with
punctuation conventions that contribute to
syntactic processing.
 Increasing reading speed
When people read, three types of action
are involvedfixations on particular
words, jumps (saccades) to the next item
to focus on, and regressions (movements
back to an item already looked at).
This means that while reading the eyes
do not move smoothly along a line of
print, but jump from one word to
another.
 Fluency in reading
Automatic recognition ability: Automatic (as
opposed to conscious) word identification and
processing is necessary for fluency.
Vocabulary and structural knowledge: Fluent
reading requires a large recognition vocabulary
(some estimates range up to 100,000 words) and
a sound knowledge of grammatical structures.
Formal discourse structure knowledge: Good
readers know how a text is organized, including
(culture-specific) logical patterns of organization
for such contrasts as causeeffect and problem
solution relations.
 Content/world background knowledge: Good
readers have both more prior cultural knowledge
about a topic and more text-related information
than those who are less proficient.
Synthesis and evaluation processes/strategies:
Fluent readers evaluate information in texts and
compare it with other sources of knowledge; they
go beyond merely trying to comprehend what
they read.
Comprehension monitoring: Fluent readers have
[unconscious] knowledge about knowledge of
language and about using appropriate strategies
for understanding texts and processing
information. Monitoring involves both recognizing
problems that occur in the process of interpreting
information in a text, and awareness of non-
comprehension.