Reading Strategies That
Work
Dumrong Adunyarittigun, Ph.D.
Thammasat University
[email protected]
What makes our students unable to understand
texts when they read?
Agenda
1. What are reading strategies?
2. What needs to be taught?
3. Strategies that work
• Skimming and scanning
• Figuring out word meaning
• KWL
• QARs
Reading Strategies
• Reading strategies are deliberate, goaldirected attempts to control and modify the
reader’s efforts to decode text, understand
works and construct meanings of text.
(Afflerbach, P., Pearson, P. D., & Paris, S. G.,
2008, p. 368)
What Needs to Be
Taught?
• What is the reading strategy about?
• When and why to use it?
• How to use it?
A model of explicit
instruction by Pearson and
Gallagher (1983)
Proportion of Responsibility for Task Completion
All Teacher
Joint
Responsibility
All Student
Guided Practice
Modeling
Gra
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elea
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of
Res
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ons
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Practice
or
Application
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Reading
Strategies
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Activating prior knowledge
Guessing word meaning from contexts
Identifying main ideas
Locating important information
Identifying word reference
Drawing inferences
Understanding authors’ stance
Skimming is reading quickly in order to get a
general idea of what readers are going to read.
• Use textual clues such as titles, subtitles, italicized
or underlined words.
• Read the introduction.
• Read the first sentence of every paragraph, which
frequently, although not always, contains the
main idea.
• Read the summary or conclusion at the end of
the passage.
What is this article about?
It is about amnesia.
Scanning is reading quickly in order to locate
specific information. The steps involved in
scanning are the following (Baudoin et al.,
1993):
• Decide exactly what information you are
looking for, and think about the form it may
take.
• Decide where you need to look to find the
information you want.
• Move your eyes as quickly as possible until
you find the information you need.
• What is amnesia?
It is the partial or total loss of memory which is
caused by brain injury or shock.
• What will happen to the patient with amnesia
if he or she is not treated?
It will make him or her unable to remember
things partially or completely
• In paragraph 4, who could identify a middleaged man who came out of a park in Seattle
as Edward Lightheart?
An English teacher in Shanghai
• What did Dr. Lightheart do?
He was an international public relations
consultant.
Word Meaning
• A strong relationship between vocabulary
knowledge and reading comprehension
(Anderson, & Freebody, 1985; Brett, Rothlein,
& Hurley, 1996).
Dealing with
Unfamiliar Words
Types of Context Clues
• Punctuations
• Definition
• Examples
• Synonyms
• Antonyms
• Clues from another sentence
Punctuations
Dashes.
Examples:
• Products provide form utility—the transformation
of raw materials or labor into a finished good or
service that the consumer desires.
• Small businesses, which operate in many of the
same areas as large businesses, are mainstays of
most economies. Most are started by
entrepreneurs—persons willing to take risks to
pursue innovation and business opportunities in an
uncertain environment.
• Every manager’s job entails a key responsibility: to
help an organization achieve high performance
through the utilization of all its resources, both
human and material. This is accomplished through
the process of management—formally defined as
planning, organizing, leading, and controlling the use
of resources to accomplish performance goals.
• Functional illiteracy—the inability to read and write
well enough to carry out every day activities—is a
complex social problem that comes from several
sources.
Parentheses
• Doctors are worried that if carpal tunnel syndrome is
ignored (carpal refers to the bones in the wrist), it
can lead to long-term disability.
• To stay healthy, experts encourage people to
consume fruits and vegetables. For maximum
benefit, this should be combined with an overall
reduction of dietary fat (including meats and
cheeses) and a regular program of physical activity.
Comma
• The next two elements together constitute what is commonly
called a SWOT analysis, an analysis of organizational strengths
and weaknesses, as well as environmental opportunities and
threats.
• Success in the highly competitive business environments, in
particular, depends on entrepreneurship, a term used to
describe strategic thinking and risk-taking behavior that
results in the creation of new opportunities for individuals
and/or organizations.
• Culture shock, the confusion and discomfort a person
experiences when in an unfamiliar culture, is a reminder that
many of these differences must be mastered just to travel
comfortably around the world.
Definition
• Amnesia is the partial or total loss of memory,
usually caused by brain injury or shock.
• Employment at will means that the employment
relationship can be started or terminated at any time
by either the employee or the employer for any
reason.
• Planning is formally defined as a process of setting
“objectives” and deciding how to accomplish them.
Objectives, in turn, are the specific results or goals
that one wishes to achieve.
Examples
• Employee benefits are rewards such as
retirement plans, insurance, sick leave, child
care and elder care, and tuition
reimbursement, provided entirely or in part at
the company’s expense.
• My family is very musical. For example, my
sister plays the violin; my father plays the
piano; and my mother sings.
• Systematic thinking approaches problems in a
rational and analytical fashion. For example, this way
of thinking involves breaking a complex problem into
smaller components and then addressing them in a
logical and integrated fashion. Managers using
systematic thinking can be expected to make a plan
before taking action and then to search for
information to facilitate problem solving in a step-bystep fashion.
Synonyms
• If the experimental results do not prove the
hypothesis to be wrong, a theory, or a scientific
explanation based on experimentation, can be
established.
• What criteria or standards should we use to judge
your work?
• The writing point of the pen should allow the ink to
flow evenly while the pen remains in contact with
the paper. This will create a smooth line of writing,
with no skips or gaps that indicate an irregular flow
of ink within the pen.
Antonyms
• Unlike the dowdy customer, the salesperson
was neat and clean.
• Altruism is listed as one of Maslow’s qualities
of a self-actualized person. However,
selfishness is not included in Maslow’s
hierarchy, and would certainly not be
associated with a self-actualized person.
Clues from another sentence
• Theory X assumes that employees dislike work
and whenever possible try to avoid it. So,
managers must coerce or control them or
threaten punishment to achieve the
organization’s goals.
What is K-W-L?
• Ogle (1986) developed K-W-L as an
instructional method designed to teach
cognitive strategies that lead to improved
reading comprehension.
26
• K: What do you know?
• W: What do you want to know?
• L: What did you learn?
27
KWL Chart
K:What do you know?
W: What do you want
to know?
L: What did you learn?
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Why K-W-L?
• The method helps activate students’ prior
knowledge and arouse their curiosity
• The method creates a context that nurtures
the increased use of self-monitoring and
metacognitive awareness.
• The instruction takes place within the context
of dialogue between the expert—either
teachers or more capable readers, and less
capable readers.
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QAR
QAR: Question-Answer Relationships
QARs was developed by Raphael (1982) as a
procedure for enhancing students’ ability to
answer comprehension questions
Types of Questions
•
•
•
•
Right there
Think and search
Author and you
On my own
• Right there: the answer is in the text.
The information to be used for the most
appropriate response is stated explicitly in the
text.
• Think and search (Put it together)
The information to be used for the response is
drawn from different parts of the text.
• Author and you
Think about what you already know and what
the author tells you in the text, and how it fits
together.
• On my own: the response information is
located in the reader’s knowledge base.
4 Principles of
Instruction
• Give immediate feedback
• Progress from shorter to longer texts
• Begin with questions for which the task demand
is straightforward and go on to questions that
require the use of multiple sources
• Develop independence by beginning with group
learning and progressing to independent
activities
(Tierney & Cunningham, 1984)
References
Ogle, D. (1986). K-W-L: A teaching model that
develops active reading of expository text.
The Reading Teacher, 39, 564-570.
Raphael, T. E. (1982). Question-answering
strategies for children. The Reading
Teacher, 36, 186-190.
Tierney, R. J., & Cunningham, J. W. (1984).
Research on teaching reading
comprehension. In P.D. Pearson, R. Barr, M.
L. Kamil, & P. Mosenthal (Eds.), Handbook
of reading research. New York: Longman.