MUHAMMAD SABOOR HUSSAIN

6th October 2010

I. Literacy Skills
II. What is reading?
III. Reading process
IV. Reasons for reading
V. Reading Sub-skills
VI. Sub-skills with their aims
VII. Reading models
VIII. Text difficulties
IX. Categories of Readers
X. Bad Reading Habits
XI. How to improve reading?
XII. Necessary Reading Tips
XIII. Active Reading
XIV. Speed Factor
 Literacy skills include being able to read and
write different sorts of texts for different
purposes.
 In most societies today, literacy is part and
parcel of everyday life for children and adults,
and life is full of different sorts of written
texts:
◦ at home
◦ in the street
◦ on television
◦ on computers
 „The ability to draw meaning from
the printed page and interpret this
information properly”

/Grabe&Stoller, 2002/
 “Reading is the process of retrieving and
comprehending some form of stored
information or ideas”.
These ideas are usually some sort of
representation of language, as symbols to be
examined by sight, or by touch (for example
Braille).

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 RECEIVER
reader

decoding

Written
text
1. to search for simple information

2. to skim quickly

3. to learn from texts

4. for general comprehension

5. for pleasure
  Scanning – reading the text
for particular bits of
information:
◦ looking for a telephone number,
◦ what’s on TV,
 Skimming – reading to ◦ looking for a name in an article
get a general idea of
what the text is about:
o running our eyes over a film
review,
o looking quickly at a report
to get a feel for the topic
and conclusion
 Reading for detailed
comprehension – reading
for extracting information
accurately
 1. You are an 18-year-old history
student. In a school history
a) Reading for detailed magazine you see an article about
reassessing the Cold War in terms
of Third World politics.
comprehension 2. You are trying to decide what
movie to take your 7-year-old
niece to see. You check your local
b) Reading for pleasure newspaper.
3. When you are in the dentist’s
waiting room, you see an article
c) Scanning about your favourite singer in a
magazine.
4. You have heard about a
d) Skimming singer/artist and you are mildly
interested in their life. You look
them up on the Internet when you
don’t have much else to do.

/Adapted from Harmer, 2007/

 The top-down approach  emphasizes the written
or printed text

 emphasizes what the  says reading is driven

reader brings to the by a process that
text, results in meaning (or,
in other words, reading
 says reading is driven is driven by text),
by meaning,
proceeds from part to
 proceeds from whole to whole
part.
The bottom-up approach

The top-down approach
This approach focuses on
“meaningful” learning.
Reading becomes a dialog
between the text and
reader.
 predicting the text using titles,
pictures
 writing a journal entry about a time
the learner had a similar experience
 expressing an opinion or reaction to
the text
 writing a summary of the text or of
the author’s point of view
 taking notes in the margin of the
main ideas of each paragraph
 relating the text to something in
current events
This approach focuses on the
smaller units of language that
help us decode a message:
word and structure recognition,
the sound-letter relationship,
making meaning of syntactic
units.
 finding or underlining examples of
tenses or grammar structures (e.g.
prepositions of place)
 scanning a text for specific
information (e.g. someone’s age,
the population of a country)
 making a timeline of the events in
the text
 finding synonyms or definitions for
words in bold
The bottom-up approach
 Vocabulary

 Sentence Structure

 Length

 Elaboration

 Coherence and Unity

 Text Structure
 Categories of Readers

1.Slow Readers: Slow reader’s eyes must stop fourteen

times, focusing on each word alone before moving on.

2.Average Readers: The eyes of an average reader stop

six or seven times because they are able to see about two
words at a single glance.

3.Fast Readers: The eyes of the fast reader stop only

three times because they focus at the centre of a phrase
and see three or four words in a single glance.

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1.Moving your lips when you
read:
moving your lips slows you to a fast
talking rate, about 150 words per minute.
 Vocalizing means that you are pronouncing
words in the voice box of the throat without
making sounds. This also slows your reading
rate to that of speaking.
 When reading, set your rate according to your
purpose for reading and the difficulty level of
the material.
 Slow readers tend to see only one word at a
time. Good readers will see several words at a
time and their eyes will stop only three or
four times as they move across a page.
 Regressing means rereading a word, phrase,
or sentence out of habit and not because of
need.
 Poor decoding.
 Poor Fluency.
 No outlining.
 No review.
 Increase your vocabulary by keeping a
dictionary handy, maintaining a list of new
words, and knowing the origin of words
 Increasing the number of words read in each
block.
 Reducing the length of time spent reading
each block
 Reducing the number of times your eyes skip
back to previous sentence.
 Look up table contents, index and topic
headers.
 Remember you are reading with a purpose, so
focus on that purpose material.
 Establish a daily 15 to 30 minute time when
everyone in the family reads together silently.
Just 15 minutes of daily practice is sufficient
to increase their reading fluency.
This needs a conscious effort:
 Try to expand the number of words that
you read at a time:
 With practice, you'll find you read faster.
You may also find that you can increase
the number of words in each glance by
holding the text a little further from your
eyes. The more words you can read in
each glance, the faster you will read!

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 The minimum length of time needed to read
each glance is probably only a quarter of a
second.
 By pushing yourself to reduce the time you
take, you will get better at picking up
information quickly. Again, this is a matter of
practice and confidence.

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To reduce the number of times that your eyes skip back to
a previous sentence, run a pointer along the line as you
read. This could be a finger, or a pen or pencil. Your eyes
will follow the tip of your pointer, smoothing the flow of
your reading. The speed at which you read using this
method will largely depend on the speed at which you move
the pointer.

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 Recognizing script.
 Deducing meanings of unfamiliar lexical items.
 Understanding explicitly stated information.
 Understanding conceptual meaning.
 Understanding the communicative values of
sentences and utterances.
 Understanding relations within the sentence.

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 Understanding relations between
sentences through grammatical and
lexical cohesive devices.
 Interpreting text by going outside it.
 Identifying main points in a discourse.
 Extracting salient points to summarize.
 Skimming.
 Scanning.
 Transco ding written information to
tabular or diagram from and vice versa.

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 Active Reading

 Underlining and highlighting

 Note Key words

 Questions
 Summaries

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Reading speed is determined by a question that how
many words your eyes can see at a single glance?
Using SQ3R technique with stands for:

 Survey
 Question
 Read
 Recall
 Review
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