Chapter I. Approaches to teaching reading skills chapter II. Methods of teaching reading to learners

Appendix I.

Reading Skills:
1. Automatic decoding. Being able to recognize a word at a glance.
. Previewing and predicting. Giving the text a quick once-over to be able to guess what is to come.
. Specifying purpose. Knowing why a text is being read.
. Identifying genre. Knowing the nature of the text in order to predict the form and content.
. Questioning. Asking questions in an inner dialog with the author.6. Scanning. Looking through a text very rapidly for specific information.
. Recognizing topics. Finding out what the text is about.
. Classification of ideas into main topics and details. Categorizing words and ideas on the basis of their relationships; distinguishing general and specific.
. Locating topic sentences. Identifying the general statement in a paragraph.
. Stating the main idea (or thesis) of a sentence, paragraph or passage. Knowing what the author’s point is about the topic.
. Recognizing patterns of relationships. Identifying the relationships between ideas; the overall structure of the text.
. Identifying and using words that signal the patterns of relationships between ideas. Being able to see connections between ideas by the use of words such as first, then, later.
. Inferring the main idea, using patterns and other clues.
. Recognizing and using pronouns, referents, and other lexical equivalents as clues to cohesion.
. Guessing the meaning of unknown words from the context. Using such clues as knowledge of word parts, syntax, and relationship patterns.
. Skimming. Quickly getting the gist or overview of a passage or book.
. Paraphrasing. Re-stating texts in the reader’s own words in order to monitor one’s own comprehension.
. Summarizing. Shortening material by retaining and re-stating main ideas and leaving out details.
. Drawing conclusions. Putting together information from parts of the text and inducing new or additional ideas.
. Drawing inferences and using evidence. Using evidence in the text to know things that are unstated.
. Visualizing. Picturing, or actually drawing a picture or diagram, of what is described in the text.
. Reading critically. Judging the accuracy of a passage with respect to what the reader already knows; distinguishing fact from opinion.
. Reading faster. Reading fast enough to allow the brain to process the input as ideas rather than single words.
. Adjusting reading rate according to materials and purpose. Being able to choose the speed and strategies needed for the level of comprehension desired by the reader [4; 4].