Purposes of Reading

Purposes of Reading

Davies (March, 2012.133-134) states perposes for reading are reading for pleasure, reading for a general impression, reading for organizing reading and study, reading for learning content or procedures and reading for learning languages. From the definition, it can be assumed that it depends on the reader’s purpose in reading whether he/she wants to ge general information, for pleasure and etc. For example; Reading comics in spare time, so the purpose could be for pleasure.

Adopted from: Davies (March, 2012), The purpose of Reading, retrieved from:http://sibungsuinred.blogspot.com/2012/03/c-purposes-of-reading.html

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Prescribing and describing: popular and academic views of ‘correctness’

            At the heart of the aspiration to relate theory to practice is a costant tension between language as viewed by ‘the expert’ and language as everyone’s lived experience-including the applied linguist’s own.

Children’s language at home and school

            As every parent knows, young children speak idiosyncratically, a child growing up in an English-speaking family. At school, however, the situation is very different. Here the child is expected, and taught, to use language ‘correctly’.

            The standard is generally used in written communication, taught in schools, and condified in dictionaries and grammar books. Dialects are regional and social-class varies of the language whic differ from the standard in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary, and are seldom written down at all.

            There is no reason why children cannot grow up knowing both a dialect and the standard form.

            Some social-class variation indicate not only differences but deficits. The language used in some sections of society is a restricted code whic lacks the full resources of the more elaborated code of the standard.

            Schools are a good barometer  of both languages use and social values, and their approach to teaching the national language or languages, which is much the same all over the world, arises from two interesting facts; any language is subject to enormous variation and many people intolerant of this variation.

Description versus prescription

            Description; saying what does happen, prescription; saying what oguht to happent, such facts as following;

-         deviation from the norm,

-         a single standard was absolute and unassaible then regional standards,

-         consistent rule governed grammars,

-         usage of the most economically and politically powerful class or region,

-          the grammar of written language, and

-          grammarians through analogy with another language.

            Applied linguistics have a responsibility to investigate the reasons behind the impasse between descriptive and prescriptivists.

-         Some prexisting notion

-         What does count as an example of the language

-         Despite descriptivist insistence on the equality of all varieties

-         Describing and explaining facts about languages

-         Paradoxically

An applied linguistics perspective

            Applied linguistics has the very difficult task of trying to find points of contact in the contrary views so that necessary decisions can be made.

            In the case of speech therapy, foreign language teaching, and language testing. A major task for applied linguistics is to bring out what these criteria are and how they are decided. Language is a lived experience intimately involved with people’s sense of worth and identity. The task of applied linguistics is to mediate between these two very different perspectives. This is a difficult task, but it is what applied linguistics does and what makes it worthwhile.

Applied Linguistics 

by Guy Cook

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IV. READING COMPREHENSION CONCEPTS

A.  Definition

1.    Comprehension is the essence of reading, active and intentional thinking in which the meaning is constructed through interactions between the test and the reader.

^2.      Reading comprehension is defined as the level of understanding of a text. This understanding comes from the interaction between the words that are written and how they trigger knowledge outside the text.

3.    Reading comprehension - techniques for improving students' success in extracting useful knowledge from text (Mayer, p 34)

As defined by Partnership for Reading (2005), Reading comprehension is understanding a text that is read, or the process of "constructing meaning" from a text. Comprehension is a "construction process" because it involves all of the elements of the reading process working together as a text is read to create a representation of the text in the reader's mind.

B.  Opinion

4.    From some definitions above I have to say that reading comprehension makes the readers think active in reading in order to comprehend the text. Where the readers should understand the text. Such as; kinds of text in English, grammar (verb, adj, adv, pron, etc), and also how to scan and skimm the text well.

C.  Examples

Word Meanings From Context

    The United States has a vast amount of newly discovered clean geothermal (natural heat from the Earth’s crust) energy. Tapping into this energy source could provide at least 10 times the energy that can be obtained from the nation’s known coal reserves.

1. What does “vast” mean?
a large amount
b. not enough
c. dangerous
d. having no known use
2. Which word in the above paragraph means supplies that are available to be used?
a. geothermal
b. tapping
c. continent
d. Reserves

D.  References

-       Durkin, (1973), What classroom observations reveal about reading comprehension instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 14, 481-533. Retrieved April.11.2012, /http://reading.uoregon.edu/big_ideas/comp/comp_what.php.

-  Rayner, Keith; Foorman, Barbara; Perfetti, Charles; Pesetsky, David; and Seidenberg, Mark, (2001), (Nov. 2001). "How Psychological Science Informs the Teaching of Reading". Psychological Science in the Public Interest 2 (2): 31–74. Retrieved April.11.2012,/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_comprehension.

-  Mayer, Richard. (2003). Learning and Instruction. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc. Retrieved April.11.2012, /http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Reading_comprehension.

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III. THE THEORY OF EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE READING

1.    THE THEORY OF EFFICIENT READING

A.  Definition:

-       Efficient reading is about reading in a way that allows you to understand the writer's message without spending too much time in the process. It's also about reading with a clear purpose in mind so that you only read material that is relevant. When you're reading in preparation for an essay or for understanding generally, remember that good reading strategies go hand-in-hand with good note-takingskills.

-       Efficient reading starts with choosing a strategy to suit the kind of text you have to read because your purpose in reading and the nature of text to be read will determine your strategy. Your purpose in reading might be to:

 gather information for an essay
 learn about a particular topic or understand a particular theory
 prepare for an exam

-       Efficient reading is creating that comprehension with the least amount of effort. However, while we read in order to comprehend, comprehension is not the end goal in the reading process.

B.  Opinion:

-       Based on some definition above, I have to say that efficient reading is done by understanding or what is writer’s message. It will save your time, so you can read efficiently. It is also easy for you to choose a good strategy for every kinds of texts.

C.  Example:

-       (Ex. for a final exam, or for a key business meeting)

-       For example, in dealing with the newspaper, we was to use a perfectly appropriate strategy, in this case one involving rapid scanning. We read so efficiently without thinking about it consciously.

D.  References:

-       https://effectivereading.com/public_home.php?

-       http://unilearning.uow.edu.au/reading/1a.html

-       http://www.monash.edu.au/lls/llonline/quickrefs/12-efficient-reading.xml

2.    THE THEORY OF EFFECTIVE READING

A.  Definition:

-        Effective: We are able to comprehend, or understand, what we read while we read.

-       Effective reading applies even to strategies that are time-consuming.In order to read more effectively, it is vital to become a more self-conscious reader. You need to understand what you are doing when you use different reading techniques for different purposes and texts, and to practise these particular reading skills. You must always read for a clearly defined purpose and adapt your reading strategies to that purpose.

-       (Torgesen, 1998) have found that effective early reading instruction for at-risk, struggling readers consists of small-group or individual instruction delivered by a highly trained teacher.

B.  Opinion:

-       Based on some definition above, I have to say that effective reading is the readers should comprehend or understand a text and they must understand what are they doing, exactly it needs much time “time-consuming”. They must know about different purposes and texts and not only in a small group but also individual instruction.

C.  Examples:

• phonemic awareness (i.e., the insight that language is made of individual sounds),
• concepts about print (e.g., book handling skills, purposes for reading),
• understanding the alphabetic principle (i.e., the connection between letters and speech sounds),
• decoding strategies (e.g., blending sounds, using analogies),
• reading fluency (i.e., reading quickly and accurately with expression), and
• comprehension strategies (e.g., using background knowledge to understand a passage).

D.  References:

-       http://www.monash.edu.au/lls/llonline/quickrefs/12-efficient-reading.xml

-       Torgesen(1998).Effectivereadinginstruction.Available on:http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/6363/. Accessed on 29 March 2012.

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Extensive Reading

-          Definition

1.      It is the view of Palmer (1964) that “extensive reading” is considered as being reading rapidly. The readers read books after books. Its attention is paid to the meaning of the text itself not the language. The purpose of extensive reading is for pleasure and information. Thus, extensive reading is also termed as “supplementary reading”.

2.      Extensive is when you try to cover vast amounts of materials, but just skip over the parts you don’t know and try to get the general gist of things. It’s all about context and the big picture. Once you get awesome, you can just sit down and read a book and understand everything, and you’re doing an extensive exercise still.

-          Opinion

3.      The readers read a text rapidly and try to find the meaning of the text and ther purpose is to get general information about things “gist” and for pleasure.

-          Example :

Funny stories

Articles

-          References;

Retrieved from ; http/ el.mdu.edu.tw/datacos/09427562007A/Intensive%20Reading.doc

http://languagefixation.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/intensive-and-extensive-reading/

Intensive Reading

-          Definition

1.      The work of Palmer (1921) notes that “intensive reading” means that the readers take a text, study it line by line, and refer at very moment to the dictionary about the grammar of the text itself.

2.      Intensive is about studying minute details and trying to wring absolutely every drop of information out of a section of text. The easy way to compare these two types is reading the same paragraph 100 times (intensive) vs. reading 100 different paragraphs (extensive).

-          Opinion

3.      The readers read a text in detail, they study line by line, not only to know about the grammar specific information but also to know vocabularies by using dictionary.

-          Example
The learners read a short text for specific information to answer true or false statements or filling gaps in a summary.

-          References :

Retrieved from; http/ el.mdu.edu.tw/datacos/09427562007A/Intensive%20Reading.doc

http://languagefixation.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/intensive-and-extensive-reading/

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Skimming

-          Definition

1.      Skimming refers to the process of reading only main ideas within a passage to get an overall impression of the content of a reading
selection.

2.      Skimming is used to quickly identify the main ideas of a text. When you read the newspaper, you're probably not reading it word-by-word, instead you're scanning the text. Skimming is done at a speed three to four times faster than normal reading. People often skim when they have lots of material to read in a limited amount of time. Use skimming when you want to see if an article may be of interest in your research.

3.      In skimming, your purpose is quite different. You may be interested in the “gist” of an article, or you

-          Opinion

4. I have to say that skimming is done to get main ideas of a text or getting gist of something, and it is done at glance or the readers just want to know whether a book is interest or not, and it can be because of limited time. So, it does faster than normal reading.

- example

rescue team tramped through the white mountains woods, into this morning searching for longtime Rawajaya radio and television broadcaster Jhonny who faild to return from a hike on Sunday.

-          Who is Jhonny?

References; http://pioneer.netserv.chula.ac.th/~pkanchan/html/skim.htm

http://www.42explore.com/skim.htm

http://www.stmartin.edu/learningcenter/studyskills/handouts/SkimmingAndScanning.pdf

Scanning

-          Definition

1.      Scanning is a reading technique to be used when you want to find specific information quickly. In scanning you have a question in your mind and you read a passage only to find the answer, ignoring unrelated information.

2.      Scanning is a technique you often use when looking up a word in the telephone book or dictionary. You search for key words or ideas. In most cases, you know what you're looking for, so you're concentrating on finding a particular answer. Scanning involves moving your eyes quickly down the page seeking specific words and phrases. Scanning is also used when you first find a resource to determine whether it will answer your questions. Once you've scanned the document, you might go back and skim it.

3.      In scanning, you usually have a question to, or something specific to look for. It might be a telephone number, a particular quotation in a book, or supporting facts to use in a discussion you’re having. When you scan, your goal is to find just the information you want. When you’ve found it, you’re finished reading.

-          Opinion

4.      I have to say that The readers read a text to get specific information quickly, just to find what they want. So, they have questions in their mind and try to find the answers, that’s why they just focus on.

-          Example;

There are many things to consider when you looking for a house, whether you intend to buy or only rent. After all, it is going to be your home, perhaps for quite a long time, and you want to be happy with it. You have to decide exactly what kind of house you want, how much you can efford to pay, and the type of neighbourhood you wish to live in.

-          What should you consider before buying a house?

References : http://pioneer.netserv.chula.ac.th/~pkanchan/html/skim.htm

http://www.42explore.com/skim.htm

http://www.stmartin.edu/learningcenter/studyskills/handouts/SkimmingAndScanning.pdf