LECTURE 12. READING, KINDS OF IT. ORAL READING. Plan: 1. Texts for Reading 2. Purpose for Reading 3. Reading Skills and Strategies 4. Principles for Designing Interactive Reading Techniques
1. Texts for Reading One can name more than 50 texts types people read in real life. They are:
Novels, short stories, tales: other literary texts and passages(e.g. essays, diaries, anecdotes, biographies)
Plays
Poems, limericks, nursery rhymes
Letters, postcards, telegrammes, notes
Newspaper and magazines (headlines, articles, editorials, letters to the editor, stop press, classified ads., weather forecast, radio/TV/theatre programmes)
Specialized articles, reports, review, essays, business letters, summaries, precis, accounts, pamphlets (political and other)
Handbooks, textbooks, guidebooks
Recipes
Advertisements, travel brochures, catalogues
Puzzles, problems, rules for games
Instructions (e.g. warnings), directions (e.g. How to use...), notices, rules and regulations, posters, signs (e.g. road signs), forms (e.g. application forms, landing cards) graffiti menus, price lists, tickets
Comic strips, cartoons and caricatures, legends (of maps, pictures)
What is the aim of learning reading and teaching reading at school?
In real life people read for:
pleasure
information
surviving
In general we read because we want to get the message from the writing: it might be facts, ideas, enjoyment, feelings, etc.
So, reading is communication or interaction through conveying a message.
Different people understand the meaning of one and the same message differently. Understanding depends on attitudes, values shared by people brought up in the same society. Understanding also depends on what we have experienced and how our minds have organized the knowledge we have got from our experiences.
We all get something different from a text. Whose understanding is better, closer to the writer’s message?
Understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible.