Reading Comprehension Strategies

Make Connections What connections do I make as I read? Good readers notice pieces of text that relate to or remind them of: ·      Their lives, past experiences, and prior knowledge ·      Other books, articles, movies, songs, or pieces of writing ·      Events, people, or issues Tips: ·      That reminds me of… ·      This made me think of… ·      I read another book that… ·      This is different from… ·      I remember when…	Visualize Good readers create pictures in their minds while they read. While reading, note places where you get a clear picture in your mind that helps you understand the text: ·      I can picture… ·      I can see the… ·      I can visualize… ·      The movie in my head shows… ·      Use your senses to connect the characters, events, and ideas to clarify the picture in your head. ·      I can taste/hear/smell the… ·      I can feel the…	Ask Questions Good readers ask questions before, during, and after reading to better understand the author and the meaning of the text. Ask questions of the author, yourself, and the text: ·      What is the author trying to say? ·      What is the message of this piece? ·      Do I know something about this topic? ·      What do I think I will learn from this text? ·      How could this be explained to someone else? ·      What predictions do I have about this reading?
Infer How do I read between the lines? When the answers are “right there,” good readers draw conclusions based on background knowledge and clues in the text. Ask yourself: ·      I wonder why… ·      I wonder how… ·      I wonder if… ·      Find information from the text that might be clues to the answers and use these with your background knowledge for possible answers.	Determine Importance What’s the big idea? So what? Good readers look for things that help them identify big ideas and why they are important. Look at text features for clues: Titles and headings ·      Bold print ·      Pictures and captions ·      Graphs and charts ·      Chapter objectives and questions Tips: ·      The big idea is… ·      Most important information is... ·      So far I’ve learned… ·      The author is saying… ·      This idea is similar to…	Synthesize How do I use what I’ve read to create my own ideas? Good readers combine new information from their reading with existing knowledge in order to form new ideas or interpretations. Synthesis is creating a single understanding from a variety of sources. Tips: ·      Compare and contrast what I’m reading with what I already know or other sources of information. ·      Think of new ways to use this information. ·      Can connections I make across this text help me to create new generalizations or new perspectives?

Blogging or Printing

        Some people have claimed newspapers will no longer exist in ten years – we will all read blogs instead.  You are going to read a text about blogs. Before you read, think if blogs are a welcome addition to traditional media or blogging is just a passing fashion.

        Read the text and do the following exercises.

Are you a blogger too?

Only a few years ago, a “web log” was a little-known way of keeping an online diary.  At that time, it seemed like “blogs” (as they quickly became known) were only for serious computer geeks or obsessives.

This didn’t last long, though, and within a very short period of time, blogs exploded – blogs were everywhere, and it seemed that almost everyone read blogs, or was a blogger.

The blogging craze of a couple of years ago (when it was estimated that ten new blogs were started somewhere in the world every minute) now seems to have died down a bit – yet thousands of blogs (probably the better ones) remain.  Blogs are no now longer seen as the exclusive possession of geeks and obsessives, and are now seen as important and influential sources of news and opinion.  So many people read blogs now, that it has even been suggested that some blogs may have been powerful enough to influence the result of the recent US election.

Blogs are very easy to set up – all you need is a computer, an internet connection and the desire to write something.  The difference between a blog and a traditional internet site is that a blog is one page consisting mostly of text (with perhaps a few pictures), and – importantly – space for people to respond to what you write.  The best blogs are similar to online discussions, where people write in responses to what the blogger has written.  Blogs are regularly updated – busy blogs are updated every day, or even every few hours.

Not all blogs are about politics, however.  There are blogs about music, film, sport, books – any subject you can imagine has its enthusiasts typing away and giving their opinions to fellow enthusiasts or anyone else who cares to read their opinions.

So many people read blogs now that the world of blog writers and blog readers has its own name – the “blogosphere”.

But how influential, or important, is this blogosphere really?  One problem with blogs is that many people who read and write them seem only to communicate with each other.  When people talk about the influence of the blogosphere, they do not take into account the millions of people around the world who are not bloggers, never read blogs, and don’t even have access to a computer, let alone a good internet connection.

Sometimes, it seems that the blogosphere exists only to influence itself, or that its influence is limited to what is actually quite a small community.  Blogs seem to promise a virtual democracy – in which anyone can say anything they like, and have their opinions heard – but who is actually listening to these opinions?  There is still little hard evidence that blogs have influenced people in the way that traditional mass media (television and newspapers) have the ability to do.

       Exercises
Vocabulary
Comprehension   
Grammar