Reading Comprehension: Skills and Aspects

Reading Comprehension

• Reading involves systematically arranging, acquiring, and understanding information or ideas represented by words or symbols.
• Reading is one of the language macroskills crucial for communication.
• Reading expands perspectives and beliefs.
• It builds resilience in facing daily problems.
• Improves reading preferences.
• Provides information for knowledge and wisdom.
• Reading offers entertainment and satisfaction.
• Reading allows the reader to experience different things in life.
• It serves as a key to global knowledge accumulated.

Aspects of Reading by Atanacio

• Physiological aspect involves the eyes (retina and cerebral cortex) for seeing, identifying, and recognizing images and symbols.
• Fixation is the process of staring to recognize and understand the text.
• Inter fixation involves eye movement from left to right or top to bottom.
• Return sweeps is reading until the end of the text.
• Regression is rereading.

Cognitive Aspect

• According to SEDI (formerly Southwest Educational Development Laboratory), there are two main steps in cognition.
• Recognition (decoding) is recognizing words and symbols.
• Comprehension involves different levels of understanding.
  • Literal meaning
  • Interpreting the meaning
  • Applying knowledge
  • Judging the content of the text

Communication & Social Aspects

• Language is a vital tool for communication.
• Social aspect is reading issues being discussed and read by many.

Main Steps in Reading Comprehension

• Recognition is identifying printed words or symbols, sounding out letters.
• Understanding is comprehending the printed symbols of the words.
• Reaction is evaluating the text's accuracy and significance.
• Association is integrating new information with prior experiences.

SQ3R Reading Strategy

• Survey or Investigation involves critically reading the text to grasp the overall idea, and determine if it suits your writing or research.
• Questions involve determining if the text is helpful and raises questions to focus your study.
• Read involves carefully and thoroughly reading the text, maintaining focus and noting key points.
• Recall requires setting aside the text and notes to recall the information.
• Review involves rereading to clarify uncertainties.

Types of Reading

• Skimming is quickly identifying the purpose without sacrificing recognition.
• Scanning focuses on specific information.
• Previewing skims the title, characters, and content.
• Casual reading aims only to pass the time.
• Informative reading increases knowledge.
• Critical reading thoroughly examines the message.
• Re-reading confirms information for accuracy.
• Note-taking highlights important points in long articles.

Theories of Reading

• Bottom-up is a traditional view resulting from behaviorism.
  • Consists of a gradual recognition of letters.
  • Reading is a sequential process: letters to words, etc.
  • The text serves as the focus for understanding the material.
• Top-down is a conceptually driven approach.
  • Focus is on the reader and is not sequential.
  • Applies former information (schemas)
  • Influenced by gestalt psychology, reading is a holistic process.
• Interactive involves interaction of bottom-up and top-down processing.
  • Comprehension is a process, not a product.
  • Requires processing while reading the text, considering that learning is cognitive.
• Schema
  • Individuals possess their own world.
  • Interpretation evolves through what is heard and observed.
  • Continuously expanding and refining with prior knowledge.

Meta-cognition

• Is awareness to thought processes during understanding.
• Awareness of skills and control over them.
• Conscious use of strategies while reading, with awareness of the learning process.

Levels of Reading

• Elementary reading is basic.
• Inspectional involves a time constraint with superficial knowledge, using skimming.
• Analytical consists of interpreting thoughts and facts.

Levels of Text Analysis

• Textual analyzes the elements of a text and the style of text being studied.
• Contextual relates the text to social events.
• Subtext analysis examines the meaning of specific symbols to understand nuanced intent.
• Intertextual connects the text to other related ones.

Types of Text

• Informative Text (non-fiction)
  • Conveys information, distinguishing fact from opinion.
  • Examples like magazines, news articles, and brochures are used.
  • Includes definitions, analysis, and cause and effect.
  • The reader considers the author's intent, main ideas, organizational patterns, and vocabulary.
• Descriptive Text
  • Supplements the presented information of the previous type of text.
  • Serves as a description of feeling.
  • Examples like literary works, biographies, and essays are used.
  • Consists of ordinary and artistic descriptions.
• Narrative Text
  • Arranges events chronologically, enabling readers to form mental images.
  • Examples like novels, short stories, anecdotes, and biographies are used.
  • Has story elements like plot, setting, character, and conflict.
• Persuasive Text
  • Aims to convince and persuade based on opinion.
  • Examples such as speeches and advertisements can be used.
  • Relies on ethos (credibility), logos (logic), and pathos (emotion).
  • An effective speech consists of credibility of the speaker, logical reasoning, and emotional appeal.
• Procedural Text
  • Outlines steps in a process, explaining how things work or achieve desired outcomes.
  • Examples like mechanics manuals, recipes and manuals can be used.
  • Contains elements such as goals, materials, and steps.

Stylistic Devices (Tayutay)

• Simile compares using "like", "as"
• Metaphor is a direct comparison.
• Personification gives life to inanimate objects.
• Hyperbole extravagantly exaggerates.
• Onomatopoeia imitates sounds.

Descriptive Text

• Aims to create concrete images through language using the five senses, often used in literature.
• Has elements such as viewpoints and impressions which guide the reader.
• Reminders in Writing descriptive text involve using details as additions and the use of the author's expression.
• May be common or intense descriptions.

Research Definitions

• Villafuerte: Research is discovering a theory, and its testing and problem solving.
• Good (via Villafuerte, et al.): A careful, analytical, and disciplined method tailored to problem conditions.
• Calderon and Gonzales (via Bernales, 2009): An organization of data through scientific methods in order to improve the quality of life.
• Kerlinger: A systematic, critical, and empirical investigation for a hypothetical proposition.
• Leedy and Ormrod (2001): A systematic process of gathering and analyzing to increase understanding of what interests them.
• Salmorin (2006): A complex undertaking.

Research Topics by Purpose

• Basic Research explores concepts or unresolved phenomena.
• Applied Research solves practical problems and benefits society.

Research Topics by Process

• Descriptive Research portrays occurrences based on participant perspectives.
• Exploratory Research investigates phenomena or ideas.
• Explanatory Research explains or analyzes the subject being studied.
• Experimental Research clarifies outcomes, causes, and effects.
• Evaluation Research assesses the success of a research.

Ethics in Research

• Plagiarism is when word theft occurs.
• Recycling reuses the papers already submitted to other courses.
• Hastening the conclusion occurs when not enough time is spent collecting information.

How to Write

• Select topic
• Information gathering
• Thesis development
• Tentative plan

Research Format

• Introduction explains the topic of interest.
• Body presents arguments supporting the thesis.
• Conclusion summarizes key points.

Structure of Research

• The scientific article has an (IMRaDC) introduction, methodology, results, discussion, conclusion.
• The purpose is to care for the health of others and natural Science.

Methodology

• Explanation of how results are obtained through credible methods.
• It should be explained: design, respondents, and instruments while ensuring ethical considerations.