Reading Comprehension Strategies

• Reading involves decoding symbols to derive meaning and requires continuous practice
• Reading is fundamental for interacting and understanding the world
• Readers use morphemes, semantics, syntax, and context clues to understand unknown words
• Reading involves recognizing words, leading to comprehension
• Reading negotiates meaning between text and reader
• Reading strategies vary

The Reading Process Involves Three Stages

• The pre-reading stage prepares readers by activating background knowledge, previewing the text, and setting a purpose for reading
• One pre-reading strategy is to speculate about the author's purpose for writing, and to examine the title and list related ideas

Pre-Reading Strategy

• SKIMMING and SCANNING
• Predict the contents of the text and pose questions
• Read and write down provided discussion questions

During Reading Stage

• In this stage readers make, confirm, or revise predictions
• Use a double-entry journal by noting the text on one side and reactions on the other to assist with review; alternatively, highlight key sections to recall important ideas
• Use headings and transition words to identify relationships in the text
• Create a vocabulary list of unfamiliar words to define later
• Try to infer unfamiliar words' meanings by identifying their relationship to the main idea
• Connect the text to prior knowledge

After Reading Stage

• This stage involves retelling the story, discussing elements, answering questions, and comparing to other texts

Reading Comprehension

• Vocabulary knowledge is a necessity to enable understanding of a text
• Text comprehension uses vocabulary and reading strategies, starts before reading, and goes on after reading
• Skimming is the process of speedy reading for general meaning, skipping over sentences or phrases that contain detail
• Concentrate on identifying central points when skimming

Scanning Technique

• Pass your vision speedily over text to find particular words or phrases

Detailed Reading and Note Taking

• Carefully review selected information while using note-taking techniques to aid understanding
• Underline key points, using keywords for main ideas
• Includes asking questions to stay engaged
• Summarize sections in your own words

Making Inferences

• Understand what writer is implying, based on reader's schema or background knowledge

Drawing Conclusion

• Explore and utilize visual clues to figure something not directly stated

Thesis Statement

• A thesis statement bears the main idea of an article or essay and gives the reader an idea of what to expect
• analytical
• expository (explanatory)
• argumentative

Academic Text Structure

• Academic texts follow a clear, consistent structure throughout

Academic vs Conversational Text

Academic:

• Formal
• Objective
• Technical Casual/ Conversational:
• Informal
• Casual words used
• Slang

Types of Academic Text

• Articles found in scholarly journals
  • Present research findings that contribute to the academic community or support national development
• Conference papers
  • Presented in scholastic conferences and may be revised as articles for publication in scholarly journals
• Reviews
  • Provide evaluation or reviews of works published in scholarly journals -Theses and dissertations
• Personal research for a college or university degree

Academic Text Structure

• The type of text has a formal structure
• There is a clearly structured introduction, body, and conclusion

Research Skills

• Research is the systematic study of materials and sources to establish facts and reach new conclusions

Basic Research Skills

• Use quality sources, such as books, magazines, and online articles
• Use online search modifiers for efficient searching:
• AND: Narrows down results by searching all terms in each source
• OR or minus (-): Alternates or excludes search terms
• Quotation marks (" "): Searches for the exact phrase

Skimming and Scanning

• Reading methods of going through information quickly, while noting down important details

The Credibility Test

• Source Type
• Examine the source thoroughly (book, website article, research paper, or news report)
• Authorship
• Is the author an expert in the field and is the publisher reliable?
• URL
• Does the website end in "edu" or ".org?"
• Up-to-date
• Check the publication date for current information

Summarizing and Paraphrasing

• Paraphrasing uses your own words to express someone else's ideas while still preserving the main ideas
• Summarizing gives the main point and is much shorter than the original text

Techniques in Summarizing

• Selection
• Select the major idea, key words and phrases, special terms and interpretations presented in the original resource
• Rejection
• Remove unnecessary data and reject repetitions, examples, illustrations, anecdotes, redundant expressions, tables and statistical data
• Substitution
• Combine several sentences into one, and use short sentences to replace lengthy sentences
• Outlining
• Identify significant details and eliminate irrelevant ones

Reaction, Review, or Critique Paper

• Evaluates strengths and weaknesses of a work and requires careful and analytical reading for a well-informed assessment

Expressing Opinion

• Signal with key words

Critiquing Effectively

• Know the scope, writer's style, theme, and intention

Tips for writing a good reaction, review, or critique paper:

• Think about major arguments/points and discuss strengths and weaknesses
• Describe each point clearly and provide in-depth analysis
• Cite credible sources and provide examples

Avoid:

• Summarizing or retelling
• Stating arguments with no evidence Providing many examples without relating them to the points

Sample Format:

• Center the title and align paragraphs to the left
• There should be 1-inch margins
• Indent the first line of each paragraph
• Include page number in the top right corner

Approaches in Writing a Critique Paper

Formalist Criticism

• Regards literature as a unique form of human knowledge and examines it on its terms, focusing on elements of form like structure, tone, and imagery

Biographical or Historical Criticism

• Understanding an author's life can help readers comprehend the work

Gender Criticism

• Examines how sexual identity influences the creation of the literary text. Includes LGBTQ issues.

Psychological Criticism

• Freud's psychoanalytic theories influenced this criticism, which explores areas like wish fulfillment, sexuality, and repression

Marxist Criticism

• Highlights the economic and political elements of art and believes all art is political, either challenging or endorsing the status quo

Moral/Philosophical Approach: Consider

• The story's view of life and mankind's relationship to God
• The moral statement and the author's attitude/conception of good and evil

Mythological Criticism

• Emphasizes recurrent universal patterns. A key concept is archetype: a symbol, character, situation, or image that evokes a deep, universal response

Critique Paper Steps

• Read and understand literary piece.
• Determine author's purpose and analyze each segment.
• Decide which criticism approaches to use and focus on specific elements.
• Compose the introduction, body, and conclusion, including the author's name, title, thesis statement, strong and weak points, and evaluation

Concept Paper Overview

• Provides an overview of the project and helps eliminate proposals that are likely to be disapproved
• It establishes a foundation for a full proposal, determines feasibility, piques interest, and obtains feedback

Uses of Concept Paper

• Concept papers are helpful in addressing social issues to show solutions that plague society

Identifying a Given Term

• Informal: Parenthetical or brief explanation
• Formal is the term to be defined with the quality that makes the terms different

Extended Definition

• Provides a detailed explanation of a term using comparison, narration, classification, and cause and effect

Explication

• A method of explanation in which sentences, verse, and quotes or passages are taken from literary or academic work and then interpreted and explained in a detailed way
• Sentences, themes, and construction/conclusions should be clarified and analyzed

Classification

• A method of explanation in which the abstract is organized to specific concrete examples

Signal Words for Clarification

• Help clarify ideas by providing examples or rephrasing information; e.g., after all

Parts of a Concept Paper Project

• Cover page includes names and affiliations, address and contact information, head of agency, and submission date
• Introduction states the mission of the agency and explains support for the project
• Background states the knowledge gap and problems to be solved
• Description states goals, objectives, and methodology, presents the timeline, and states the benefits

Project Needs and Cost

• Outline the main budget and personnel needed

Academic Research Parts

• Preliminary Literature
• Provide states of the field you are researching of (and the gaps in knowledge to be addressed), the reasons you want to investigate topic
• State the theoretical and practical implications of your proposed research
• Statement of problem/objectives
• State the general problem (and specific questions/objectives in one sentence)
• Abridged Methodology
• Provide context and participants of the study
• Provide the instruments to be used
• Provide data collection procedure
• Provide analysis scheme to be used
• Timeline
• Provide a timeline