Reading: An Overview PDF

READING: AN OVERVIEW Reading -​ defined as a complex cognitive process of decoding printed symbols to derive meaning from them. ​ Traditional Reading - simply looking at a symbol of printed symbols -​ When readers read, they do not only use their eyes to receive info...

READING: AN OVERVIEW Reading -​ defined as a complex cognitive process of decoding printed symbols to derive meaning from them. ​ Traditional Reading - simply looking at a symbol of printed symbols -​ When readers read, they do not only use their eyes to receive information from written symbols, but they also make use of their intellectual acumen or cognitive prowess to deduce what those written symbols intend to meaningfully communicate to them. ​ Foreign Language Teaching Methods (2010) - a process undertaken to reduce uncertainty about meanings. ​ Why read? ❖​ Reading gives us pleasure of knowing, feeling, acting, and learning, or of escaping from our limited worlds. ❖​ Knowledge is the most important reward books have to offer; through it come: ​ Compassion ​ Sensitivity ​ Insight ​ Taste ​ Judgement ❖​ It is the golden key to the world of enlightenment and enjoyment. ❖​ In our daily lives, 80 percent of things we do involves reading. ​ Reading recipes in cookbooks ​ Instructions on how to do things ​ Labels of canned food and other products ​ Menus in restaurants ​ Street signs and advertisements ​ Periodicals and Non-fiction books to know more about places and things ​ Fiction comic books and light, humorous stories for relaxation ​ Reading for study  ❖​ Through reading, we can ponder the mysteries of the world, explore accumulated knowledge, and contemplate the unknown. ❖​ Thus, reading is a valuable ingredient for blending our inner psychological world with the outer social world and for emerging into a new universe of thought, imagination, and reality. ❖​ Reading makes us well informed about various areas of knowledge that have accumulated through the years. It informs us about man’s progress as well as the mistakes and successes of human endeavors. Reading is worthwhile. ❖​ Reading gives us inspiration; reading is a form of therapy. What does reading mean? ❖​ William Gray (1950) known as the father of reading, defines reading as a 4-step process. 1. Perception of the word 2. Comprehension of its meaning 3. Reaction to the meaning in terms of prior knowledge 4. Integration of the idea into one’s background of experience ❖​ Oliver Wendell Holmes (1976) describes reading as reasoning. He believes that “power and speed of reading” can adequately explain the act of reading. ​ Power of reading - power to read, comprehend and apply difficult textbook.The ability to grasp the central thought, details, idea, and to interpret content and draw interferences. ​ Speed of reading - the rate of comprehension of fiction and factual materials.  ❖​ Kenneth Goodman (1982) says that reading is a problem in language processing, a psycholinguistic guessing game. The reader selects enough cues or follows another word to trigger his/her own appropriate language experiences. ​ Graphic cues ​ Sounding or use of phoenix clues ​ Semantic cues ➔​ Goodman believes that reading involves an interaction between language and thought. He says that reading processes are cycles of sampling, predicting, testing, and confirming. ❖​ Frank Smith (1978) - describes two types of information necessary in reading 1.​ Visual Information - taken from printed page 2.​ Non-visual Information - includes: ​ our understanding of the relevant language ​ our familiarity with the subject matter ​ our general ability in reading ​ our knowledge of words. ➔​ According to Smith, skill in reading depends on using the eyes as little as possible... As we become fluent readers, we learn to rely more on what we already know, on what is behind the eyeballs and less on the page in front of us. Reading According to the Experts 1.​ Caroll Gray - "Reading early in life gives a youngster a multitude of friends to guide intellectual and emotional growth." 2.​ Richard Sleete - "Reading is to mind what exercise is to the body." 3.​ Chinese Proverb - "After three days without reading, talk becomes flavorless." 4.​ Frederick Douglas - "Once you learn to read you will be forever free." 5.​ Isaac D'Isrelli - "The delights of reading impart the vivacity of youth even in old age." 6.​ Francis Bacon - "Reading maketh a full man." 7.​ Elizabeth Hardwick - "The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination. CURRENT THEORIES ABOUT READING Reading and cognitive development Jean Piaget and Lev S. Vygotsky (1981) - showed that language and thought interact with and complement each other, and children go through 5 stages of development. ​ Stage 1: Sensorimotor Period (birth – 2 y/o) -​ Children learn by adaptation to the environment. The newborn does not have a well-developed frontal cortex so they develop understanding through 5 senses. ★​ SUB-STAGES 1.​ Basic Reflexes (0-1 month) 2.​ Primary Circular Reactions (1-4 months) 3.​ Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8 months) 4.​ Coordination of Secondary Circular Reactions (8-12 months) 5.​ Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18 months) 6.​ Representational Thought (18-24 months) ​ Stage 2: Preoperation or Preconceptional Period (2-4 years) -​ Active, exploratory period when children explore the world around them, experiment things in their environment, and imitate adults in the use of things. -​ Begin to develop concepts and associate words with pictures and images -​ Rapid development of language skills, symbolic thought, and ability to categorize objects based on similarities and the limitation of egocentrism. ​ Stage 3: Intuitive Thought Period (4-7 years) -​ Children are introduced to concepts of number, weight, length, and height. -​ They enjoy listening to rhymes and reading and reciting poems. Children can read simple words, phrases, and sentences at ages 4 to 5.  -​ At this stage, they are still pre-occupied with questions about the world of things around them. At ages 6 -7, most children can read pre-primers and basal readers. -​ Children experience ★​ SUB-STAGES 1.​ Symbolic thought 2.​ Egocentrism 3.​ Animism 4.​ Conservation 5.​ Centration 6.​ Reversibility ​ Stage 4: Concrete Operational Read (7-11 years) -​ Children are capable of thinking about actions. Actions become internalized. They can do a lot of reading with meaning, retell stories, read, pick out keywords or topic sentences that give the main idea -​ This stage coincides with the periods of rapid growth in reading and in the use of the reading tool. -​ At this stage, children develop increasingly advanced reasoning. Their thinking becomes better organized, more logical, and systematic. ★​ DEVELOPMENTAL EXAMPLES 1.​ Seriation, 2.​ reversibility, 3.​ classification, 4.​ conservation, 5.​ transivity, and 6.​ overcoming egocentrism. ​ Stage 5: Formal Operations (12-14 years) -​ Pre-teeners are already capable of dealing with hypotheses and propositions, establishing and manipulating between things. -​ They can cope with higher level critical reading skills such as drawing conclusions, making judgments, and evaluating plot and author’s style. This stage is also the beginning of the period of refinement and wide reading.  ★​ DEVELOPMENTAL EXAMPLES 1.​ Abstract thinking, 2.​ scientific reasoning, 3.​ moral reasoning, 4.​ critical analysis, 5.​ perspective-taking, and 6.​ continual language development. ​ SUBSTRATA FACTOR THEORY OF READING ​ (Holmes, 1953, Holmes and Singer, 1961) variables correlate to reading ability to predict speed and power of reading. Cognitive abilities also contribute to reading ability. Systems work together to read texts at different levels. Believes that different “working systems” including perceptual, linguistic, cognitive, motivational, affective, and physiological, that interact within the reader and between the reader and the text. BASIC ASSUMPTION UNDERLYING THE SUBSTRATA-FACTOR THEORY An average child’s receptive, mediational, storage, and oral subsystems for processing and responding to spoken language are fairly well developed before her systematically starts to form his subsystems for decoding, comprehending, and encoding responses to printed language. In the process, intermodal communication subsystems between auditory and visual systems are developed which are necessary for transfer from one modality to the other. (Holmes, 1957) ​ Formation of oral reconstruction or at least recoding subsystems are necessary for oral reading. However, a reader who has attained maturity in both oral and silent reading has not only developed subsystems for both of these types of reading but can minimize or suppress his oral reconstruction and recoding subsystems when reading silently.  As individuals progress through the grades, perceptual processes tend to decrease in relative importance while meaning factors tend to increase. ​ Statistically determined models of reading have been constructed at college, high school, and elementary levels. These models were constructed by use of substrata analysis, which extends the Wherry-Doolittle multiple correlation selection technique to successive levels of analysis. WHOLE TO PART THEORY ​ (Weir, 1962 & Brown, 1964) whole-to-part or also called whole language is a method of teaching children to read at an early age that allows students to select their own reading matter that emphasizes the use and recognition of words in everyday contexts. Founders of Whole Language Approach ​ Frank Smith is a contemporary psycholinguist recognized for his contributions in linguistics and cognitive psychology ​ Kenneth Goodman is best known for developing the theory underlying the literacy philosophy of whole language. How does the whole language method work? ​ This method strives to teach children to read words as whole pieces of language. The books children are provided with in this method are often quite repetitive and very predictable. Children do not need to be very accurate about reading all the words in this method. Unlike phonic-based reading, it attempts to break a written language down into small and simple components. It is taught by having children use letter sounds and letter symbols. Children identify letters with certain sounds and piece them back together – decoding. How is this method different from traditional reading programs? ​ It encourages children to be able to recognize the core words in a sentence rather than having to read out all the words phonetically. It uses literature as a tool for learning and will encourage children to use their reading and writing skills to do simple everyday tasks. This ensures that there is meaning behind what they read and write, instead of simple learning the phonetics of a language and then having to decode each word without knowing what it means. Traditional reading focuses on phonetics and teaching children how to read words phonetically. Who can benefit from this approach? ​ Children who are more creative and less traditional in their learning approach will benefit the most from the whole language approach as it allows more room for such a child to get creative during the learning process. Advantages of using the whole language method for teaching a child. ​ The child is exposed to very good literature right from the beginning of his learning experiences, making it more interesting for him. The approach encourages his creativity and gives him more understanding of the materials he has to read as he is not made to learn any rules or go through lists of sounds Drawbacks of the Whole Language Approach: ​ Some children may not be able to spell properly if they do not get proper phonetics instructions. ​ Due to the lack of phonetic knowledge, children will be unable to recognize or read unfamiliar words. ​ Accuracy is often overlooked. ​ The non-existent structure makes things difficult for the teachers as they will have to make their own curriculum and possess excellent knowledge of how to use the whole language approach. ​ Not every child benefits from this approach as some prefer more organized learning methods. “Mathemagenic” Behavior (Rothkoff (1970) ​ An activity which gives birth to learning. Fosters learning-related or mathemagenic processes are instructional components, such as directions, questions, and task assignments. Learners can learn through asking questions and letting them process the given knowledge of information for them to realize and understand the lesson. Interspersed questions prompt learners to process the material in a manner that is more likely to give birth to learning. Learners become active performers responding to activities imposed by the lesson rather that active learners. (Dabbagh 1997) Mathemagenic approaches: ​ Generative – this is based on the idea that the learners can create new ideas to enhance their educational experience. ​ Supplantive – imposed by instructional model information is presented in order in which the component sub-skills are taught directly. Comprehension of Interaction ​ Reading comprehensions interactions display both a relating to teaching, conversational structure, with participants interacting and talk about the text. ​ According to Gert J van der Westhuizen, interactions around texts for purposes of reading comprehension occur frequently in school classrooms. The interaction flows are dominated by teachers who determine the structure, and questions asked. ​ The purpose is to use current methods of conversation analysis to analyze a typical interaction. ​ It explores how communicative activity plays out in terms of conversational features such as sequence organization, response preferences, and repair actions. Specific communicative actions work towards comprehension outcomes, and that these reflect the authenticity of each interaction sequence. Examples to Assist in Comprehending the Message. ​ Assigning an interaction to part of particular event, such as story. (telling, joking, praying, complaining) ​ Assigning places, persons or things to categories. ​ Inferring cause and effect relationships. ​ Anticipation income. ​ Inferring the topic of a discourse. ​ Inferring the sequence between events. ​ Inferring missing details. ❖​ Rumelhart (1976) and Singer (1983) says that comprehension is the result of interaction between reader and text data. ❖​ Shank and Abelson (1977) says that the reader symbolizes a script or set of schemata for assimilating and recalling information. ❖​ (Hayes 1971) Help students extend their knowledge structure which they can use to comprehend new information. THEORY ON TEXT DATA (Gray and Leary 1935) 1.​ High frequency words are quite simply those words which occur most frequently in written material, i.e. “and”, “the”, “as”, and “it”. They are often words that have little meaning on their own but contribute a great deal to the meaning of the sentence. 2.​ About sentence length. ​ Short (5 words) ​ Medium (9-10 words) ​ Long (16 words) ❖​ Vandyk and Kintoch (1977) found out that text which were logically organized can be processed more rapidly and evenly by average readers. ​ Following features: Cohesion, Staging, and Content Analysis ​ Cohesion – lying sentences together with the use of connectors and conjunctions ​ Staging – way of featuring information in the text. ​ Content Analysis – separation of content into events and movements, setting, background, and evaluations. Metacognition (John Flavell, 1796) ​ Awareness of an ability to capitalize on one’s knowledge and through processes as they are applied to some specific tasks. ​ Flavell was one of the first psychologists to study the ways in which children think about their thinking processes and the human mind. Known for his studies of role-taking in children. ​ Metacognition is defined as “thinking about your own thinking.” ❖​ TWO ELEMENTS OF METACOGNITION: ​ Knowledge of cognition ​ Regulation of cognition  ❖​ TYPES OF METACOGNITIVE KNOWLEDGE ​ Declarative Knowledge – “person knowledge”, this type isn’t always accurate, as self-assessment can easily be unreliable. ​ Procedural Knowledge – “task knowledge”, (what do I need to know?), (how much space do I have to communicate what I know?). It’s related to how difficult individual perceives the task. ​ Strategy Knowledge – “conditional knowledge”, one’s ability to use strategies to learn information, as well as for adapting these strategies to new situations. This is related to the age or developmental stage of the individual. Metacognitive Regulation ​ It is used to describe how individual monitor and assess their knowledge. This includes knowing how and when to use certain skills and helps individuals to control their learning. “How am I doing?”, “How could I do this more efficiently or accurately next time?” (Baker and Brown, 1984) ❖​ TWO DIFFERENT CLUSTER OF METACOGNITION 1.​ Student’s awareness of any incompatibility between available knowledge and the task to be done – it is concerned with a person’s knowledge about his own cognitive resources and the compatibility between himself as a learning and the learning situation. The main purpose of which is to find out how much a child knows about certain pertinent features of thinking, including himself as a thinker. The passage suggests that if a child understands what is needed to perform well, they can take steps to meet the demands of a learning situation. However, if the child is unaware of their limitations or the task's complexity, they will struggle to anticipate or address potential problems effectively.​ 2.​ Active self-monitoring cognitive processes while reading – this consists of the self-regulatory mechanisms used by an active learner during an ongoing attempt to solve problems. Metacognitive indices involve evaluating outcomes, planning next steps, monitoring actions, and revising strategies. Learners are more likely to take  control of their learning when faced with tasks of moderate difficulty. Active monitoring of cognitive processes is crucial for effective learning; failure to do so can result in significant reading difficulties. Metacognitive Reading Strategies ​ Planning strategies are used before reading; activating learners’ background knowledge to get prepared for reading is an example of planning strategy. Guide Questions: What strategies will I use to study? How much time do I plan on studying? Which aspects of the course material should I spend more or less time on, based on my current understanding? ​ Monitoring strategies occur during reading. Examples: comprehension of vocabulary, self-questioning, summarizing, and inferring the main idea of each paragraph. Readers may also identify and focus on key information including “but”, “however”, “on the other hand”, “in addition”, “also”, and “in conclusion”. Determining what can be emphasized or ignored based on the purpose of the task is another monitoring strategy. Guide Questions: To what extent am I being systematic in my studying of all the material for the exam? Am I struggling with my motivation to study? If so, do I remember why am I taking this course? Which confusion remain and how am I going to get the clarified? ​ Evaluating strategies are employed after reading. Learners may think about how to apply what they have read to other situations. They may identify with the author, a narrative, or main character. Guide Questions: What about my exam preparation worked well that I should remember to do next time? What did not work so well that I should not do next time or that I should change? What is Psycholinguistic? ​ People who study psycholinguistics work towards discovering answers to questions like: Do we learn language through hard-wired way through nature, or do we learn language more through the nurturing of our families? ​ It is a study that combines the fields of linguistics and psychology. “Language psychology” If you were a psycholinguist, you could choose to work in various subfields, including language in the mind. ​ You might also be interested in this field if you were studying speech and language pathology or cognitive sciences. The research within the psycholinguistics field can be broken down into specific topics. Some of those topics is phonetics or phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. ​ Language begins with phonetics and develops through pragmatics. Psychology of language is the study of psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language. Psycholinguistic Theory and Models Language Acquisition ​ There are two schools of thought as to how children acquire or learn language: ​ Behaviorist perspective - all language must be learned by child, and ​ Innatist perspective - believes that the abstract system of language cannot be learned, but that humans possess an access to what has been called universal grammar. ​ The innatist perspective began in 1959 with Noam Chomsky’s highly review of B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior (1957). -​ Chomsky posited that humans possess a special innate ability for language and those complex syntactic features, such as recursion, are “hard-wired” in the brain. Children acquiring a language have a vast search space to explore among human grammars. Two Models of Reading: Bottom Up and Top Down Approach Bottom Up (stories, paragraphs, sentences, words, letters, shapes, context cues, prediction, decoding, phonics, alphabet, shapes) ​ Each word in a selection must be recognized to comprehend the selection ​ Word and sound letter cues should be used exclusively to determine unrecognized words. ​ Reading acquisition requires mastering and integrating a series of word recognition. ​ Reading instruction emphasizes letters, letter-sound relationships, and words. ​ Accuracy in recognizing words is important. Top Down ​ Reading begins with the reader's background knowledge. It predicts from the topic and confirms or rejects the confirmation after reading. ​ Comprehending a selection is possible even if each word in the selection is not recognized. ​ Meaning and grammatical cues, in addition to graphic cues, should be used to determine unrecognized words. ​ Learning to read is achieved through meaningful reading, writing, listening, and speaking activities. ​ Reading instruction emphasizes sentences, paragraphs, and text selection. Reading for meaning is important. Nature of Reading (Interactive Model) ​ An interactive reading model is a reading model that recognized the interaction of bottom-up and top-down processes simultaneously throughout the reading process. ​ Third model espoused by Rumelhart (1977) offers another view to characterize readings. An interactive model in which both letter features as data-driven sensory information and non-sensory information come together at one place. Rumelhart calls this place a “message board”. ​ The message board (synthesizer) is a model that recognizes the interaction of bottom-up and top-down processes simultaneously throughout the reading process. ​ One example of interactive reading is literature circle where students are given an opportunity to talk about books with their friends. THE SCHEMA THEORY For the next theory, we have the “Schema Theory”. Schema theory explains how our old knowledge influences our understanding and interpretation about new information. This theory was proposed by Frederic Charles Bartlette in 1932. In one of his famous studies, “War of the Ghosts”, he found out that many of the recalls about the Native American Folklores are not accurate, and some of the unfamiliar information are replaced by the familiar ones based on their existing knowledge frameworks. ​ For example, one participant misremembered the phrase "something black came out of his mouth" as "he foamed at the mouth," reconstructing the information to align with their schema. ​ According to Rumelhart (1980), schemata are mental units of knowledge that help in recalling memory. While in Minsky’s Frame Theory year 1970s, Minsky use frames to represent knowledge in machines. For Richard Anderson’s Schema Theory in Education, in 1977 he emphasized that understanding what you are reading involves both the bottom-up and top-down reading process. Types of Schemata: 1.​ Content Schema: Factual knowledge, values, and cultural norms. 2.​ Formal Schema (Textual Schema): Knowledge of rhetorical structures of texts and genres. 3.​ Linguistic Schema(Language Schema): Knowledge of language structure, vocabulary, grammatical inflections and cohesive structures. According to Swalles (1990) prior knowledge can be assimilated from direct experiences OR from verbal experiences and encounters. PROCESS READING ​ Process reading is not just about getting the main idea, it is also about learning, thinking and understanding. Both writers and readers evaluate words, sentences, and overall meaning. Writers edit his words and sentences for clarity, while readers evaluate its words and analyze its meaning which help them to learn new vocabulary and sentence construction. Even though being good at reading does not guarantee good writing, it is still essential in becoming a good learner and writer because it helps us strengthen our thinking, learning and creativity. STAGES IN PROCESS READING​ Stage 1: Read for Content ​ In this stage, you have to identify the main idea or the thesis sentence and after that, you have to identify the major and minor ideas and lastly, the structure of the text to support the claims. To fully understand the text, you have to analyze the three group of words which are: 1.​ TERMS - words that is used in ordinary sense 2.​ ALLUSIONS - words that refer to other context 3.​ TROPES - are figure of speech that add flavor to the text If this stage is successfully finished, you’ll be able to provide reliable feedback to clothes on text like writing a summary of it. Stage 2: Read for Intent ​ For this stage, you have to identify overt and covert meaning of a text. ​ Overt - refers to the general meaning of the text ​ Covert - refers to the hidden agendas that are disclosed by drawing assumptions and implications.  Ex. If a senator states that he is running for the presidency, his covert intent may be to lead the country to progress, make his mark in history or to protect and advance his cronies' business interests, legal or otherwise. Reading for intent gives you reason for a proper reaction or response to a text’s message. Ex. A woman with a child who asks you for money may really need your help or may simply be raising funds to support her vice. Stage 3: Read for value ​ This stage in reading is the most critical one. Reading for value focuses on determining the truth, worth, importance and urgency of the meanings conveyed. In this stage you should: ​ Examine the underlying theories and methodologies. Check the sources, data such as linguistic and numerical data, and the statistical analysis used. Lastly, watch out for misleading graphics. Ex. The picture of an intern hugging the US President in a public rally may be cropped to make it appear it was taken in a very intimate setting. Beware also of computer or darkroom manipulation of images. Currently, many compromising photos of celebrities on the Internet are downright fakes. ​ Evaluate the logic of the text. Some statements are strongly expressed, with convincing rhetoric, but without good argument. Ex. A statement like, Workers, unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains may be a battle cry for worker activism, but it leaves open the consequences of that call. If workers unite, will they displace their employers? If they do so, do they have capability to run the business? A restaurant workers' union goes on strike; the owners threaten to shut down if the workers do not return to work; the workers continue their strike; the restaurant closes; the workers lose their jobs, the restaurant owner's wealth remains mostly intact A few months later, the same owner opens another restaurant in a nearby building. Obviously, the decision to go on strike and the campaign for participation involved written texts. Unfortunately, in such an example, the logical consequences of the statements reflecting  the union's decision were probably not thoroughly studied, nor presented to the striking workers. ​ Reflect on your own belief system. Consider how the text fits into your personal belief and how the text affects your belief system. ​ In the context of decision making, reading for value must also extend to determining the importance and urgency of the text. Many faulty decisions could be traced to the failure to consider the importance of certain ideas. Ex. A government building gets built with a centralized air- conditioning system because that is specified in the donation papers of the foreign funding agency. Such fails to consider reports on electricity. Eventually, the building gets completed, but the expensive centralized air-conditioning system does not get used at all since the government unit has no budget to cover the expense involved. Reading for value helps you develop critical reading skills and good judgement into your readings. Stage 4: Read for language ​ For the last stage, we have “read the language”. Reading gives us the opportunity to learn new words and reading other language books helps us to learn and to be familiar with that particular language. In reading books that have different language you have to be: ​ Be sensitive to linguistic aspects of the written text and take notes. If you are not familiar or the text used is different from what you know, try taking notes about it and check it in the collegiate dictionary. ​ Be especially sensitive to idiomatic phrases. Remember that the meaning of words used in idiomatic phrases are not always its actual meaning. ​ Recognize evolving grammatical rules. If you find sentence construction that violates grammatical rule, it may be an (unintentional) error or an evolving change in grammatical rule. ACTION/REACTION ​ Process reading helps form your cognitive response by distinguishing between fact and fiction, often relying on personal knowledge or analyzing the writer’s credibility. Your practical response may happen in different ways. ​ Practical Response. You may render the text in feedback format by summarizing, outlining, or rephrasing the main ideas or you may draw inferences by analyzing the relationships of the ideas from the body of data. ​ Integration to Storehouse of Knowledge. You can try integrating what you’ve read with other info and it can be done by using closed type and open type integration. ​ Secondary Analysis. You can reanalyze the data or argument and see if you will arrive at the same or different outcome. ​ Act of Information. You can reconsider your current beliefs and knowledge, share credible ideas you’ve learned or keep the information for future use. 3 Levels of Reading to Develop a Critical Reader for Any Given Literary Text 1.​ Read the lines: Focus on the literal meaning of the text. 2.​ Read between the lines: Infer deeper meanings and underlying messages. 3.​ Read beyond the lines: Critically analyze and evaluate the text in a broader context. 3 Levels of Literary Treatment 1.​ Implication: Understand the pros and cons, develop foresight, and broaden perspectives. 2.​ Immediate: Observe what is directly present or described in the surroundings. 3.​ Superficial: Rely on first impressions or initial observations. The Need to Develop Critical Reading Skills ​ It is important for us to develop critical reading skills so that we will be able to save ourselves from misleading and unreliable information that we can always encounter in digital world. ​ Techniques to develop critical reading skills 1.​ Keep a Reading Journal  -​ Write your feelings and ideas in reaction to your readings. This allows you to build personal connections and improve your understanding. 2.​ Annotating the Text -​ Highlight important passages and write notes in the margins. This helps you actively engage with the writer’s ideas. 3.​ Outlining the Text. -​ Try making a rough outline by locating and plotting thesis statements, claims, and evidence. In this way, you can understand how the writer organizes ideas. 4.​ Summarizing the Text -​ Get the main points of the essay and important supporting details. With this, you can better understand the arguments of the writer. 5.​ Questioning the Text -​ Ask questions on the author’s assumptions, intentions, and evidence. This will help you to evaluate the text’s credibility and how well it addresses opposing views. The following questions may be asked: a. What type of audience is addressed? b. What are the writer's assumptions? c. What are the writer's intentions? d. How well does the writee accomplish these? e. How convincing is the evidence presented? f. How reliable are the sources? Are they based on personal experience, scientific data or outside authorities? g. Did the writer address opposing views on the issue? h. Is the writer persuasive in his perspective? IDENTIFYING AND ANALYZING CLAIMS Determining Explicit and Implicit Information Critical reading involves distinguishing between explicit and implicit information. ​ Explicit information is direct and clearly stated and easy to identify in the text.  ​ Implicit information is suggested but not directly written, requiring readers to infer meaning using textual clues, reasoning, and background knowledge. Defining Claims ​ The writer’s point or position regarding the chosen topic is known as the claim or the central argument. The claim is the most important part of the text and it is what the writer is trying to prove by providing details, explanation and other types of evidence. Characteristics of a Good Claim: 1.​ A claim should be argumentative and debatable. It should present a perspective that invites discussion and allows for objections, as it can only be meaningfully challenged if it addresses a topic that is open to reasonable debate. 2.​ A claim should be specific and focused. Avoid being overly broad. 3.​ A claim should be interesting and engaging. It should capture the reader’s interest. 4.​ A claim should be logical. It should make sense and follow a reasonable line of reasoning that connects the support to the conclusion. Distinguishing Between the Types of Claim 1.​ Claims of Facts. They rely on date to validate a statement (makes them unique from other inferences) and it answers “WHAT?” questions. When determining whether something is a claim of fact, the following questions are useful: a.​ Is this issue related to a possible cause or effect? b.​ Is this statement true or false? c.​ How can its truthfulness be verified? d.​ Is this claim controversial or debatable?  2.​ Claims of Value. This consists of arguments about moral, philosophical or aesthetic topics. It explains how problems, situations or issues ought to be valued. To discover these explanations, you may ask the following questions: ​ Which claims endorse what is good or right? ​ What qulaities should be considered good? Why? ​ Which of these values contend with others? ​ Which ones are more important and why? Whose standards are used? ​ What are some concrete examples of such values? 3.​ Claims of Policy. Assume that specific actions should be chosen as solutions to particular problems. Usually, it begins with “should” “ought to” or “must” and it answers “HOW?” questions. The following questions will be useful in evaluating a claim of policy. ​ Does the claim suggest a specific remedy to solve the problem? ​ Is the policy clearly established? ​ Is the policy the best one available? For whom? ​ According to whose standards? ​ How does the policy solve the problem? ​ Identifying the Context of Text Development Identifying the Context of Text Development Being a critical reader means understanding that a text is influenced by its context, which includes social, cultural, political, and historical factors. The context shapes how the text is written and interpreted, and knowing it helps in better understanding and evaluating the text's message. In discovering a reading's context, you may ask questions like: ​ When was the work written? ​ What were the circumstances that produced it? ​ What issues does it deal with? ​ What were the surrounding situations of the issue? Intertextuality helps to improve understanding by linking text to another text.  Ex. Take, for instance, the local legend of folk hero Bernardo Carpio. Many versions of his tale exist, but local folklore says he is a giant who is the cause of earthquakes. In Greek mythology, there is also Poseidon, who is the god of the sea and earthquakes. Many cultures also attribute natural disasters to legendary figures. This is an example of intertextuality. Another important technique is Hypertext. It is a nonlinear way of showing information. This can be seen in textbooks online, the reader is given more flexibility and personalization in learning and accessing related multimedia content. Ex. You are doing research about the Philippine eagle. A quick Google search would lead you to a Wikipedia article on it. Information on it would include a picture and a crief, written description. While reading about the Philippine eagle, you will also encounter links to its conservation status. This may lead you to more information about conservation efforts. However, if you were interested in the appearance of the Philippine eagle because you wanted to sketch it for your art class, the same page would provide its physical description and even give you links to pictures and videos of the Philippine eagle. Thus, depending on your purpose and interests, the article on the Philippine eagle could lead you to a variety of different, detailed paths. Critical Reading as Reasoning Identifying Assertions Critical reading involves evaluating claims made by the writer. Assertions are statements that claim something is true or false. Read the following examples: ​ The sampaguita's roots are used for medicinal purposes, such as an anesthetic and a sedative. (FACT because it can be directly verified by experience or reliable research reports) ​ The sampaguita belongs to the genus Jasminum of the family Oleaceae. (CONVENTION because it is based on a classification system made up by scientists and is acceptable to the scientific community.)  ​ The popularity of the sampaguita flowers is most evident in place of worship. (OPINION because it is based on an observation that needs to be proven by studies and repeated observation; there are too many factors involved that makes explicit judgment difficult.) ​ Sampaguitas are the most beautiful and most fragrant of all flowers. (PREFERENCE because it says a lot about the type of flowers that the writer likes, instead of objectively comparing the qualities of sampaguita to that of other flowers.) There are four common types of assertion: 1.​ FACT - A statement that can be proven objectively through direct experience or research. 2.​ CONVENTION - A statement that sounds factual because they are socially accepted ways of doing things, they cannot be verified objectively by measurements. 3.​ OPINION - A statement that is based on facts but is hard to objectively verify. 4.​ PREFERENCE - Are based on personal choice that can’t be objectively proven. Formulating Counterclaims ​ To be an effective critical thinker, it is important to analyze arguments, including counterclaims, which is the contrasting perspective that challenges the main argument. Being able to recognize and formulate counterclaims shows that you have a deep understanding of the topic. Furthermore, understanding counterclaims helps to clarify your own position.​ The following questions will help formulate a counterclaim: ​ What are the major points on which you and the author can disagree? ​ What is their strongest argument? ​ What did they say to defend their position? ​ What are the merits of their view? ​ What are the weaknesses or shortcomings in their argument? ​ Are there any hidden assumptions? ​ Which lines from the text best support the counterclaim you have formulated? Determining Textual Evidence ​ To evaluate an author's argument effectively, identify the evidence in the text, as it validates the author's claims and supports counterclaims. Evidence can include the following: ​ Facts and statistics: Validated data supporting claims ​ Opinions from experts: Insights from authorities in a field. ​ Personal anecdotes: Relevant stories that add depth. The following are some questions to help you determine evidence from the text: ​ What questions can you ask about the claims? ​ Which details in the text answer your questions? ​ What are the most important details in the paragraph? ​ What is each one's relationship to the claim? ​ How does the given detail reinforce the claim? ​ What details do you find interesting? Why? ​ What are some claims that do not seem to have support? ​ What kinds of support could they be provided with? ​ What are some details that you find questionable? Why do you think so? ​ Are some details outdated, inaccurate, exaggerated, or taken out of context? ​ Are the sources reliable? The following are the characteristics of good evidence: ✓ Unified ✓ Relevant to the central point ✓Specific and concrete ✓ Accurate, and, ✓ Representative or typical The Four Types of Evidence 1.​ Statistical Evidence - This is the strongest type of evidence that can be used in formal writing. It is based on reliable research, polls, data and percentages. 2.​ Testimonial Evidence - Statements (either spoken or written) collected from experts and authorities in a given field. 3.​ Anecdotal Evidence - Used when storytelling is involved as evidence. This can be highly effective in determining credibility or proof but anecdotal evidence is not extremely strong. 4.​ Analogical Evidence - This is regarded as the weakest type of evidence used in formal arguments. It is often used to increase credibility of the proof by comparing situations.