Introduction to Reading for Understanding
Overview
Reading is an activity that is essential for learning in any language. It provides a door to understanding. Reading can show us how much we already understand and what more we need to know.
What Kind of a Reader Are You?
For many learners, reading is a boring task that involves just pronouncing words and "getting through it" to finish an assignment. Many students feel that they have to look up every word they don't know, so they can understand the reading passage. Doing this exhausts them and makes them hate reading.
Other learners read outside the class assignments to learn more vocabulary and think about new ideas. They just can't get enough reading! Whatever your relationship is to reading, here is another way to try.
What's Ahead?
In this module, you will start to relate to a reading passage in a more active style by writing questions, comments and other reactions on a separate page as you read. You may need to go back and re-read parts of the passage to improve your understanding; that is okay. The idea is to interact with what you're reading and use more of your own life experiences to understand the text.
Objectives
By the end of this module, you will be able to...
- Connect your own life experiences to ideas in a reading passage
- Write questions, comments, and connections as you read a text
- Predict the main idea in a reading passage by looking at the title, subheadings and graphics
Content
Look at "The Power of Creativity" on pages 25-26 in your Pathways textbook. Read the title; look at the pictures, read the captions (small print), and skim (quickly read) the first paragraph. What do you think this reading passage will be about? Do not worry about the details. What is the main idea?