What we read
The study skills page that follows Unit 3 of Rogers and Wilkins (2013, p. 36) gets us to think about and gives some suggestions on strategies to improve reading comprehension, an essential part of academic work.
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My response
Following her five questions to get us reflecting on our current reading habits, Cottrell suggests eight strategies that can help to improve our reading comprehension.
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My question
Read Cottrell's eight suggestions. Then choose two that seem most useful to you. Which two would you like to try in future? Write a comment that explains what you do now in your reading and what you would like to work on changing in future. Will you do exactly what Cottrell suggests, or modify it a bit to better fit your reading situation?
Cottrell's eight strategies
- Start with something general
- Monitor your comprehension
- Guide your reading
- Re-read difficult passages
- Highlight key words and phrases
- Colour-code information
- Ask "depth questions"
- Relaxed reading
Cottrell's questions
- How do I approach reading tasks now?
- How could I spend my time reading more effectively?
The instruction I gave with my questions above is a slightly more specific version of Cottrell's general questions.
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Reference
- Cottrell, S., (2013). In L. Rogers & J. Wilkin, Skillful Reading & Writing: Student's Book 2. London: Macmillan Education
As usual, I like most of Cottrell's suggestions, The only one I don't like much is the suggestion to colour code. I occasionally do that, but it seems to me that it wastes time changing colours, so I usually just use one colour, although sometimes when i'm reading on my Kindle apps I do use different colours.
ReplyDeleteThe three suggestions that I really like are:
- read something general first
- re-read difficult passages, and
- ask "depth questions"
When I'm reading, I sometimes come across difficult but important passages, and I sometimes have to re-read them a couple of times to be sure I've understood exactly what the writer is saying. I sometimes combine this with Cottrell's other suggestion to tell myself the ideas in my own words. That's a good way to check my comprehension.
I also like the idea to read something general first to give you a basic introduction to the topic. For example, if you wanted to learn about ancient Roman history, it might not be most useful to read a detailed account of how the conflict between senators and common people was reflected in the laws: that sort of detail can come later if you need it.
Finally, when I'm reading I find it useful to ask questions about the purpose and strategy of the piece of writing. Why was it written? What is the author trying to achieve? How does he set out to achieve those goals?
Monitor your comprehension and re-read difficult passages are the most section I wanna try and practise
ReplyDeletethem.
Monitor my understanding make me clear about what I read, and it definitely leads you to the way the author wanted to state. In contrast, If you misunderstand, it will find uncorrect realisation also.
Also, re-read difficult passages is very important. Due to academic essay, it is full of tough words that you cannot understand, reading it twice can help you to look overall and complete your understand better.
I think that start with something general and
ReplyDeletemonitor your comprehension are the most useful ways to improving reading comprehension skill. I always use this method when I read difficult article or essay. In addition, ask "depth questions" and colour-code information are the two ways T want to try in the future because these methods will help you improving advance reading comprehension skill better.
I think I will choose "re-read difficult passages". When you read an academic writing or some work about uninterested topic, they usually have a difficult or not understandable text and the way to understand them should be re-read the text to check what the writing are about until you get it.
ReplyDeleteThe second one will be "color-code information". I think it's very useful to use color to categorize or highlight the main idea of the writing. It very helpful when you read the second time. It will strike the eyes when you re-read it.
I think to re-read difficult passages is important because it help you to understand the idea easier. Some words that you don't know, you can see the word around them to get them.
ReplyDeleteAnd I also think that to highlight key words and phrases is important too. When you read and need to catch the idea. You can get by read and highlight what important to you.
I think "start with something general" and "highlight key words and phrases" is useful for me, because general article make us understand sense of English language, foreign language grammar is different from English, we need familiar with the writing order. If the article is too long, sometimes, I can't remember some important points, but highlight the key words is useful to understand and remember the article's meaning.
ReplyDeleteMy approach for reading tasks is that in each paragraph I will try to get its main idea by looking at the first few sentences or the last sentence of the paragraph. This help me read articles a lot faster, especially when taking exams. In my view, the most difficult part in reading is when there are too many unknown vocabularies in the article in which I can't guess any clue about the main idea, and I have to use dictionary in order to read it.
ReplyDeleteI think highlight key words and phrases and relaxed reading are the most useful to me because highlight key words is giving me an main idea of reading and I can see an important part of reading. Relaxed reading is a good way to read too because if I feel stress and read I won't understand anything from the reading, so when we read we should be relax.
ReplyDeleteI think most useful strategies for me should be something that relate with specific word or sentence in the article. First, I choose to re-reading difficult passages because the passages that hard to read always be wrote in academic words. Thus, it's important to understand their meaning. Second, highlight keywords and phrases because that will help you to concentrate with the main ideas.
ReplyDelete