Silent Reading

(Full Marks: 5) Reading has been defined as making sense of the printed word. We read in order to get something from the text, whether it be a dictionary or a novel. There must be a reason for reading. We want our students to read, discuss and criticise. We want to develop their intellectual capabilities while analysing a text. Traditionally reading has been divided into intensive (or silent) and extensive reading. Both approaches are essential and they share many of the same strategies. Silent reading or intensive reading refers to reading for accuracy. It involves approaching the text (passage), preferably short, under the guidance of a teacher or with a specified task which forces the learners to pay close attention to the materials to be read. Intensive reading aims at giving the reader a deep and detailed understanding (comprehension) of the text and how its meaning is transmitted or carried. Intensive reading is used to develop specific reading skills. In intensive reading the reader pays attention to the contents of the text and also to how it is written. We expect readers in middle and upper primary classes to learn to analyse written material in three ways. 1. Read and learn literal or stated information that is written, e.g. who, what, where, and when .. facts and the sequence of events. When the words are taken at their face value, we say that they are interpreted literally. The kind of comprehension is often referred to as reading the lines. 2. Read and recognise the authors silence and interpret the writer's thoughts for the purpose of drawing inferences or getting implied meaning. This kind of comprehension often referred to as reading between the line. 3. Read and analyse what is written to try to gain new insights by applying what is read to other situations: o Drawing generalisations that are not stated explicitly (directly) by the writer. o Deriving implications or making speculations (guesses) about facts that are not stated by the writer. This kind of comprehension is referred to as reading beyond the lines. This kind of reading can help children develop the ability to generalise from the given text and apply ideas to personal and social situations outside the text. Intensive reading therefore is intended to train students in higher level thinking skills as they develop reading strategies. Here is how you can present an intensive reading lesson. STEP I Introduce the text to the pupils using any of the strategies you have learned before. You can:

Relate the topic to pupils experience. Show a related object or picture to stimulate discussion on the topic. Present new vocabulary from the text. Ask and answer general questions about the topic. Refer to previously taught lessons in other subjects that may relate to the topic.

STEP II STEP III STEP IV STEP V STEP VI

Conduct a related field trip or invite a guest speaker, and so on. Give guide questions to learners for purposeful reading, then have them turn to the reading passage.

Learners read as they note down answers to the questions. Have learners meet in pairs or small groups to discuss their answers. Then have whole class reports on answers from the groups. Clarify general points not understood by learners. Give more detailed work and practice e.g. in writing, role playing activities, etc

Reading is an integral part of language learning, linking into speaking, listening and writing. It is essential that students enjoy the lessons so they are motivated to read, thereby improving all aspects of their language skills. It is easier to deal with short texts that can be

covered in one lesson. However, in upper primary, pupils need to read longer texts, include full-length books.

Sub-Skills of Listening
(Full Marks: 5) Listening is described as an activity of paying attention to and trying to get meaning from something we hear. To listen successfully to spoken language, we need to be able to work out what meaning the speaker / speakers are trying to convey. When speakers use words, they are using particular words in particular ways on particular occasions, and not simply to understand the words themselves. In general, listening may have the following sub-skills: 1. Deducing meaning and use of unfamiliar lexical items through understanding word formation and contextual clues in utterances and spoken text 2. Recognising and understanding phonological features of speech [especially those forms associated with supra-segmental features]

3. Understanding relationships within the sentence: the syntactic and morphological forms characteristic of spoken language 4. Understanding relationships between parts of text and utterances through cohesive devices [especially grammatical cohesive devices such as reference] 5. Understanding relationships between parts of text by recognising discourse markers [especially for transition and conclusion of ideas, for anticipation of objections or contrary views and for turn-taking] 6. Understanding the communicative function and value of utterances with and without explicit markers [e.g. definition and exemplification] 7. Understanding conceptual meaning in spoken text and utterances [e.g. comparison, degree, cause & effect, result, and audience & purpose] 8. Understanding attitudinal meaning in spoken text and utterances [especially ability to recognise the speaker's attitude towards the listener and the topic by intonation] 9. Identifying the main points or important information in discourse [especially through vocal underlining and verbal cues] 10. Distinguishing main ideas from supporting detail [the whole & its parts, fact & opinion, statement & example, and proposition & argument] 11. Understanding explicitly stated ideas and information 12. Understanding ideas and information in spoken text and utterances which are not explicitly stated [e.g. through making inferences] 13. Interpreting spoken text by going outside information in the text to information not contained in the text [e.g. through picking up exophoric reference] 14. Transferring and transforming information in speech to diagrammatic display [e.g. through completing a diagram, table or chart] 15. Skimming: listening to obtain the gist of spoken text 16. Scanning: listening for specific details in spoken text

17. Note-taking from spoken text

Extracting

salient points to summarise specific idea or topic in text Selectively extracting relevant key points from text [especially involving coordination of related information and tabulation of information for comparison and contrast] Reducing text through rejection of redundant or irrelevant items or information [e.g. determiners, repetition, compression of examples, use of abbreviations, and use of symbols denoting relationships between states or processes] However, from the attitudinal activity, Sub-skills of Listening may be analysed as below: Silence Active Interest Attention Concentration Note making Repetition Recall Recite Think Understanding any speech of foreign origin is a complex activity involving a large number of different skills and abilities. There are two teaching strategies to develop the listening skill: (a) listening for sound perception and (b) listening for comprehension. Listening for sound perception: The objective of these exercises is to train the learner to perceive aurally the different sound combinations correctly and the stress and intonation patterns of the target language. Listening for sound perception should be dealt with at two levels: (a) at the Global (or, World) Level and (b) at the Sentence Level. Listening at the Global Level deals with various phases like (i) Repetition, (ii) Categorisation, (iii) Identifying similar listening (pair) words, (iv) Frequency of hearing those words, (v) Identifying the Right

Word and (vi) Identifying Syllables. Sentence level deals with (i) Oral Repetition, (ii) Identifying Word Division, (iii) Identifying Stress and (iv) Identifying Intonation. Listening for Comprehension: There are three principal factors of a listening activity: (a) the Input, (b) the Exercises and (iii) the teaching stages. In case of Input, the features of natural speech which may be introduced into a listening text are: (i) Shortness of speaking discourse, (ii) Visibility of the speaker, (iii) Environmental Clues like using maps to explain a direction and (iv) Informal Speech Live or Recorded. In the case of Listening Exercises, Penny Ur (1984) categorised them into three sections: (i) Listening and making no response, (ii) Listening and making short responses like ticking-off, numbering, True-False exercise, fill-in the blanks, tracing a map, chart-filling etc. and (iii) Listening and making longer responses like predicting, summarising, answering open-ended questions, problemsolving etc. Teaching stages are divided into three stages: (i) Pre-Listening (Purposes: Arousing a general interest in the subject and increasing motivation, Introducing the theme, Presenting the key vocabulary to make students understand the listening text, Encouraging to predict the content of the text), (ii) While-Listening (Purposes: Understanding the main idea, Grasping the gist of the text, Understanding the supporting details and specific information, Deducing word meaning, Making comparisons) and (iii) Post-Listening (Purposes: Consolidation, Personal reflection, Evaluation). ______________________________________________