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What Are Some Useful Reading Strategies

Three Readings with Notes and Questions

There are as many different reading strategies as there are opinions regarding which ones are most effective. The students that would benefit the most from re-reading are often the ones that will not re-read for clarification or for any other reason. They need to be shown the value of this reading strategy. For his book The Literature Workshop: Teaching Texts and Their Readers, Sheridan D. Blau titled his second chapter “From Telling to Teaching: The Literature Workshop in Action.” His main focus for this section was on teaching children to think about their reading instead of teaching what they should think about it. His intention for this chapter is to teach teachers how to help their own students become autonomous. He briefly explains the formatting of the chapter which includes the creation of an imagined lesson. The lesson is a culmination of several actual lessons he has experienced in his classroom. The lesson includes five specific steps. Briefly, the steps included:

Three Readings with Notes and Questions

• Read and re-read
• Rate understanding of reading
• Make notes
• Read a third time and repeat the two previous items

Group Work

• Discuss findings with a group of three to four
• Rate understanding again after discussion

Completing the Experiment and Noticing What Happened

• Discussion of the changes within the students understanding

Collecting Data from the experiment – what changed? What remained the same?

• Drawing conclusions from the experiment – why are there differences in the readings?

Mariolina Salvatori writes “[I]n the act of its reading the work cannot, nor should, be reduced to one meaning, to one perspective; the reader should not deny the possibility of subsequent revisions of meanings, subsequent modifications of perspectives” (“Reading and Writing Text: Correlations between Reading and Writing Patterns” 660). She suggests in her article that they can and must be taught together. The above reading strategy shows the students that a text can have multiple meanings.

References:

Double-Entry Journals

With regards to helping students to perform, Sheridan D. Blau states that “instruction directed toward fostering performative literacy must focus on the process of reading and rereading, placing an equal or greater emphasis on what student readers learn about their own capacity as reader […]” (The Literature Workshop 215). He adds that the instructor should use assignments that make visible the reader’s own process. To this end, he recommends a double-entry journal. (also, see Beyond Re-Reading? link)

Divide a page in half

• One side is for reading notes
• One side is for discussion notes

Variations:

• One side is quotes and page numbers
• One side is reflections on the reading
• Personal or critique

*Blau recommends that students write a new journal page for each rereading of the same text for self-reflection

Mariolina Salvatori writes “[I]n the act of its reading the work cannot, nor should, be reduced to one meaning, to one perspective; the reader should not deny the possibility of subsequent revisions of meanings, subsequent modifications of perspectives” (“Reading and Writing Text: Correlations between Reading and Writing Patterns” 660). She suggests in her article that they can and must be taught together. The above reading strategy shows the students that a text can have multiple meanings by making their own conclusions upon their first read and hearing the discussions and noting the meanings that others ascribed when they read the same text.

References:

SQ3R

The SQ3R is a tried and true reading strategy that works particularly well when used to study textbooks. Each step in the strategy should be modeled and the lesson should include a guided practice with feedback. The steps for this strategy (from 50 Literacy Strategies by Gail E. Tompkins) are as follows:

Survey – (activate prior knowledge) Preview the reading by skimming through quickly. They should look at headings and make note of the main ideas. They should also, quickly read the introduction and summary.
Question – (purpose for reading) Turn the section headings into questions before reading. Read – Read to find the answers to their questions.
Recite – Students recite from memory the answers to the questions immediately following the reading of each section.
Review – After completion of the reading assignment, the students go back over what they just read. Ask and answer the questions again and take notes (103).

Try this with the text your college has assigned for the basic writing class as a required text. Now, you have a use for the text as a way of teaching a valuable reading strategy that will aid your students in writing, studying and learning in all of their classes and you have made a step toward achieving a common educational outcome.

Teaching the reading strategies seems to be a key component for less proficient readers. According to a study at the Seoul National University, “less able readers benefited more from the strategy training […]” (50). The study found that the less able readers may have even been aware of some of the strategies prior to the training but did not employ them until properly taught to use them.

References:

Research (Links to the full-text study articles Gender, Learning, and EFL ) shows reading is an essential element of an effective writing program, although, a sometimes neglected and undervalued part.

Studies Show:

A study of reading strategies was conducted by Seoul National University in 1996. The findings of the study were reported in an article by Mi-jeong Song for the Asian Journal of English Language Teaching (Link to study information EFL). The basic idea of the study was to look at whether or not reading strategies, when taught to EFL students, would impact their reading proficiency or not. The group was comprised of all EFL students but they were pre-tested and categorized into three groups according to reading comprehension – low, intermediate and high. The study showed that the students reading proficiency and comprehension were improved after learning the reading strategies. The study showed a much greater increase in the students that started with the least amount of proficiency although, even the highest level readers showed some improvement, as well. The strategies taught to the EFL study subjects were summarizing, questioning, predicting and clarifying. The strategies were all taught in the subjects first language, Korean. In the article, Song writes “the results of the study suggest that foreign language reading pedagogy, especially for adult students in academic settings, would benefit from the explicit and direct strategy training” (54).

Another study Learning) conducted on 485 undergraduate students reported in The Journal of Instructional Psychology examined the question of learning problems and how this related to learning strategies. They identified fourteen factors related to needs including poor reading, writing and information processing. They state that “[t]he ultimate goal of all learning strategies is to enhance learning outcomes and performance” (193). They found that many students did not develop the strategies on their own. They paraphrase Weinstein when they stated that students will learn them and use them if they are explicitly taught including modeling, practice and feedback. Self-assessment is an important skill when monitoring comprehension. There is a correlation between student engagement, including the use of learning strategies, in retention and completion of college.

The final study (Gender) to consider in this literature review was an interesting one on gender differences. The study examined if men and women had any significant differences regarding their uses of reading strategies. The conclusion of the study found that there are not any major difference between men and women when it comes to reading strategies. They were very similar in their usage of the strategies. The article also contains a top (and bottom) five list of strategies used by men and women. The top five included:

• Paying close attention while reading
• Re-reading for better understanding
• Trying to stay focused on reading
• Reading slowly and carefully
• Adjusting reading rate (Table 2)

Literature Review - Questions about Reading Strategies

Works Cited:

Key words for searching:

Reading Strategies Writing Struggling writers Outcomes Benchmarks College writing College basic writing Reading and writing SQ3R Re-reading Double entry journal Teaching reading Teaching writing Literacy strategies Mariolina Salvatori David Bartholomae Sheridan Blau Linda Adler-Kassner First Year writing Freshman writing Better writing Reading studies Reading study Gender Study Reading Research Gender research EFL ESL LD English as a foreign language English as a second language Writing improvement Poetry Lesson plans Learning disabilities

Questions Surrounding Reading Strategies: