EXTENSIVE READING

by: Drs. H. Moh. Ali Said, M.Pd

Q.S. Al-Alaq: 1-5

Meaning
1. Read! In the name of Your Lord who has created (all that exists)
2. He has created man from a clot (a piece of thick coagulated blood)
3. Read! And your Lord is the Most Generous
4. Who has taught by the pen
5. He has taught man that which he knew not

· Reading textual and contextual
· Textual means everything we read,
· Contextual means everything available in universe (related to the creatures)

Weaknesses
a. Knowledge
b. Skill
c. Attitude

English teachers should
1. guiding the materials
2. classroom management
3. understanding the strategy

1. What is Reading?

Reading is a fluent process of readers combining information from a text and their own background knowledge to build meaning. The goal of reading is comprehension. Strategic Reading is defined as the ability of the reader to use a wide variety of reading strategies to accomplish a purpose for reading. Good readers know what to do when they encounter difficulties. Fluent Reading is defined as the ability to read at an appropriate rate with adequate comprehension.


Strategies Fluency

Reading


The Reader The Text

2. Background to the teaching Reading
Reading is an essential skill for learners of English as a second language. For most of these learners it is the most important skill to master in order to ensure success not only in learning English, but also in learning in any content class where Reading in English is required.

Silent Reading : Reading is primarily a silent activity. The majority of reading that we do will be done silently. Different strategies are used when reading orally than when reading silently. Since comprehension is the goal of reading, your primary focus in the classroom should be on getting meaning from print. Make silent reading the goal in your classroom instead of using oral reading.

Reading Process: The models of reading process can be divided into three categories:
a. Bottom-Up Model typically consist of lower-level reading process. Students start with the fundamental basics of letter and sound recognition, which in turn allows for morpheme recognition followed by word recognition, building up to the identification of grammatical structures, sentences, and longer text


b. Top-Down Model begin with the idea that comprehension resides in the reader. The reader uses background knowledge, makes predictions, and searches the text to confirm or reject the predictions that are made. A passage can thus be understood even if all of the individual words are not understood. Within a top-down approach to reading the teacher should focus on meaning generating activities rather than on mastery of word recognition.

c. Interactive Model are accepted as the most comprehensive description of the reading process. This third type combines elements of both bottom-up and top-down models assuming “that a pattern is synthesized based on information provided simultaneously from several knowledge sources” (Stanovich, 1980, p.35)

3. Principles for Teaching Reading

• Exploit the reader’s background knowledge
• Build a strong vocabulary base
• Teach for Comprehension
• Work on increasing reading Rate
• Teach reading strategies
• Encourage readers to transform strategies into skills
• Build assessment and evaluation into your teaching
• Strive for continuous improvement as a reading teacher

4. Classroom Techniques and Tasks

• Activate prior knowledge
• Cultivate vocabulary
• Teach for comprehension
• Increase reading rate
• Verify reading strategies
• Evaluate progress

When we read a story, magazine, or newspaper we employ our previous knowledge as we approach the process of comprehension, and deploy a range of receptive skills

Purpose : to get benefit from their reading’ The more students read, the more language they acquire.
How : Teacher encourages students to choose what they read and to do so for pleasure and general language improvement

Reason for Reading

• Instrumental

To a chieve some clear aim
Eg. We read a road sign so that we know where to go

• Pleasurable

For pleasure
Eg. Reading magazine, newspaper, illustrated cartoon
etc

· Analyzing Reading
Top down = the readers get a general view of the reading passage by absorbing the overal picture
Bottom up = the readers focus on individual words and phrases and achieves understanding by stringing these detailed elements together to build up a whole
· Different Skills

• Identifying the topic

Good readers are able to pick up the topic of a written or spoken text very quickly with the help of their own schemata they get idea quickly of what is being talked about. This ability allows them to process the text more effectively as it progress

• Predicting and guessing

Readers and listeners sometimes guess in order to understand what is being written or talked about. Sometimess they predict what is coming. Sometimes they make assumptions or guess the content from their guide

• Reading and listening for general understanding

Good readers are able to take in a stream of discourse and understand the gist of it. Skimming: we run our eyes over a text to get a quick idea

• Reading for specific information

We want a specific information by scanning

• Reading for detailed information

We read the text in order to understand everything we are reading in detail
Eg. Garuda Indoneisan Air/ GIA AA671 will fly to Medan in 15 minutes

• Interpreting text

Readers are able to see beyond the literal meaning of words in a passage, using variety of clues to understand what the writer of speaker is implying or suggesting
Eg. You’re in non- smoking zone

Extensive Reading: Why? and How?
The Role of Extensive Reading in Language Learning

1. It can provide 'comprehensible input'
2. It can enhance learners' general language competence
3. It increases the students' exposure to the language
4. It can increase knowledge of vocabulary
5. It can lead to improvement in writing
6. It can motivate learners to read
7. It can consolidate previously learned language
8. It helps to build confidence with extended texts
9. It encourages the exploitation of textual redundancy
10. It facilitates the development of prediction skills

To resolve such problems we need to think about how we choose topics, and how we approach different reading genres:

• Choose the right topics

Choose topics which our students will be interested in

• Create interest

We can get the students engaged by talking about topics, by showing a picture for prediction, by asking them to guess what they are going to see or have them look at the headlines or captions before they read the whole thing

• Activate schemata

Give the SS predictive tasks and interesting activities

• Vary topics and genres

Make sure we expose them a variety of a different text types

The Characteristics of an Extensive Reading Approach
from Day & Bamford (1998, p. 7-8)

1. Students read as much as possible, perhaps in and definitely out of the classroom.
2. A variety of materials on a wide range of topics is available so as to encourage reading for different reasons and in different ways.
   
3. Students select what they want to read and have the freedom to stop reading material that fails to interest them.
   
4. The purposes of reading are usually related to pleasure, information and general understanding. The purposes are determined by the nature of the material and the interests of the student.
   
5. Reading is its own reward. There are few or no follow-up exercises after reading.
   
6. Reading materials are well within the linguistic competence of the students in terms of vocabulary and grammar. Dictionaries are rarely used while reading because the constant stopping to look up words makes fluent reading difficult.
   
7. Reading is individual and silent, at the student's own pace, and, outside class, done when and where the student chooses.
   
8. Reading speed is usually faster rather than slower as students read books and other material they find easily understandable.
   
9. Teachers orient students to the goals of the program, explain the methodology, keep track of what each student reads, and guide students in getting the most out of the program.
   
10. The teacher is a role model of a reader for the students -- an active member of the classroom reading community, demonstrating what it means to be a reader and the rewards of being a reader.