critiques on book

8/10/2019 Critiques on book

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UNIVERSITI PUTRA MALAYSIA

LHE3215

CONTENT-BASED SECOND LANGUAGE

INSTRUCTION

THE GOLDILLOCKS STRATEGY OF CHOOSING

READING MATERIALS

NAME : Mohd Ikram Bin Mohd Fakhri (160767)

Amir Hamzah Ramli (160753)

Teoh Yong Cun (160749)

GROUP : 21

FOR ATTENTION : Dr. Nooreen Noordin


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INTRODUCTION

In order for readers or teachers to choose the appropriate materials which to be

used for reading purposes, Goldillocks Strategy would be a suitable way to do it.

GoldillocksStrategy is a method for choosing books for independent reading, which

developed by Ohlhausen and Jepsen in 1992. The models of this strategy would be;

too soft, just right and too hard reading materials.


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TOO SOFT

The graphic novel Black Beauty written by Anna Sewell was chosen as one of

our reading materials. We came to a conclusion that this story is too soft for tertiary

level students as suggested by the Goldilocks plans for struggling readers. Even though

this book has a very interesting topic that would capture most readers, the reading level

is way too low for tertiary students. We read this book several times and we were able

to comprehend the story easily. In addition, this is a graphic novel where readers have

visual assistance as they read through the story. Readers might get bored after a few

more times reading the same story. As tertiary students, we are not like young children

and we seek for more information and adventures when choosing a reading material.

We as readers were able to predict the content of the story by looking at the

graphic drawn in the novel. The words selection in this graphic novel is quite easy for

tertiary students as we were able to understand and retell the story without much effort.

We feel very confident in sharing our reading experiences about this graphic novel.

Even though we are very comfortable in reading this book, we felt that we could not

improve much skills though this reading experience because it is just repetitions of

knowledge that we have learned over and over again. Tertiary students need a wider

variety of texts with high level vocabularies to help them in academic writings and

readings.

We were able to understand and pronounce almost every word precisely and

construct new sentences out of it. This showed that the book is too easy for tertiary


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students like us. Readers need to choose a book that has a level that is just right to help

them improve their language proficiency. A book that is too easy and not up to the

readers level will not lead to any improvement in their academic development. Even

though at many times, readers will think it is good thing to reread a book which is easy

and familiar because they will not do any mistakes, teachers should take the

responsibility to tell readers that they need to have mistakes in order to learn better.

We were able to read this graphic novel smoothly and fluently without much

practice. Most of the inferential questions asked by our group members were easily

answered correctly. Hence, there were not much discussion took place in sharing the

content of the story. There were not much complication and questions raised after

reading the story a few times. This has proven that this graphic novel is categorised as

too soft for tertiary level students. A much more challenging reading materials could

have make much more impact on us.


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JUST RIGHT

As for the material for the just right level discussed in the Goldilocks Strategy,

we have selected an article entitled Driving Hazard (p. 46-48) from Just English

magazine. As discussed in the Goldilocks Strategy, this article meets the first criteria

outlined in the strategy whereby the content is familiar to the students of tertiary level.

This is because almost all students possess a driving license, had an experience or at

least know how to drive. We also find that the content of the article are interesting,

beneficial and appropriate for tertiary level students.

Despite of having to reread some part of the article, we are able to retell what the

article is all about to other people when we finish reading it. This indicates that this

article is somehow challenging but manageable for students of tertiary level. From our

discussion regarding the article, we discover that the usage of simple, compound as

well as complex sentences have contributed in making this article a little bit challenging.

This is also added by the usage of a few difficult words such as cocoon, fatality, and

lethal. Other than that, the author uses standard and commonly used words thus

makes the article easy to read and appropriate for tertiary level use.

In addition to that, we also think that this article is suitable for tertiary level

students because they will only requireminimum help on the vocabulary and

comprehension. Thus we agree that this reading material has a smooth flow and not

choppy. It is a good thing because this will encourage the students to read more when

they discover that reading is fun, beneficial and easy. We also think that this kind of


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material will leads to academic improvements and prevent frustrations caused by a too

soft or too hard reading materials because students can figure out most of the words

and understand what is going on in the text.

Another reason why we think that this is a just right material for the tertiary level

students is because of the moral values that are inculcated. Some of the moral values in

this article are not to eat and uses mobile phone while driving because it will reduce

drivers alertness and will lead to accident. Moral values are just as important aspect as

content familiarity, smoothness when reading and easy to understand in choosing a

perfect reading material. This is because we do not want students to read materials that

have no moral values in it.


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TOO HARD

The Story of Science from Antiquity to the Present, by R.R. Subramaniam,

Shobhit Mahajan, Archana Madhukar, Suman Sahay and G.S. Roonwal, was chosen as

our too hard reading materials, even for the tertiary level students. We would say

although this book is interesting for some from other aspects, but this book is too hard

for the tertiary level students to comprehend. We have to read this book over and over

again in order to gain the information from this book due to some of the characteristics

found, as according to the Goldillocks Strategy.

First of all, I would say the book has long content and most of the words are hard

to be decoded. Though the book is only 216 pages long, but the content is being written

in two column style in each page. So that means the book is actually longer than how it

is written, maybe double or triple in pages. In addition for that, the words used are quite

hard to be understood. This is because the book is filled with facts and histories of

Sciences. For those who are not majoring in Science or Science-based course would

find this book hardly to be understood. For example, the words of quantum mechanics

and quantum electrodynamics from page 49.

Next, the print used in the book is small and the pictures provided in the book do

not provide enough assistance towards the information provided. As stated previously,

as the book is being written in the column of two, so the size of the print becomes

smaller and it seems crowded with words in one page. So, the size of the words might

be lesser than standard size of 11 or 12. So it might be in 8 or 9 of size. This will make


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the readers to become more discourage to read the book. Besides, in almost of each

page, there will be at least one picture. These pictures will add on more crowdedness of

the books page even more. These pictures are also not much of help in giving

assistance or clear ideas of what or how certain theories would be.

Last but not least, this The Story of Science from Antiquity to the Present book

is not something can be read by readers who are not familiar with this topic. This is

because, for those who do not really have the knowledge or do not have gone depth

within the Science subject matter before, they would not be able to understand and then

correlate with their schemata or prior knowledge. Moreover, without any help from

someone from the field will make the readers hard to obtain the knowledge of the book.

This will consume more time to the readers, even for the tertiary level students, to read

the whole book to get the concepts or main ideas of the book.

In conclusion, the book is a too hard reading material as according to

Goldillocks Strategy of choosing the best reading materials as it is long and hard to

comprehendible contents, has crowded contents and requires prior knowledge and

assistances in order for the readers to be able to understand. So readers might need to

be spend more time to read the book for a few times and need to find help from those

who are familiar with the subject for them to grab what the book is all about.


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REFERENCE LISTS

Hann, E. (2013). Driving Hazard. In Just English Vol. 9 Issue 6(pp. 46-48). Kuala

Lumpur: Just English Sdn. Bhd.

R.R. Subramaniam, Shobhit Mahajan, Archana Madhukar, Suman Sahay &

G.S. Roonwal, (2010). The Story of Science from Antiquity to the Present.

Potsdam: h.f.ullman publishing.

Sewell, A. (2010). Black BEauty.Johor Bahru: IMS Trading.


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APPENDICES

TOO SOFT


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JUST RIGHT


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TOO HARD

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