How to develop reading skills?Man learns by various sources and means such as by observation, conversation, experience and reading. Right from the stage of Stone Age to space age the man has evolved himself by reading the scripts which he himself has created and passed on the baton to his next generation. No one knows how one reads with in himself because he feels himself and understands with in himself. Everyone has unique way of reading and yet a few styles which are common among all human beings. Let us look at the different dimensions of reading skills.According to the National Reading Panel (NRP), "The ability to read requires proficiency in a number of domains such as phonemic awareness', phonics', fluency', vocabulary' and comprehension or reading comprehension'". It indicates connectivity of many things during reading and also all the concepts mentioned will help for effective reading.According to CHALL www.nationalgeographic.com there are different stages of reading which is popularly known as Chall's stages of Reading Development'. And according to her, "Each stage of reading builds on skills mastered in earlier stages; lack of mastery at any level can halt the progress beyond that level"She divided the reading process into various stages. The first stage being the Zero stage which symbolizes pre-reading that is usually up to the age of 6 years of the child. It is also known as reading readiness. The subsequent stage is the Stage One, where the child is in the age of 6 to 7 years and it is also known as initial reading stage or decoding stage. In the next stage i.e. Stage Two where the age of the child is approximately 8 years during which child confirms himself and it is also called as confirmation stage. Further in the Stage Three the child who is in the age of 9 years, he reads to learn. In the Stage Four, the child turns into teen age and develops multiple shades of opinions and viewpoints and ultimately in the final Stage Five the man constructs his views and opinions independently and forms his own perceptions and judgments on various things.

Techniques of reading: Although there are number of tools and techniques in reading there are three tools by which you can improve reading skills. In brief, they are scanning, skimming and concept mapping techniques. All these can be deployed depending upon the context and also on the purpose of reading. Initially it is better to have cursory look on the contents by scanning, and then switch over to skim the contents by skimming strategy and at last read by applying the techniques of concept mapping. Concept mapping is nothing but drawing a two dimensional picture of a concept either mentally or physically. It is very important technique for noting information and connecting ideas. Since concept maps are pictures they can be easily retained in the memory. To substantiate these three strategies let us recall what Francis Bacon said, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few are to be chewed and digested".

SQRRR is another popular technique which is the acronym for Survey, Question, Read, Recall and Review. According to this, while reading one has to examine and then question himself for the contents that are read. Whatever has been read is to be recalled with in the mind and ultimately the contents are to be reviewed.

The layered method of reading is yet another approach towards reading which is accepted and adopted by the majority of readers. As per this, you have to overview the entire material very fast and form an opinion on it. Subsequently focus little more on the important portions which deserve to be addressed such as introduction, headings and summary. It is a prelude to read the book and hence it is called as preview. It provides proper judgment and direction whether to go ahead with reading or not. After passing through this phase if the book or the material is worth to be read, you can go ahead with reading. It is in fact the semi final. And the final phase is the review. Whatever has been read has to be reviewed for better comprehension and for effective memory retention. Below are the tools and techniques for developing effective reading skills

Tips for effective reading: Find out what you want to know and for that you need to cut through the clutter. At the same time assess what is to be skipped from reading. Question yourself whether you are reading for any specific purpose or for pleasure because at times intention is more important than action. Always lay emphasis on contents and contexts but not on the style or flow or delivery of the material.

It is always important to stress on qualitative not quantitative reading. Cultivate positive attitude towards reading. The more you read and the more love you develop towards reading. Nancy Collin aptly said, "The only way to improve reading skills is to read".

Before you read, find out 2Ws i.e. why you are reading and what you are reading.

Check your biological clock and read so that the degree of absorbability and assimilation of the material is higher. Keep the dictionary beside when you go for reading. If the meaning of a word is not known it will help you to know instantly. In every sentence there are key words to be focused. When the meaning of the key words is known then it becomes easier to understand and memorize the material. If you get boredom, give a break and restart reading so that you can grasp better.

Surround yourself with various kinds of books. Learn to underline the key parts/words/concepts for further references. Develop the habit of paraphrasing the contents. Transfer the material from text book to note book so that the best part of the material is with you. By this, you can separate chaff from the grain. And when you write then the degree of retentivity is higher. Create your own short hand stuff from the material. While reading, new ideas and concepts will flash in the mind and the same may be added on the margin side of book. Failure to do will lead to missing the beautiful ideas. Don't focus on filler words in the sentences. The words like is's and the's can be avoided while reading as these take longer time and not of much significance for understanding the contents.

Try to recall the contents repeatedly which are in your mind and summarize the same and write down either on the margin of the text book or in the note book. If you are able to generate a few examples from the text book in a given context it will help you to enhance retentivity. And also link the contents of the material with real life events, examples and accidents.

By using different colored pencils the importance level of the contents will be realized for further readings. You can keep your style based the degree of significance and the priority levels. Rather you can create your own mythology, style and coding as per the convenience.

If you find it boring to read, keep the book upside down and read you will be able to applyMore pressure to read with this.

There is no fixed formula for reading and the methodology changes when you read text books, newspapers, magazines, journals and more so when you surf online content.

Average readers read about 200 to 250 words per minute. And the speed can be enhanced without affecting the quality with faster eye ball movement and with longer breaks and pauses.

You can make sense of sentence by omitting articles, conjunctions, prepositions etc., By this you can focus more on the contents and also you can save time. Try to convert the written information into pictorial format while reading for effective comprehension of contents. If the meaning of a key word is not clear then try to look at it from different dimensions of the origin of the word to get the closer or accurate meanings. Also if possible look at the prefix or the suffix of the key word for earlier and faster understanding. Daily fix some amount of time exclusively for reading and over a period of time it will become a practice. Train your eyes to take in words in larger gulps. Avoid confusing material and don't get stuck.

Developing reading comprehension.This document focuses on comprehension and considers the language skills and cognitive resources that play a part in developing reading comprehension, including the important roles of inference and deduction (reasoning). It also examines how explicit teaching of certain strategies such as summarising and recognizing degrees of importance can support the reader's comprehension. This document only briefly touches on teaching approaches that help develop comprehension. However, many such examples can be found in the Primary National Strategys set of flyers on reading comprehension and in the guidance on shared and guided reading.

According to www.york,ac.uk Reading comprehension is a highly interactive process that takes place between a reader and a text.Individual readers will bring variable levels of skills and experiences to these interactions. These include language skills, cognitive resources and world knowledge. Any act of reading occurs within a particular sociocultural and emotional context. This consists of elements such as the childs home culture, their previous experiences of reading and being read to, their expectations that reading should carry meaning, their motivation, their view of themselves as a reader, the purpose for reading the text, the cultural value placed on reading and the reading environments the reader experiences. While the purpose of this document is to concentrate on looking closely at the development of comprehension skills, this broader context and its influences should be borne in mind, and we can that reading comprehension depends on oral language skill. Reading comprehension is the product of word recognition skills and listening comprehension skills. Recognizing (reading) the words on the page is vital to reading comprehension; if a child cannot read the words, then they will quite obviously be unable to extract meaning from the written word. Once written words are recognized they can be understood as long as they are in the child's oral vocabulary. Unfamiliar words that are not already in the child's oral vocabulary start to acquire aspects of their meaning from the context within which they have been read; that is, reading gradually becomes a major source of vocabulary development. Once the words are recognized, they can be input to the language comprehension system to understand what a writer conveys. It is well recognised that children vary in the ease with which they can decode. They also vary in their listening comprehension, and consequently in their reading comprehension. An effective reader has good word reading and good listening comprehension.

A fundamental aspect of comprehension is the ability to sequence information and to understand the order of events. The skills that underlie time and sequence are not well understood.

Sequencing is a thought process that comes to some children easily and to others not at all. Children with sequencing problems need support to understand and to follow sequences of events, both in oral language and when reading stories. There are many teaching strategies to support the development of sequencing skills, such as getting children to retell familiar routines or stories using sequencing cards or getting children to create sequential story maps (or flow diagrams for information texts) and story boards. Teachers can encourage children to recognise sequencing in other areas of the curriculum, such as ordering numbers in mathematics or working out a sequence of movement in PE.

The working memory system has limited capacity and therefore it is important to combine the product of comprehension processes as soon as they become available (online). For example, it is not efficient to remember either individual word or sentence meanings once these have been integrated into meaningful chunks. Such detail has to be suppressed (or inhibited) to allow new incoming material to be processed. This process is sometimes referred to as instantiation. In the classic example of instantiation, the reader reads a text which states explicitly that the swimmer was eaten by the frightening looking fish; later the memory representation contains the single element shark.

Another control process that is required to ensure good understanding is comprehension monitoring.

Organisational processes including comprehension monitoring come into play to ensure that the language processed is coherent and makes sense. Children vary in their working memory capacity and their organisational skills; hence, there is a strong relationship between verbal working memory skills and comprehension abilities. Listening and reading comprehension also differ in the demands they place on working memory. In reading there is a permanent record that is not present when listening. A written text offers the child strategies, such as the ability to look back, that are not feasible in an oral situation.

Reading comprehension

Reading comprehension is a much less natural act than listening comprehension. Moreover, language use differs between oral and written language with a tendency for more complex forms to occur in writing.Therefore, while reading comprehension depends on listening comprehension ability, it also requires that additional strategies be brought to bear.In formal terms, successful reading comprehension depends on the construction of a rich and elaborate mental model of the text that is read. This is often referred to as the situation model (Kintsch and Rawson, 2005). The situation model can be thought of as an integrated summary of the contents of the text, which can be scrutinised in response to questioning.The following are the steps in the construction of a situation model: Decoding of words and sentences Extraction of explicit meaning Merging of topics to form a logical structure Organisation of key topics or themes (often requiring the generation of inferences) What is understood as an integration of meaning elicited from text and prior knowledge that is activated as reading progresses?There are many teaching strategies for building and activating prior knowledge before and during reading. It is clear from this perspective that reading comprehension depends on the linguistic competences we have already discussed, boosted by specific strategies for reading comprehension that are developed throughreading experience.

Types of comprehension

Regarding to the site Http:nflrc.hawaii.edu there are six types of comprehension that we propose and discuss are based on our experiences in teaching reading and developing materials. We do not intend this taxonomy to cover all possible interpretations of comprehension; we have found the six types to be useful in helping our students become interactive readers. Our taxonomy has been influenced in particular by the work of Pearson and Johnson (1972) and Nuttall (1996).

Literal comprehension

Literal comprehension refers to an understanding of the straightforward meaning of the text, such as facts, vocabulary, dates, times, and locations. Questions of literal comprehension can be answered directly and explicitly from the text. In our experiences working with teachers, we have found that they often check on literal comprehension first to make sure that their students have understood the basic or surface meaning of the text.An example of a literal comprehension question about this article is: How many types of comprehension do the authors discuss?

Reorganization

The next type of comprehension is reorganization. Reorganization is based on a literal understanding of the text; students must use information from various parts of the text and combine them for additional understanding. For example, we might read at the beginning of a text that a woman named Maria Kim was born in 1945 and then later at the end of the text that she died in 1990. In order to answer this question, How old was Maria Kim when she died?, the student has to put together two pieces of information that are from different parts of the text.Questions that address this type of comprehension are important because they teach students to examine the text in its entirety, helping them move from a sentence-by-sentence consideration of the text to a more global view. In our experience, students generally find reorganization questions somewhat more difficult than straightforward literal comprehension questions.

Inference

Making inferences involves more than a literal understanding. Students may initially have a difficult time answering inference questions because the answers are based on material that is in the text but not explicitly stated. An inference involves students combining their literal understanding of the text with their own knowledge and intuitions. "These types of comprehension and forms of questions are a result of our work in teaching foreign language reading and in developing materials for teaching foreign language reading." Readers are required to use their knowledge of the field, teaching foreign language reading, with what they have gained from reading the article, in particular that sentence, to construct an appropriate answer. That is, readers might understand that newcomers to the profession generally do not develop materials or write articles, so the authors are probably experienced language teachers.

Prediction

The fourth comprehension type, prediction, involves students using both their understanding of the passage and their own knowledge of the topic and related matters in a systematic fashion to determine what might happen next or after a story ends.We use two varieties of prediction, while-reading and post- (after) reading. While-reading prediction questions differ from post-reading prediction questions in that students can immediately learn the accuracy of their predictions by continuing to read the passage. For example, students could read the first two paragraphs of a passage and then be asked a question about what might happen next. They can determine the answer by reading the reminder of the text. In contrast, post-reading prediction questions generally have no right answers in that students cannot continue to read to confirm their predictions. However, predictions must be supported by information from the text. Generally, scholarly articles, such as this one, do not allow for postreading prediction questions. Other types of writing, such as fiction, are fertile ground for such questions. To illustrate, consider a romance in which the woman and man are married as the novel comes to a close. A post-reading prediction question might be: Do you think they will stay married? Why or why not? Depending on a variety of factors including evidence in the text and personal experiences of the reader, either a yes or a no answer could be justified.Having students make predictions before they read the text is a pre-reading activity. We do not see this type of prediction as a type of comprehension. Rather, it is an activity that allows students to realize how much they know about the topic of the text. RFL 17.1 Developing reading comprehension questions (http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl)

Evaluation

The fifth type of comprehension, evaluation, requires the learner to give a global or comprehensive judgment about some aspect of the text. For example, a comprehension question that requires the reader to give an evaluation of this article is: How will the information in this article be useful to you?In order to answer this type of question, students must use both a literal understanding of the text and their knowledge of the text's topic and related issues. Some students, because of cultural factors, may be reluctant to be critical or to disagree with the printed word. In such circumstances, the teacher might want to model possible answers to evaluation questions, making sure to include both positive and negative aspects.

Personal response

The sixth type of comprehension, personal response, requires readers to respond with their feelings for the text and the subject. The answers are not found in the text; they come strictly from the readers. While no personal responses are incorrect, they cannot be unfounded; they must relate to the content of the text and reflect a literal understanding of the material.An example of a comprehension question that requires a personal response is: What do you like or dislike about this article? Like an evaluation question, students have to use both their literal understanding and their own knowledge to respond.Also, like evaluation questions, cultural factors may make some students hesitate to be critical or to disagree with the printed word. Teacher modeling of various responses is helpful in these situations.

Summary of comprehension types

If we believe that reading is an interactive process in which the reader constructs meaning with the text, then we need to help our students learn to do this. This means moving beyond a literal understanding of a text, and allowing our students to use their own knowledge while reading. It may be challenging, however, for beginning and intermediate students to create their own understanding, if they are accustomed to reading word-for-word and focusing on meaning at the word- and sentence-levels.When questions move beyond a literal understanding, students' answers have to be motivated by information in the text. Inference questions can have clearly correct and incorrect responses. In contrast, prediction, evaluation, and personal response answers are correct as long as they depend primarily on students' reactions to what they read. Evaluative and personal response answers not only depend primarily on students' reactions to what they have read, but they need to reflect a global understanding of the text.Finally, research has shown that effective teachers and teachers in more effective schools are more frequently observed asking higher level questions, questions that go beyond It is also important to remind that for us develop our reading skills we need to dominate well grammar, and here I am going to focus a bit about grammatical skills

Grammatical skills

Comprehension at the sentence level (and beyond) depends upon having good grammatical skills.

Grammar is a system of rules that specifies the order in which words can be used in sentences (syntax), and how word order is used to convey meaning. Formally, grammar is made up of morphology as well as syntax.Morphology refers to the basic structure of words and the units of meaning (or morphemes) from which they are formed. For example, the word boy is a single morpheme but the compound word cowboy can be thought of as containing two morphemes, cow and boy. There is therefore an intimate relationship between grammar and meaning and, therefore, comprehension.Although sentences can be both grammatical and semantically unlikely, for example The fish walked to the bus, we will not be concerned with such unusual examples here. More usually, the grammatical structure of a sentence is closely related to its meaning so that different grammatical forms generally take particular semantic roles in the sentence. Nouns usually refer to agents or objects whereas verbs refer to actions or feelings. In a similar vein, prepositions signify location while adjectives and adverbs are used to describe nouns and verbs respectively.Almost all children have a grasp of simple sentence structure but more complex structures may cause difficulty through the primary school years. More complex constructions include: The passive voice: for example The window was broken by the boy. Embedded clauses: for example The girl with the red hair ran away. Relative clauses: for example The boy who delivered the news was scared.

Successful comprehension depends upon being able to break the sentence down into verb, noun, adjective and so on. Complex constructions can therefore pose an obstacle to comprehension. In a similar vein, children need to know about pronouns and their use in order to understand who or what is being referred to.

Knowledge of and engagement with texts In oral language, effective communication depends on pragmatic skills. There are parallels in text comprehension. In order to read for meaning, children must both understand the purpose of the activity and the goals of the author. If not they will become confused. They must have a positive attitude towards reading and be motivated to read. Such motivation is critical to the development of a personal standard of coherence for comprehension. In short, children must not be satisfied with incomprehension. They must be motivated enough to monitor the meaning of what they are reading and to look back with the purpose of self correction.

Comprehension strategies

According to the USA National Reading Panels (2000) report on the teaching of reading, five strategies should be taught to ensure good reading comprehension. These are: prediction, questioning, clarifying, imagining and summarisation. To varying extents, these skills draw upon linguistic and cognitive resources.In concert they can be used to ensure that children are able to build coherent mental models of the texts they read.

Prediction

It could be argued that the ability to predict what a text entails is the first step to successful comprehension. A reader obtains the first clues to what a text is about via its title. Together with the opening sentences this can help the reader decide if the text is appropriate to their purpose (in the case of non-fiction) or to activate a story schema (in the case of fiction). The good reader then actively looks for cues to enrich their mental model of the text as reading proceeds. In turn, the developing representation of the text can be used to set up expectancies at the word, sentence and text levels. This will facilitate reading fluency and deepen understanding.

Questioning and clarifying An actively engaged reader can use self-questioning to monitor their reading comprehension and to help clarify points that they fail to understand. Closely related to this is the use of the look back strategy to find information that is needed to resolve ambiguities. A successful comprehender knows how to generate pertinent questions, and can fall back on their mental model of the text to know where to locate relevant information.

Imagining

Imagining refers to the use of mental imagery to enhance text comprehension by enriching the mental model of a text. Many successful comprehenders translate the story they are reading into a series of images, almost like a film that can be replayed during story recall. Children who do not do this spontaneously can be taught to use the strategy to incorporate the details of what they read around a central theme.

Summarisation

The process of summarisation is perhaps most closely allied to the development of the situation model.Summarisation involves the extraction of the gist and main themes of what is read (while putting aside the irrelevant details), and integrating the details into a coherent whole. Additional processes may include the evaluation of style and mood and making generalisations. Summarisation depends on basic language skills, inferential abilities and knowledge and engagement with texts.Reciprocal teaching (Brown and Palinscar, 1985) is a classic method for teaching reading comprehension strategies. Children are first shown how to apply the strategies by their teacher who models the process.Children then read a piece of text, paragraph by paragraph, and they learn to practise the strategies of: Generating questions Summarising Attempting to clarify word meanings or confusing text, and Predicting what will happen in the next paragraph.

Why do some children have reading comprehension difficulties?

There are three main reasons why children will fail to progress in reading comprehension: Inefficient word-level reading skills Poor oral language skills Lack of print experience and/or negative attitudes to reading.When trying to understand a particular childs difficulty, teachers should ask themselves a simple set of questions, as follows. Is the child able to: Read the text at the independent or easy level Complete the task when listening but not when reading Understand and follow the instructions given Complete the task at a more simple level or with an easier text Demonstrate a concept or strategy but not be able to explain it adequately Complete part of the task but not be able to orchestrate a final full answer Complete the task at a slower rate Complete the task when provided with a model or supported step by step Detect where an error has been made?Note: task is used in the above list to cover a wide range of possibilities, from understanding a simple set of instructions to understanding a complex theme running through a novel. It does not imply only comprehension exercises.More specifically, in order to set up teaching targets, the following set of questions should be applied.

Which part of the task is the child not able to complete accurately? What are the small steps needed to complete the task: can the child complete any of the steps? What vocabulary might the child need to complete the task: has the child got the appropriate vocabulary?Teachers then need to match teaching strategies to identified areas for development. For example, a child who is failing to recognise another persons feelings in the text could be supported by completing an emotions graph for the character. In this way children can be encouraged to acquire a range of known comprehension building strategies that they can then apply when they experience a failure in comprehension. This supports them in becoming strategic and intentional learners.

The nature of the text may also affect childrens comprehension. Is it too dense? Are there too many unknown or difficult words? Is the authors style accessible? Is the genre familiar?More specific causes of reading comprehension failure follow from an understanding of the cognitive and experiential prerequisites of progression through the literacy framework. These are detailed in Progression in comprehension