Critical Reading Skills

This paper aims at showing how comprehension of a text should not only focus on understanding the explicit but also the inferential meaning with a little inclination towards training the learners to tolerate vagueness since moderate level of ambiguity can have very positive effects on poor or incomplete schemata

Critical reading is an indispensable learning skill that students need both inside and outside the classroom. Even though many attempts haave been made to unravel the impact of critical reading on Second Language (L2) reading, there is a paucity of investigations examining the effect of critical reading combined with students’ active role. The study raises three questions. They are: 1) What are the students’ views about reading comprehension and critical reading skills? And2) What difficulties do students encounter when they read? And3) how can critical reading strategies improve students’ reading comprehension? Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate how critical reading skills can enhance students reading’ comprehension while working in groups. For the sake of this study, data were gathered from an open-ended questionnaire distributed to university students before intervention, learning logs, and participant observations. The results of the study revealed significant effects of critical reading skills on students’ reading comprehension at different levels. Students viewed reading as an active dynamic process that motivated the activation of higher order thinking skills and helped students tap into their prior experiences to approach the reading materials. It also showed how implementing a rich repertoire of critical reading skills enabled students to overcome reading problems as they could read not just what is directly stated but what is being communicated between and beyond the lines. The findings offered several pedagogical implications and recommendations for further research.

This study investigates the opportunity to adopt the Think Aloud metacog-nitive technique to instruct students to become strategic and skilled readers in the online environments. After presenting the historical and theoretical roots of the Think Aloud and the methodological characteristics of this technique, the study proposes an instructional tool that could support late primary and secondary school teachers in planning online reading lessons with the Think Aloud. Finally, the main strengths and weaknesses in the application of this technique to the online reading, and the prospects and future developments of the research in this area are analyzed.
Nel presente lavoro è indagata l'opportunità di adattare alla lettura negli ambienti online la tecnica metacognitiva del Think Aloud, modello di istruzione già rivelatosi efficace nella comprensione del testo stampato. Dopo aver accennato alle radici storiche e teoriche, e descritto le caratteristiche metodologiche del Think Aloud come strumento di ricerca e come tecnica per modellare la comprensione del testo, vengono presentati percorsi gui-da per l'applicazione di questa tecnica alla lettura online. Nella parte finale, tenuto conto di una pur modesta base conoscitiva, sono illustrati i principa-li punti di forza e i limiti nell'applicazione di questa tecnica alla lettura on-line, nonché le prospettive e gli sviluppi futuri della ricerca in questo ambito.

This paper adds to the nascent literature on teaching research methods and what students learn from courses and assessment. Postgraduate students are often confronted with large amounts of reading, and the content of material can be intimidating. Convincing them also to engage critically with readings is even more difficult. We report on a successful strategy used to help postgraduate students in a qualitative research methods course develop the skills to read efficiently and critically. We outline the synopsis method and report on an evaluation of students’ experiences of it as an assessment and learning tool. Evaluation showed that students saw their learning experience as challenging and rewarding and could articulate how the synopsis method was useful for specific reading/writing skills, critical engagement and reflexivity, content knowledge, and motivation. We were surprised students found it novel to be asked to question or critique ‘published’ papers and articulate subjectiv...

This study investigates the opportunity to adopt the Think Aloud metacognitive technique to instruct students to become strategic and skilled readers in the online environments. After presenting the historical and theoretical roots of the Think Aloud and the methodological characteristics of this technique, the study proposes an instructional tool that could support late primary and secondary school teachers in planning online reading lessons with the Think Aloud. Finally, the main strengths and weaknesses in the application of this technique to the online reading, and the prospects and future developments of the research in this area are analyzed.

This paper adds to the nascent literature on teaching research methods and what students learn from courses and assessment. Postgraduate students are often confronted with large amounts of reading, and the content of material can be intimidating. Convincing them also to engage critically with readings is even more difficult. We report on a successful strategy used to help postgraduate students in a qualitative research methods course develop the skills to read efficiently and critically. We outline the synopsis method and report on an evaluation of students’ experiences of it as an assessment and learning tool. Evaluation showed that students saw their learning experience as challenging and rewarding and could articulate how the synopsis method was useful for specific reading/writing skills, critical engagement and reflexivity, content knowledge, and motivation. We were surprised students found it novel to be asked to question or critique ‘published’ papers and articulate subjective...

This paper adds to the nascent literature on teaching research methods and what students learn from courses and assessment. Postgraduate students are often confronted with large amounts of reading, and the content of material can be intimidating. Convincing them also to engage critically with readings is even more difficult. We report on a successful strategy used to help postgraduate students in a qualitative research methods course develop the skills to read efficiently and critically. We outline the synopsis method and report on an evaluation of students’ experiences of it as an assessment and learning tool. Evaluation showed that students saw their learning experience as challenging and rewarding and could articulate how the synopsis method was useful for specific reading/writing skills, critical engagement and reflexivity, content knowledge, and motivation. We were surprised students found it novel to be asked to question or critique ‘published’ papers and articulate subjectiv...

The effect of using self-regulated learning strategies on developing critical reading skills among experimental secondary school students (August 2015). A Master thesis conducted by Mostafa Bagagat  Younis (Senior Instructor of English, Egyptian Ministry of Education) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Mohamed Ismail Abu-Rahmah and Prof. Dr. Taher Mohamed  El-Hady (Professors of English Education/TEFL, Suez Canal University. Egypt).

This study investigates the opportunity to adopt the Think Aloud metacognitive technique to instruct students to become strategic and skilled readers in the online environments. After presenting the historical and theoretical roots of the Think Aloud and the methodological characteristics of this technique, the study proposes an instructional tool that could support late primary and secondary school teachers in planning online reading lessons with the Think Aloud. Finally, the main strengths and weaknesses in the application of this technique to the online reading, and the prospects and future developments of the research in this area are analyzed.