Reading Skills

Article Reviewed
Pardo, L. S. (2004). What every teacher needs to know about comprehension. International Reading
Association, 272280.

Introduction
Reading is defined as the act of combining letters into words and decoding
the joint words into meaningful sentences. Comprehension is one of the main
component of reading and is mostly used as a tool to evaluate the reading progress
of a child. Comprehension can be defined as ability to read text, process it and
understand its meaning (Wikipedia Encyclopaedia). It is important for one to
understand the comprehension in order to be able to answer the questions prompted
later on. As for the teacher, it is a must to understand the meaning of the
comprehension well enough so that they will be able to teach and guide the students
in the reading skills and the gauging the meaning of the vocabulary in the
comprehension. This article entitled, What every teacher needs to know about
comprehension written by Laura S. Pardo (2004) which has been taken from the
journal article entitled International Reading Association, discussed in details on
each step that a teacher should take and perform in order to know better on the
comprehension.
Summary
This article discusses on how to help the teachers to understand the
comprehension well enough in order to ensure that the students will be best in
comprehending. The factors of reader, texts and context and the meanings are being
discussed clearly and in detail. Quoting from the RAND Reading Study Group, the
author defined the comprehension to be the process of simultaneously
extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with
written language (page 272). The authors discussed that the main factor of how a
comprehension works is on the relationship between the reader and the text. Both
has certain features and background that will influence the entire reading process.
The readers world knowledge (page 273), will influence the reading as the
background schemata he/she has will tend to influence the reading as they will find
something that make sense to them closely related to their understanding. In
addition, the readers cognitive development and the readers culture (page 273)
also plays a role. The readers also will tend to read based on their purpose of
reading and their level of motivation to read. Thus, Pardo suggested to support the
readers by teaching decoding skills, help students build fluency, build and
activate prior knowledge, teach vocabulary words (page 273-274). On the other
hand, Pardo also discussed on the features of the texts that will influence the
comprehension reading. It is important for the teachers to know the structure of
the text (page 275) as different text provide different structure and format of
reading. The content of the structure will also vary and be different according to the
purpose of it being written. Even the type of font and the sizes will play a role in
influencing the students to read. Another component of the text that teachers must
know is the authors intent in writing the text (page 275). This is because some
students will interact with the text and will be taken into the text deeply based on the
intention of the writers. Therefore, Pardo suggested ways for the teachers which are
teach text structures, model appropriate text selection, provide regular
independent reading time (page 275-276). The author also discussed on the
transaction as there are connections occur between the reader and the text and
between different parts of the text (page 276). Furthermore, Pardo suggest the
that the teacher supports the transaction by Providing explicit instruction of
useful comprehension strategies, teaching students to monitor and repair,
using multiple strategy approaches, scaffold support, make reading and
writing connections visible (page 276-277).
Conclusion
This article help me to improve my understanding on the comprehension. As
this article is written for the teachers, it is certainly a good article that one should
read as it provides a lot of information and content that is very knowledgeable. Most
teachers, including myself take comprehension for granted and we are just merely
using it as a tool to measure our students understanding in reading. However, most
of us are lacking in knowledge on the clear meaning of what it is about. Thus, by
reading this article, I have made myself clear on what comprehension is about as
well as to help my students to understand it better. This article is certainly suitable for
the Malaysian education system as comprehension is one of the must have
questions in all our examination papers and it is a component that is certainly being
taught in the classroom. Now that I have a clearer vision on what it is about, I am
sure that my teaching style would be upgraded and the students will benefit from it.
As a conclusion, this article entitled, What every teacher needs to know about
comprehension written by Laura S. Pardo (2004) which has been taken from the
journal article entitled International Reading Association, is certainly an article that
must be printed out and be in every English teachers file as a guide and a reference
on how to teach and learn comprehension.
Reference
Pardo, L. S. (2004). What every teacher needs to know about comprehension. International Reading
Association, 272280.
Reading comprehension. (2013). Retrieved from Wikipedia Encyclopaedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_comprehension

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