Reading Skills

Introduction

There are many reasons why students struggle with academic reading. From my literature review and interviews with tutors and students, a few reading difficulties are:

1. Selecting problems: hard to select relevant texts

2. Getting key ideas and key words

3. Slow reading speed

4. Gaps in specific academic vocabulary

5. Boring texts - the problem of motivation!

I would like assist international Masters level students to address their academic reading problems by creating some exercises as follows:

Reading Problems Students Identified	Strategies	Methods	Types of Exercises
Selecting problems: hard to select relevant texts	Survey: Preview and predict	Skimming and scanning	Quickly reading 1. preface or cover of a book 2. abstract of a journal
Getting key ideas and key words	Read questions before reading the context	Skimming and scanning	1. Putting paragraphs into correct order 2. Matching paragraphs to correct descriptions.
Slow reading speed	Knowledge assimilation: 1. Improving comprehension 2. Retaining information 3. Recalling information	1. Using stop-start sweeps 2. Using eye movement patterns	Time limited reading
Not enough academic vocabulary	Improving academic vocabulary	1. Learning words using prefixes, suffixes and roots 2. Guessing words by texts	Cloze-tests
Boring texts	SQ3R		Integrative reading comprehension

Please click on Selecting to go to the next section.