Reading is one of the important aspects of Language Arts. Reading goes beyond transfer of ideas from one mind to another. It is the eloquence of words that offers one insight. Comprehension is an integral part of reading. Comprehension goes beyond pronouncing words or knowing the vocabulary of individual words. It is the understanding of the idea expressed in a sentence or a paragraph or even the entire book.
The role of the teacher is to make sure that the reader or learner understands the meaning of the text in its totality. This will enable the student to appreciate what he/she is reading and apply the insights he/she learns into his/her life.
Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension is the level of understanding of a passage or text. In a normal reading rate of estimated 200-220 words per minute the level of comprehension is above 75% (Wikipedia, 2007).
Improving reading comprehension is a challenge every language arts teacher must overcome. To improve reading comprehension, teaching conceptual and linguistic knowledge helps. Reading comprehension can also grow by training to assess one's comprehension, test comprehension through questionnaires and improving metacognition. Metacognition means thinking about one's own thinking. It utilizes cognition or memory, perception, calculation, association and other mental skills (Wikipedia, 2007).
The self-assessment method can be done by summarizing and questioning. Through practice, the skill becomes automatic. Reading comprehension testing through questionnaires is a useful tool in improving reading comprehension because it allows the student idea of his/her ability and at the same time enables the teacher to gauge the student's progress (Wikipedia, 2007).
Reading Strategies
Reading strategies refer to techniques or activities used by students to increase their reading abilities.
A teacher should be able to analyze the problems of each individual student when it comes to reading. Once the teacher knows the problem, it would be easier to determine that strategies of instruction are needed to improve student's reading abilities. To put it another way, the teacher will know what to do inside the classroom to address the needs of all levels of students' reading abilities.
Zemelman et al (1988) delineates the "best practice strategies" for reading:
- Teacher reading aloud to classes of students
- Time for students to read independently
- Students choosing their own reading materials
- Teachers exposing students to many genres (such as novel, short story, poetry) including magazines and newspapers
- Focusing on comprehension
- Teaching reading as a process and modeling thought processes using:
- The activation of prior knowledge
- Making predications
- Guided reading
- After reading applications
- Reading as a collaborative process
- Grouping by interests or book choices (literature circles)
- Teaching of reading skills in context - mini lessons as needed
- Writing and reading as natural partners - writing before, during, and after reading
- Use of reading in the content areas (historical novels in social studies)
- Evaluation that assesses holistic, high level thinking skills
- Measuring success of total programs by student reading habits, attitudes, and comprehension
Kelly Gallagher (2004) in her book “Deeper Reading: Comprehending Challenging Texts” also came up withways to make reading lessons effective: introduce pre-reading strategies, details first and second draft reading techniques, explores meaningful collaboration as a tool for raising comprehension, explains how the use of metaphor increases deeper thinking and reflection, discusses the benefits of critical reading, and aids teachers in lesson planning by providing many ideas, strategies, and templates for teaching effective deeper reading.
Gallagher believes that “there is a big difference between assigning students difficult
reading and teaching them how to read deeply”. Chris Tovani (2000) probably had the same idea in mind when she said that a teacher should provide “direct, explicit instructions that demonstrates what good readers do”. She believes reading is “thinking,” a process that occurs in one's head and in one's mouth.
Tovani says that any teacher can teach comprehension strategies by first knowing
his or her own thinking processes. Once teachers know how they read and “determine what they do to make meaning…[they can] pass these techniques on to their students”.
Testing Reading
Reading is a very important skill to be developed. Reading goes beyond surface information or understanding vocabularies. It should be about attaining a good grasp of abstract concepts and ideas that people try to communicate.
In United States, testing reading is mandated by the United States policy of No Child Left Behind Laws. Students must master vocabulary, phonics, fluency and reading to pass reading comprehension testing (Wikipedia, 2007).
Understanding what individual word means does not suffice in testing reading. It should be about understanding insights expressed collectively.
Testing reading is a good way for teachers to determine the progress of the student in reading. This test can assess the comprehension ability of the learner.
Testing reading should make use of carefully created questions which ask natural passages of text. Test questions could require the summary of the text, answering of open-ended questions, close formats and multiple choice questions.
Multiple choice questions must see to it that the questions ask for the overall meaning of the text, details and meaning of words. The question should not give idea to the answers (Wikipedia, 2007).
