Q. Discuss reading skills that you have learned in this class, but have rarely used in your reading. Do you think they are really necessary ones for better reading? Why or why not?
Reading skills are very beneficial for me because I can get what I want from the text by means of them. Even so, I’m not the person who usually make use of lots of reading skills for every reading time. Like my case, you may adopt just limited reading skills because they mean “unconscious and internalized pattern.” Therefore, you might get accustomed to using some skills even in the situation where another strategy is required. Now, I’ll find which reading skills I barely adopt and identify the benefit of them through chapter 4, “reading skills ,”in the textbook.
When I considered Table 4.1, I found some reading skills that I’ve almost never even thought of all my life. Fist one is learning “homonyms”; I have tried it several times, but it really didn’t work well. There might be several reasons; I just memorize homonyms without context and it was getting boring like phonics. Also, I had been studying English to pass the exam when I was in middle and high school. I finally thought, “Core meaning is significant now.” I couldn’t imagine how much homonym plays an important role in successful reading in L2. The problem was turned to be serious, especially when I was in U.S.A. For example, I just knew that “get” has numerous meanings, depending on the context. However, I had considered that the word means “obtain” ignoring other critical meanings. So, the reality of “get” use was definitely shocking to me. I started recognizing that what I had been usually stuck in English reading was “get+adjective/-ed” form. Also, “get” in lots of idioms such as “get on” and “get in” can have various meanings.
Second skill is retelling story that a student paraphrase the story they’ve read on their own words. In Asian EFL setting like Korea, speaking activity based on reading isn’t common because the language learners are unlikely to take a high risk of speaking. Just same as my English classes in middle and high school; even paraphrasing the story in written English was rare. On the other hand, I had to speak out my own remade-story in ESL classes in U.S.A. I found most of the Asian learners having a difficult making similar story with original one. And I felt that producing written form was a lot easier than spoken form. But, students confirm what they understood in the reading passage and construct interactive meanings by sharing stories each other. Also, it’s obvious that learners can remember what they explain by their own words longer. The skill would work well with students who easily get bored in reading classes and are actionists.
The final one in the table is classifying books. I even didn’t understand why the skill is in the table. Gordon put the skill under the reading research and study skills. In the case of reading research, learners could need the skill. However, I believe that it’s not essential for learners to learn because it comes naturally when we need to do that. In addition, there is a doubt; "how should learners classify books?" depending on ways, the process could be different. For those reasons, the skill doesn't have to be learnt although teachers can introduce it to students.
