Reading strategies

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• havo, vwo
• Leerjaar 1

Reading 

Havo:

A2 Ik kan de hoofdlijn begrijpen van eenvoudige teksten in een tijdschrift, krant of op een website.

VWO:

A2 Ik kan korte, beschrijvende teksten over vertrouwde onderwerpen begrijpen.

A2 Ik kan de hoofdlijn begrijpen van eenvoudige teksten in een tijdschrift, krant of op een website.

Leerdoelen leerjaar 1 Havo/VWO

Find the subject of the text by reading the title, looking at the pictures and finding out the type of text (orientation).

Read the introduction and the subheadings (reading globally).

Read the entire text while answering the questions (detailed understanding).

Follow the steps

1. Before reading a text, it helps to think about what you already know about the subject. This way, you can often predict what a text will be about and that makes a text easier to read.
   
   
2. Make sure you carefully read the questions of the exercise before you start reading the text. That way, you  know what to look for while you’re reading.
   
   
3. A lot of texts have photos or drawings. Pay attention to these before you start reading, they often tell you something about the subject of the text.
   
   
4. Have a look at the type of text and its lay-out (advertisement, letter, article), as well as the photos or images. These also tell a lot about the subject of the text.

Before reading

Reading Strategies

If you want to find out if the text is useful or interesting, you should explore the text. 

This will help you get to know the subject of the text before reading it in more detail.

When you explore a text you should look at the:

- title

- introduction

- subheadings

- images (illustrations or pictures)

- lists, rows, grids or diagrams

- words printed in a different style, size, or font

- source at the end of the text. The source often tells you what kind of text it is: an article from a magazine or the internet, a story, a poem, an advert, a letter, etc.

Exploring/ Skimming a text

When you’re reading globally, you try to find out the most important information. You don’t have to understand every word. Read the title, the introduction, the conclusion, and the first and last sentence of every paragraph. 

Another way to pick out the most important information from a text is by answering the WH-questions:

- who / what is the text about?

- where ...?

- when ... ?

- why ... ?

- how ... ?

Reading globally

Intensive reading means that you read a text carefully in order to understand all the information. You do this when you need to understand the text in detail or when you need to find the main idea of the text.

When practising intensive reading you:

• read the entire text
• pay attention to the introduction and the subheadings
• look for the most important words and sentences from each paragraph
• look up the meaning of difficult words
• determine the main idea of each paragraph

Intensive reading

You scan a text when you are looking for specific information.
For example, a specific name, date, price or time. You don’t read the entire text.

When you scan a text you:

• read the heading (title) and subheadings
• look for key words
• look at words that are printed differently (for example, bold, italics, or words that are LARGE,     coloured or underlined)
• look at charts and graphs
• look for symbols, for example €, £, $ or *
• stop reading when you have found what you were looking for

Scanning a text 

The writer of a text has a certain goal. He or she might want to explain something to the reader, or the writer might want the reader to do something. Different texts can have different purposes, as you can see in the grid below.

Determining text purpose

The writer would like ...	Purpose	Examples of kinds of texts
... you to learn something.	inform	newspaper article, flyer, report of a sports game
... to tell you how to do something	instruct	recipe, instruction manual
... you to (not) do something	activate	invitation, advert
... to give their opinion	convince	response on website, album or film review
... to entertain you	amuse	fictional story, comic, lyrics

Sometimes a question isn’t about what is exactly said in the text. 

Those are questions that start with “what does the author mean by …”, for example.

Be very clear about what information is asked before you answer the question.

Follow these steps when answering the question:

• Underline key words in the question.
• Write down positive or negative comments-opinions on the subject.
• If it’s a multiple choice question, think about your own answer before going through the alternatives.

Answering questions

Let's get to work!

In Google Classroom you can now find three different reading tasks. 

• Sanders' Meme Success --> clarifying difficult words
• Elephants for Sale --> predicting
• Gotta Catch 'Em All --> predicting

Let's begin!