|
Home Courses Faculty Useful Links Publications Alumni Articles Research Resources |
|
|
3
Purpose and expectations As
stated earlier, people read because they have a purpose
in doing it. They read for pleasure or for information. People read
stories, newspapers, etc because they enjoy doing it. They also read things like
train/bus schedule, maps, etc because they need some useful information. So,
what you read depends, invariably, upon your purpose. Another
important characteristic of reading is that people have expectations of what they are going to read.
For instance, the headlines of a news report may rouse your expectations
of what is said in the report. Frequently, we choose to read a book because of
its catchy title, or its attractive cover or even its authorship. All of these
factors rouse our interest and expectations about the book, and prompt us to
‘guess’ its content. So no reader starts off reading a text with an absolutely
blank mind. As language teachers, it is important to keep these in mind when
teaching reading skills. Now
it is time to take a break and ponder over what we have discussed in the
foregoing section. 4
Review questions ·
What are the main
characteristics of reading? Think of an example for each. ·
What expectations did you have
of this unit? Has the above discussion matched up to your expectations? Discuss
your views with your friends and we will get back to you shortly. 5
Reading skills 5.1
Predictive skills In
the foregoing sections, we noted that readers have expectations about what they
are going
to read. Their success at understanding the meaning of the text depends
largely upon to what extent the text content matches up to their expectations.
However, many a time,
the reader’s predictions may not turn out to be true. But as the reader
continues to read, s/he gets more information which enables him/her to modify
his/her ideas further. Thus there is a continuous interaction between the
reader’s expectations and the content of the text. One
of the main functions of the lead-in
stage is to encourage the predictive
skills of the reader in order to facilitate the reading process.
|
|
|
H M Patel Institute of English Training & Research, Vallabh Vidyanagar - 388120, Gujarat, India Phone : 091-2692-230193, 091-2692-230079 |
|