Skimming – used to understand the “gist” or main idea, Scanning – used to find a particular piece of information, Extensive reading – used for pleasure an general understanding, Intensive reading – accurate reading for detailed understanding, and there are appropriately and skillfully.[2]
After reading activities and questions should also take into account the six-level hierarchy of skills that bloom suggests in his taxonomy. The first level is knowledge, which includes recall or recognition of information. The next level, commonly used in post-reading tasks, is comprehension, where the reader might explain, describe, or rephrase a text. The next four levels focus on the following:
1. Application, where the reader applies the information learned in the text;
2. Analysis, where the reader would make inferences or derive generalizations;
3. Synthesis, where the reader combines several ideas; and
4. Evaluation, where the reader judges the value or importance of a text.
These levels provide a simple yet helpful guide to the types of questions that we might ask after reading.
Based on the quotation above the links between reading and writing, for example, have been emphasized to such an extent that it is now normal to see them referred to as Literacy. Similarly, the term Oracy is commonly used to denote the skills of speaking and listening.
This is no doubt true, even unavoidable, in the practical classroom situation. However, we would argue that to look at the four skills individually, in order to look for parallels between the processes is in theoretical terms, far more useful for those who strive to learn from these theories and use them in a constructive way. Thus, the sum of the parts may be greater, and more practically helpful, than the whole.
Think about the way in which they are reading this text. Most people think that they read the way young children read–either letter-by-letter, or at best word-by-word.
If the notice the way in which their eye muscles actually move when reading a printed text, they will probably find that they are fixing their eyes on one block of word, then moving their eyes to the next block of word, and so on: effectively they are reading not word, but blocks of words at a time. The period of time during which the eye rest on one word is called a fixation.
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[1] Merriam Webster, Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms, (The United Stated: Massachusetts inc, 1992), p. 193.
[2] Penny Ur, A Course in Language Teaching, (Cambridge: University Press, 1991), p. 147.
