Reading & Writing Strategies 10

Writing is a critical communication skill. Universities and employers frequently complain that writing is an underdeveloped skill. Writing provides big gains in reading comprehension and reading fluency. Writing also improves students’ reading fluency. When students must stop and think about what spelling patterns to use when they write, they are making a deeper connection in their brains about sound and spelling patterns. This deeper connection makes it easier, and faster, for students to recall those same patterns when they read. Written language is literally a secret code that someone made up to represent spoken sounds. The more students think about and practice the code in written form, the better they will be at understanding the same code in writing. Fluent readers more deeply understand that code. Writing also improves reading comprehension as students get better at formatting their writing. In this course, students will analyze a variety of texts and determine the author's purpose and point of view. People read different kinds of text (e.g., scholarly articles, textbooks, reviews) for different reasons. Some purposes for reading might be:

• to scan for specific information
• to skim to get an overview of the text
• to relate new content to existing knowledge
• to write something (often depends on a prompt)
• to critique an argument
•  to learn something
• for general comprehension

Before reading.

• Establish your purpose for reading.
• Speculate about the author’s purpose for writing.
• Review what you already know and want to learn about the topic (see the guides below)
• Preview the text to get an overview of its structure, looking at headings, figures, tables, glossary, etc.
• Predict the contents of the text and pose questions about it. If the authors have provided discussion questions, read them and write them on a note-taking sheet.
• Note any discussion questions that have been provided (sometimes at the end of the text)
• Sample pre-reading guides – K-W-L guide
• Critical reading questionnaire