STYLES OF READING APPLICABLE TO THE READING CLASS

Reading aloud or reading silently?

Silent reading: Scanning, skimming, intensive and extensive.

Reading aloud

FOR: 
• In the first years of primary education storytelling plays an important role in the process of learning.
• More effective if the story is told (or read) aloud due to the fact that learners become more involved and consequently more motivated.
• Students can show that they recognize written and spoken forms and the relationship between form and meaning.
• At early and intermediate levels can be used to check bottom-up processing skills or simply pronunciation.

AGAINST
• It is not a very authentic activity.
• It is a boring activity because while one student is reading, the others can easily lose attention.
• It’s not an interactive activity because students only have to recite.

Silent reading 

• The most common and natural type of reading.
• Different goals can be pursued depending on the predetermined purpose of reading:
Scanning: search of specific information within a text: relevant dates, numbers in a directory, times on a timetable or key concepts in an academic text.
Skimming. Very common in everyday life; used to get a global impression of the content of a text (the gist of the text). Requires a definite reading competence because it implies an overall view of the text. It Develops students’ self-confidence since they obtain a lot of information without needing much reading.

Intensive

• Focuses on linguistic and content accuracy.
• It is very important in some educational contexts because it is used to exemplify different aspects of the lexical, syntactic and discourse systems.
• Full understanding of the literal meaning presented in the written passage.
Extensive:

• Oriented towards grasping a general understanding of the text for the purpose of enjoyment or learning.
• Texts are usually long such as books or articles and reading them takes extended periods of time.
• Extensive reading is not usually performed during class time but it is known that this activity helps students to improve their reading abilities.