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12.2.9. Tasks / assignments for self- study

1.    Students work in groups and name jobs which they think would be ideał for each group member including themselves. Lists are then read out and choices discussed. If someone disagrees with a choice of job for them, they need to explain why they believe the idea is not sound (based on Klippel, 1987:80).

2.    Students (or a teacher) in advance prepare a list of things they presume are true about other group members. They talk to as many students as they can to verify whether their assumptions were right or wrong (based on Hadfield, 1987).

3.    Prepare a task for students around the topie “Smoking”.

12.3. The Reading Skill

12.3.1. What is reading comprehension?

Reading is considered to be a passive or receptive skill (Widdowson, 1978:57). It is understood as “grasp[ing] language pattems from their written representation” States Lado (1964:132). To understand a written text, says Grellet (1981:3), means to extract the information that is needed from it in an efficient way. For example, different reading strategies are applied when trying to find an advertisement for a particular type of fiat while looking at a notice board and during a careful reading of an article of special interest in a scientific journal, sińce it is a complex skill involving “a whole series of lesser skills” (Broughton et at, 1980:89). It is therefore essential, claim authors of the sources referred to in this chapter, to take a number of elements into consideration the most significant of which shall be described below.

12.3.1.1. What do we read?

Below are the main text types readers usually come across (Grellet, 1981:3-4): li- novels, short stories, tales;

W- other literary texts and passages (e.g. essays, diaries, aneedotes, biographies),

plays,

—    poems, limericks, nursery rhymes,

—    letters, postcards, telegrams, notes,

—    newspapers and magazines (headlines, articles, editorials, letters

to the editor, stop press, classified ads,

—— weather forecast, radio/ TV/ theatre programmes), sds- specialised articles, reports, reviews, essays, business letters, trade publications, summaries, accounts, pamphlets (political and other),

—    handbooks, textbooks, guidebooks,

—    recipes,

—    advertisements, travel brochures, catalogues,

—    puzzles, problems, rules for games,

—    instructions (e.g. wamings), directions (e.g. How to use...),

—    notices, rules and regulations,

—    posters, signs (e.g. road signs),

—    forms (e.g. application forms, landing cards),

—    graffiti, menus, price lists, tickets,

—    comic strips, cartoons and caricatures, legends (of maps, pictures),

statistics, diagrams, flow/pie charts, time-tables, maps, m- telephone directories, dictionaries, phrasebooks.

12.3.1.2. Why do we read?

According to Grellet (1981:4), there are two main reasons for reading:

—    reading for pleasure,

$4* reading for information (in order to either find out or do something with the information one acąuires).

Cross (1991: 255-256) suggests that we read for a reason, hence the purposes for reading differ and rangę within a spectrum of:

—    reading for pleasure (a novel),

for information (a railway Schedule, a newspaper),

—    for knowledge (joumals, books),

—    for curiosity (a guide book),

—    to satisfy a need (instructions for a new machinę), and so on.