Journal II

Discuss readings skills that you have learned in this class, but have rarely used in your reading. Do you think they are really necessary ones for better reading? Why or why not?

     I learned various reading skills in the class. However, among them, there are several skills that I don’t usually use. I don’t use lower-level skills much in these days comparing to higher-level skills. I think it’s because most of my reading’s purpose is comprehension of the content. Most of my reading is for acquiring knowledge or information. So I don’t use some skills like rhyming words, root words, prefix and suffix. These skills are mainly related with analysis on the words in the content, which deal with words’ endings, structures, and meanings. To use these skills I had to dissect the passage which takes so much time. If I concentrate on too much on each small parts of the reading material, I easily get lost while reading forgetting the main topic of what I was reading. With these skills it’s hard to see the flow of the big story. So I think using these skills while reading is such a waste of time, and eventually they will make the reading boring.
 

     Other skills that I don’t usually use are related with the pronunciation such as pronunciation key.  I don’t see a point of caring about the pronunciation in reading in these days. I would say caring about the pronunciation would be necessary or important when students are young or beginning to learn English; however, in these days when I read I only focus on the content rather than any other things. So pronunciation is separated thing from the reading to me.

     Those skills are the ones that I don’t use when I read in these days. However, there are other many skills that I don’t use often comparing other skills too. I think kinds of reading skills I use are closely related with the purpose and content of the reading. In these days, I read the passage solely for the purpose of acquiring information. To do this I use skimming, and scanning skills very often. However, in daily life, I also meet with various styles of reading such as letters, instructions, and articles. So I all the skills related with these reading activities such as sequencing, follow directions, predict outcomes etc. However the frequency of using these skills is comparatively less than skills like scanning and skimming. In other words, there are many reading skills exist in the world, and at the same time there are various kinds of reading, so all the skills would be needed and used at some point. Each people have their own purpose of reading, so he or she has to choose the appropriate skill to use according to his or her purpose.
 

     Moreover with the purpose of the reading, I think level of English of the reader is also important factor for choosing the right reading skills. I think lower-level reading skills related with dissecting the passage and other skills related with the pronunciation can be helpful to other people in lower level in English. They might be able to learning vocabularies and practice pronunciation with reading passage which can be very helpful to them. So when the readers’ level of English is low, they might use these kinds of skills to improve their reading and English, and then they would choose other reading skills as their level improve. So I think all the reading skills are necessary at some point for better reading.