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Date Posted: 06:42:07 10/16/05 Sun
Author: Luis Antonio Morad Stefani
Subject: Re: Final Draft: Reading as a source of information and expansion of knowledge
In reply to: Leonardo Rodrigo Soares 's message, "Final Draft: Reading as a source of information and expansion of knowledge" on 09:05:32 10/15/05 Sat

Dear Leonardo,

I really enjoyed reading your essay. You’ve been writing about a very significant aspect of language teaching and learning.You have improved much of it, but I have some suggestions which I think might help you to improve it even further.

I believe that you need to reconsider the structure of the last part of your essay. What I mean is that your 5th , 6th and 7th paragraphs seem to me, to be in fact the three components of a single larger paragraph. I reckon you could join them together, using paragraph #5 as the topic sentence, paragraph #6 to explain the concept of “developing strategies” and, finally, paragraph #7 as the conclusion of this topic.Remember that you must not write a paragraph which contains only one sentence (paragraph #5).I would also consider the following details.

In paragraph #5:
“According to the philosophy behind the pedagogical principles in the
Strategic Reading series - a three level reading series taking learners from basic to upper-intermediate levels of reading proficiency - reading is viewed as a cognitive process and as a strategy development.”

Don’t you think that you could make it clearer separating it into two sentences?

Strategic Reading series is a three level reading series which takes learners from basic to upper-intermediate levels of reading proficiency. According to the philosophy behind the pedagogical principles used in this series, reading is viewed both as a cognitive process and as a process of strategy development.

In paragraph #6:
“In the cognitive process, learner will develop skills such as: discerning main ideas; understanding sequence; noticing specific details; AND making inferences;(USE A COMMA HERE) comparison(S) and predictions. In the strategy development teachers will teach language learning strategies and admit (ISN’T “CONSIDERING” A BETTER CHOICE OF VOCABULARY ?) different cognitive styles. Strategies such as: look for reading material that is at or near students´ level; plan how to read a text, monitor to see how the reading is going, and then check to see how much of it was understood;(THE FIRST STRATEGIES THAT YOU MENTION ARE TO BE USED BY TEACHERS, WHEREAS THE LATER ARE TO BE USED BY THE STUDENTS. WHY DON”T YOU MAKE TWO SENTENCES HERE EXPLAINING THAT?) make ongoing summaries either in one´s mind or in the margins of the text; guess the appropriate meaning by using clues from the (surrounding OMIT THIS) context and use a dictionary to get a detailed sense of what individual words mean are fundamental and effective.”

Your paragraph #7 will work well as a conclusion to this new paragraph, but not as a conclusion to your whole essay. Remember to cover all the issues that you mentioned in your essay and to go back to what was stated at the introduction, when writing your conclusion.

The structure of the first four paragraphs of your essay is very logical. I have just a few comments to make:

In the 1st paragraph I do not think it is a good idea to highlight your thesis using capital letters.

In the 2nd paragraph I believe that using “Processing” instead of “Approach” would be a more precise lexical choice. I also wouldn’t explain what top-down and bottom-up are in brackets. I believe you could explain these different ways of processing information in a more detailed way.

In the 3rd paragraph:
“World knowledge is fundamental when we want to understand the real meaning of the sentence, ( in OMIT THIS )which involves MAKING a series of associations. The importance of world knowledge helps in a certain way of formulating ( WORLD KNOWLEDGE IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE IT HELPS THE READER FORMULATING …) guesses when some texts do not provide enough clues. We activate previous knowledge (schemata) and build the meaning of the text (top-down approach) while we read a text. In other words, in top-down (PROCESSING)approach we use our intelligence, experience and common sense.

In the 4th paragraph:
“The importance of developing technical reading skills rather than those used for literary reading is fundamental. Richards (2003) claims that teachers are responsible (to develop)FOR DEVELOPING those technical and effective analytical processing skills (solving and critical thinking), by providing learners WITH A VARIETY OF authentic materials (with a variety of texts,) FROM DIFFERENT genres, content areas and styles of writing. In addition, the importance of different cognitive styles must also (have) BE taken into account while developing reading skills.”

I hope you find the suggestions useful for you. If there’s anything which is not clear, don’t hesitate to contact me.
Best wishes,

Luis

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Replies:

  • Re: Final Draft: Reading as a source of information and expansion of knowledge -- Rodrigo Nunes Pinto, 13:17:41 10/16/05 Sun
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