THE READING NIGHT EVENT


The school librarian organised a special event called "A Reading night." Together with some students, she created a poster on a topic.

She prepared a special programme with activities for that night:
• make bookmarks
• listen to a young writer
• read excerpts from a book by the young author, discuss them and dramatise them
• listen to a young poet recite
• discuss universal youth themes: love, music, generation gap, addiction

In pairs. observe the poster and ask and answer the questions below.

What can you do if you write poems?
Where are you supposed to overnight?
Which activity do you find the most appealing and why?
Is there an activity you miss? Suggest.

ACTIVITY IDEA


Being inspired by the idea of A Reading Night, as chairperson of the school Literarure club, you would like to organise a similar literary event. Along with other club members, you decide on Branje pod krošnjami - Reading under a tree(top).

Imagine you attended a club meeting, where you discussed when, where and how to organize the event. You were asked to make notes and later to prepare a what-to-do list and share it with other members on Facebook.

Now, prepare a what-to-do list. Include the date, the time, the venue, etc. Write it in your notebook. Share it with your classmates, improve it together and store it. You might be asked to organize a similar real life event one day.

Example:
What-to-do list
• have a word with the headteacher for permission and support
• have a word with the class teacher
• day and date
• time: beginning/end
• venue
• make a list of ...
• provide ...

Don't forget to write a brief account of the event for the school magazine and local radio.

Google for more information about similar national and international reading events. You'll be surprised how many of them are carried out on a regular basis to foster reading culture.

FIND OUT


ABOUT READING STYLES

The three reading styles, called also strategies, techniques, methods are scanning, skimming, speed reading.

Once you are a good reader, you can make use of many different ways of reading and read at different speeds.
Before reading, you should ask yourself what you would like to achieve. Why are you reading? What do you want to know after reading? Once you know the purpose, you can examine the resource in a proper way. For example if you want to make good use of different reading strategies, you should know how to use them in your mother tongue first.

Read about different reading styles, but for more information on reading strategies you can still do Google Search.

Scanning
If you need certain information on a subject then you scan the text, you do not read everything. This means, for example, you do not have to read the chapter introductions and summaries of a book in detail.
You also scan when you read quickly through the text to locate a particular piece of information making use of key/target words. For example, a name, a date, a number, a word or phrase, etc. We scan dictionaries, timetables, notice boards, lists, diagrams, maps and web pages.

Skimming
(skim-reading or reading for "gist")
It works best with non-fiction materials. You use it when you need only an overall knowledge of the book, so you read only chapter headings, the first and the last sentences of paragraphs, introductions, and summaries. You read quickly through the text to get the gist or the main/ general idea. For example, you skim a book review to find if the reviewer liked the book or not, or a book in a library, or an article, etc. It is important to know you do not need to understand each and every word.

Speed reading
If you would like to read longer texts, books faster, you should learn about speed reading to improve your reading ability. It means you speed-read the contents of the chapters, picking out and understanding key words and concepts. You might not absorb all the information or understand a long text fully if you read fast, but you are able to speed up through texts that are known to you and slow down when you need to understand things in detail.

Intensive reading
or study reading means we need to read more carefully, for every detail, for example, a research, instructions etc. We read slowly or even stop to check the meaning in a dictionary.

Extensive reading
We read extensively when we read for pleasure and to develop general reading skill. We do not have to read in detail.

Close reading
When close reading, you choose a brief passage of a text, for example, a literary one and analyse it in detail, paying attention to individual words, etc., which leads to deep comprehension.

LEARN MORE


Let's describe how to do scan reading

You have just done this kind of reading with the word cloud above. Think about what was your strategy to find the three words in the word cloud.

Scanning, therefore, means that you look for a specific piece of information and you do not need to understand every single word in the text. We can easily "scan" texts that are arranged in alphabetical order, chronologically, by category, etc.

Suppose you would like to look up the word "fiction" in a dictionary.

In this case, you should locate the word in a page where headwords begin with the letter "f".
Move quickly through the text, using a pen, your finger or the cursor if you are working with an e- dictionary.

Always keep in mind what keywords you are scanning for.

If you want to scan a book, then, for example, read the chapter introductions, and summaries of a book in detail.

You will become a more flexible reader if you learn how to do the scanning.

ACTIVITY IDEA


You have learned about many reading styles. Are there any you are familiar with? Which one(s)? List them in your notebook.

You are a good reader, but not always an effective one. You feel reading sometimes takes up too much of your time. What to do to make it better, more effective?

For example:
Select a piece of text or an article, for example and first think of the purpose of reading it, then choose the reading style that would suit you the most in this case and finally practice it in real life.

For learning different reading styles make a plan how to achieve the goal and for what purpose you would use it.

If you don't feel confident enough, you can always ask your teacher about it or google for more information on reading styles or strategies.

The more you practice, the more effective your reading will become.