READING TECHNIQUES “SQ3R”
Reading a chapter correctly takes a lot more time than you probably spend now, but try this SQ3R method for just one class. Slowly add this system into your other classes too. Be patient and give this method 2 weeks to make a difference. At first, you'll spend a lot of time on this. Remember: You can study a lot of hours over the course of the semester or you can study all of those hours the week before your final.
Study time rule: 1 hour of class = 2 hours of study time!
This reading method will seem slow at first, but the benefits will soon be clear: You will remember more of what you read, and you won't waste time repeating work you've already done!
SQ3R Means:
SURVEY THE CHAPTER
Do not read the chapter yet! Do these steps first:
- Read the title - prepare your mind to study the subject.
- Read the introduction and/or summary - think about how this chapter fits the author's purposes, and focus on the author's statement of most important points.
- Quickly look over each boldface heading and subheading - organize your mind before you begin to read - build a structure for the thoughts and details to come.
- Look over any graphics, charts, maps, diagrams, etc. They are there to make a point - don't miss them.
- Notice the reading aids - italics, and boldface print show that something is important
- Also, the chapter objective and the end-of-chapter questions are all included to help you sort, understand and remember the information.
QUESTION
Do not read the chapter yet! Do these steps first:
Create questions from your reading to help your mind think about the material.
Look at each section at a time and turn the boldface headings into as many questions as you think will be answered in that section. The better the questions, the better your understanding will be. You may always add more questions as you continue. When your mind is actively searching for answers to questions, it is learning! This is also the best way to predict test questions - where do you think your teachers think up questions?!
Here's an example: if a heading says "Parts of the Flower," you can make a question like: "What are the parts of a flower?" "Historic People" can be a question like "Name some historic people."
Make up as many questions as you possibly can.
READ
Ok, now it is time to read the chapter, but follow these steps:
Read each section of the chapter with your questions in mind. Look for the answers, and take note of questions you didn't think of that were answered in that section.
RECITE
As you read the chapter, you should recite your notes.
Reciting means practicing out loud what you’ve written down. Yes, that's right - talk to yourself!
After each section of reading, stop, think about your questions, and see if you can answer them from memory. If not, look back again (as often as necessary) but don't go on to the next section until you can say what you have learned!
REVIEW
Spend 15 minutes every day reviewing your notes.
Once you've finished the entire chapter using the steps above, go back over all the questions that you made. See if you can still answer them. If you cannot, read the chapter again, being careful to answer your own questions.
THE LEXICAL APPROACH
We could not talk about vocabulary teaching nowadays without mentioning Lewis (1993), whose controversial, thought-provoking ideas have been shaking the ELT world since its publication. We do not intend to offer a complete review of his work, but rather mention some of his contributions that in our opinion can be readily used in the classroom.
His most important contribution was to highlight the importance of vocabulary as being basic to communication. We do agree that if learners do not recognise the meaning of keywords they will be unable to participate in the conversation, even if they know the morphology and syntax. On the other hand, we believe that grammar is equally important in teaching, and therefore in our opinion, it is not the case to substitute grammar teaching with vocabulary teaching, but that both should be present in teaching a foreign language.
Lewis himself insists that his lexical approach is not simply a shift of emphasis from grammar to vocabulary teaching, as ‘language consists not of traditional grammar and vocabulary, but often of multi-word prefabricated chunks’(Lewis, 1997). Chunks include collocations, fixed and semi-fixed expressions and idioms, and according to him, occupy a crucial role in facilitating language production, being the key to fluency.
An explanation for native speakers’ fluency is that vocabulary is not stored only as individual words, but also as parts of phrases and larger chunks, which can be retrieved from memory as a whole, reducing processing difficulties. On the other hand, learners who only learn individual words will need a lot more time and effort to express themselves.
Consequently, it is essential to make students aware of chunks, giving them opportunities to identify, organise and record these. Identifying chunks is not always easy, and at least in the beginning, students need a lot of guidance.
Hill (1999) explains that most learners with ‘good vocabularies’ have problems with fluency because their ‘collocational competence’ is very limited, and that, especially from Intermediate level, we should aim at increasing their collocational competence with the vocabulary they have already got. For Advance learners he also suggests building on what they already know, using better strategies and increasing the number of items they meet outside the classroom.
The idea of what it is to ‘know’ a word is also enriched with the collocational component. According to Lewis (1993) ‘being able to use a word involves mastering its collocational range and restrictions on that range’. I can say that using all the opportunities to teach chunks rather than isolated words is a feasible idea that has been working well in my classes, and which is fortunately coming up in new coursebooks we are using. However, both teachers and learners need awareness raising activities to be able to identify multi-word chunks.
Apart from identifying chunks, it is important to establish clear ways of organising and recording vocabulary. According to Lewis (1993), ‘language should be recorded together which characteristically occurs together’, which means not in a linear, alphabetical order, but in collocation tables, mind-maps, word trees, for example. He also suggests the recording of whole sentences, to help contextualization, and that storage of items is highly personal, depending on each student’s needs.
We have already mentioned the use of dictionaries as a way to discover meaning and foster learner independence. Lewis extends the use of dictionaries to focus on word grammar and collocation range, although most dictionaries are rather limited in these.
Lewis also defends the use of ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ material from the early stages of learning, because ‘acquisition is facilitated by material which is only partly understood’ (Lewis, 1993, p. 186). Although he does not supply evidence for this, I agree that students need to be given tasks they can accomplish without understanding everything from a given text, because this is what they will need as users of the language. He also suggests that it is better to work intensively with short extracts of authentic material, so they are not too daunting for students and can be explored for collocations.
Finally, the Lexical Approach and Task-Based Learning have some common principles, which have been influencing foreign language teaching. Both approaches regard intensive, roughly-tuned input as essential for acquisition, and maintain that successful communication is more important than the production of accurate sentences. We certainly agree with these principles and have tried to use them in our class.
There are several aspects of lexis that need to be taken into account when teaching vocabulary. The list below is based on the work of Gairns and Redman (1986):
· Boundaries between conceptual meaning: knowing not only what lexis refers to, but also where the boundaries are that separate it from words of related meaning (e.g. cup, mug, bowl).
· Polysemy: distinguishing between the various meaning of a single word form with several but closely related meanings (head: of a person, of a pin, of an organisation).
· Homonymy:distinguishing between the various meaning of a single word form which has several meanings which are NOT closely related ( e.g. a file: used to put papers in or a tool).
· Homophyny:understanding words that have the same pronunciation but different spellings and meanings (e.g. flour, flower).
· Synonymy:distinguishing between the different shades of meaning that synonymous words have (e.g. extend, increase, expand).
· Affective meaning: distinguishing between the attitudinal and emotional factors (denotation and connotation), which depend on the speakers attitude or the situation. Socio-cultural associations of lexical items is another important factor.
· Style, register, dialect: Being able to distinguish between different levels of formality, the effect of different contexts and topics, as well as differences in geographical variation.
· Translation:awareness of certain differences and similarities between the native and the foreign language (e.g. false cognates).
· Chunks of language: multi-word verbs, idioms, strong and weak collocations, lexical phrases.
· Grammar of vocabulary: learning the rules that enable students to build up different forms of the word or even different words from that word (e.g. sleep, slept, sleeping; able, unable; disability).
· Pronunciation:ability to recognise and reproduce items in speech.
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