Prelim

• Reading is decoding and understanding written texts:

  • Decoding involves the translation of the symbols of a writing system into spoken words they represent
  • Phonological awareness includes the ability to segment sounds, rhyme, and identify syllables
  • Alphabetic knowledge or The Alphabetic Principle is the understanding that letters represent speech sounds
  • Orthographic knowledge is the understanding of the writing system to represent language, including spelling, punctuation, and capitalization
• Understanding written texts is determined by factors like reading purpose, context, nature of the text, readers' strategies and knowledge:

  • Purposes can include being entertained, getting information, understanding ideas or theories, understanding the author's viewpoint, and supporting one's view
  • Context refers to the set of circumstances (social, cultural, political, historical) that affect the meaning and interpretation of a text
  • Nature of the text includes structure, purpose (informative, persuasive, argumentative), context, audience, and whether it's academic or non-academic
  • Reader's Schema involves formal schema (knowledge of text types, genres, structures), linguistic schema (knowledge about vocabulary and grammar), content schema (knowledge of the text's content area), and cultural schema (set of beliefs, customs, attitudes, etc.)
• Critical reading is an analytic activity where the reader rereads a text to identify patterns of elements like information, values, assumptions, and language usage throughout the discussion:

  • These elements are tied together in an interpretation, asserting an underlying meaning of the text as a whole
• Critical reading involves questioning the circumstances of the publication of a piece of writing, evaluating the author's conclusions and evidence, comparing and contrasting the text with existing knowledge, and assessing its strengths, weaknesses, and general validity
• Critical reading is the ability to arrive at the author's main ideas
• Critical reading is done when the reader analyzes the material read and questions the validity of inferences drawn
• Critical reading emphasizes higher thought processes related to the selection-rejection of ideas, the relationships between ideas, and the organization of information
• Critical reading is the ability to process text, understand its meaning, and integrate it with what the reader already knows
• Reading comprehension is essential for developing higher academic self-confidence, improving writing skills, developing critical thinking and analytical skills, improving problem-solving skills, increasing empathy and understanding, enhancing memory and recall, and enhancing concentration and focus
• A sigmoid curve is a mathematical function shaped like an S, commonly used to model the growth of a population or the spread of a disease

  
• Reading comprehension benefits include improving memory and recall by actively processing information as you read, enhancing concentration and focus by understanding the material, and filtering distractions
• Academic texts:

  • Written by experts or scholars in a field
  • Undergo the peer-review process
  • References are organized and compiled
  • Considered primary sources
• Questions to consider about academic texts:

  • Who wrote it?
  • Who is it written for?
  • Where is it published?
  • Is it peer-reviewed?
• Peer-review is designed to assess the validity, quality, and often the originality of articles for publication
• Examples of academic texts:

  • Research paper: presents the author’s interpretation, evaluation, or argument of a topic or issue
  • Lab report: an account of an experiment and its discoveries
  • Annotated bibliography: a list of citations followed by a brief descriptive and evaluative paragraph
  • Essay: informs the reader about a topic or argues a perspective
• Non-academic texts:

  • Editorial: presents the newspaper's opinion on an issue
  • Blog post: offers regularly updated content about a topic
  • Novel: a narrative work of prose fiction
  • Business letter
• Author's credentials include qualifications to write with authority on a topic, educational background, previous publications, and being considered an authority
• Author's bias can be influenced by financial interests, profession, age, educational background, cultural background, social status, religious background, gender, political belief, and upbringing
• Author's stance is the opinion, position, or point of view of the author
• Academic texts are formal, impersonal, and objective, while non-academic texts are personal, emotional, and subjective
• Academic texts contain citations and references, while non-academic texts often do not
• Critical reading, writing, and thinking involve assessing statements as facts, opinions, or personal ideas, and considering evidence and sources
• Facts are pieces of information that can be confirmed by numerous independent sources and are supported by evidence
• Opinions often contain opinion verbs, adjectives expressing personal feelings, modal verbs, and details provided by the author to support claims
• Statistical evidence is numerical data from reliable sources, while testimonial evidence comes from experts and authorities, and anecdotal evidence is based on individual accounts and narratives
• Testimonial evidences can come from:

  • direct interviews with experts
  • quotes from an expert’s book, paper, or other material
  • one's specialized knowledge if one has the credentials or experience to support it
• Anecdotal evidence is based on individual accounts and narrative, not on scientific research
• Quotations are pieces of text copied directly from another source to support the argument
• Visual items refer to photographs, illustrations, graphs, charts, tables, diagrams, and maps
• When no evidence is presented, the author will attempt to convince the reader by creating empathy
• Critical reading involves skimming the text to get the main idea before reading it in detail
• When skimming, evaluate and identify the author, place of publication, genre, table of contents, title, subtitles, section headings, and other standout information like images, graphs, and tables
• Skimming is used to get the overall view, gist, or impression of the content
• Scanning is used to look for a particular word, phrase, or detail from a text
• The first and last rule in reading is to read the first and last paragraphs of the essay for important information
• Elements to include in written notes: content of reading through summaries, paraphrasing, and quoting important phrases, and reaction to the content including emotional reactions and questions
• Types of written notes can be linear, diagrammatic, or annotations
• A term is a concrete and fixed definition used to represent or refer to concepts
• A concept is an abstract or general idea that represents a category, class, or notion
• Outlining is the skeleton of the text pinpointing the main ideas