Teaching and Learning Reading Skills Research Paper

Teaching and Learning Reading Skills - Research Paper Example This paper illustrates that various types of media that are available in the society that discourages the students to read more are very accessible. Television, movies, and the like do not require anybody to learn how to read. The mere fact that people should only open their eyes and listen to what is projected on the screen without reading anything leads students to become uninterested in reading. At school, there is not as much student interaction during the reading classes, thus the more the students stay uninterested. Identifying students’ learning strategies are as important as identifying the different teaching strategies that the teachers should implement in a classroom. Children, at a young age, require activities that would make them interested in participating in a reading class. If there are not enough activities that would engage them in learning and developing their skills, more likely, the students would lose focus and resort to disinterest. Specific teaching tec hniques such as additional exercises and activities are necessary to encourage the students to read further. One of the most common teaching techniques that the author has observed among the teachers back in elementary was the focus on the vocabulary words in a reading class rather than the content and comprehension. There are more vocabulary exercises than those that require comprehension and analysis that may have been a lot more interesting for the children than the memorization and use of the words that teachers thought were important for the students to focus on. There are no doubt vocabulary skills should be improved as well, however, reading classes should not put much weight on the definition of the difficult words, but rather, the understanding of the students to the ideas that the reading exercises present. In addition, reading activities were but a part of the language book. Reading comprehension exercises were limited to only a few questions for which no further exercise s are added.