Active Reading

Today I have read Using Student-Constructed Questions to Encourage Active Reading written by Ernest Balajthy and published by the International Literacy Association and Wiley. The journal of sorts speaks of how to improve reading skills and how to make sure that you memorise the material. From my reading the journal is made to help students of all ages learn their study material. It involves many steps about the form of the study. The form is to continuously self-question while you read. Continually asking questions about how the text is structured. The journal said that some analysts and schema theorists say that retention is automatic and can be predicted by analysing the text structure, others say that retention is influenced by interacting facts factors:

• 
  The nature of the material
•  The characteristics of the learner
• The learning activities applied
•  And the task by which learning is measured

In order to study the journal properly I used the SQ3R method (skim, question, read, remember, review) which I personally think that his is an effective method if you are reading something and want to remember it.

Use of questions supposing improves text retention which is helpful. The advantage of self-questioning is the role of motivator peaking the interest and directing the readers attention especially if the reading is a long and uninteresting passage. Questioning studies showed the importance of training and practice. Training in self-questioning especially enhances retention for poor readers. Teaching students to make questions for the story structure increases retention of the narrative material.

The journal has named many self-questioning teaching techniques. These techniques are sentence analysis, question-provoking questions, student-led discussion, group competition, acronym study techniques, content-oriented structure exercise, using teacher manuals, question circle, question outline construction, use of exam clue words  

1.  Facts- who, when, where, why, what, define, describe, write, identif
2. Understanding- what is the cause, compare, contrast, distinguish, explain
3.  Analysis- analyse, categorize, classify
4.  Synthesis- create, suggest
5.   Evaluation- decide, evaluate, judge, what do you think?

After reading that journal, I have realized that the author doesn’t seem to be against the techniques that I have used to read the journal written by her. Especially since SQ3R was mentioned in the journal when I read it.

During this reading task one of the most challenging things, I found was reading the journal and trying to put my full attention into reading it. I’m personally not interested in this type of articles/journals so trying to concentrate even while using the techniques was a bit of a challenge.