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Reading _ Writing skills_8th Class

The document provides tips for improving reading skills, emphasizing techniques such as annotating, skimming, and scanning for specific information. It explains the importance of context clues in understanding unfamiliar vocabulary and outlines steps to infer meanings. Additionally, it highlights the distinction between reading for general understanding and specific details.

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dhruvsamin005
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6 views9 pages

Reading _ Writing skills_8th Class

The document provides tips for improving reading skills, emphasizing techniques such as annotating, skimming, and scanning for specific information. It explains the importance of context clues in understanding unfamiliar vocabulary and outlines steps to infer meanings. Additionally, it highlights the distinction between reading for general understanding and specific details.

Uploaded by

dhruvsamin005
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Reading

& Writing Skills


ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND
COMMUNICATION
8 Tips to Help Students Build Better Reading Skills

Practice
Annotate and
Personalize problem
highlight text.
the content. ... solving skills.
...
...
Incorporate Understand
Set reading
more senses. common
goals. ...
... themes. ...

Read in
portions. ...
What is reading for specific information?
Reading for specific information involves understanding what
information, or what kind of information, you're looking for,
locating it and then reading the relevant part carefully to get a full
and detailed understanding.
Skimming is reading rapidly in order to get a general overview of
the material. Scanning is reading rapidly in order to find specific
facts. While skimming tells you what general information is within
a section, scanning helps you locate a particular fact.

The main reading skill employed is scanning. This involves moving


very quickly over the text, ignoring unknown vocabulary and
focusing solely on key words, phrases and ideas. Scanning should
enable you to find the specific information. Then read that part
more carefully to get a full understanding.
Reading for general
understanding

Skimming is one of the tools you


can use to read more in less time.
Skimming refers to looking only for
the general or main ideas and works
best with non-fiction (or factual)
material.
Inferring meaning of unfamiliar words from context
One way to increase your understanding of the vocabulary in
reading material is to use context clues that surround the word
Context clues are hints you can find about a word’s meaning by
looking carefully at the other words in a sentence.
Example:
Gerard was so hungry that for lunch he consumed three sandwiches
and a quart of milk.

The sentence gives context clues (hints) that Gerard was hungry.
He did something with 3 sandwiches and a quart of milk. You can
assume that consume must mean “ate and drank.”
Meaning Stated With Punctuation

The simplest kind of context clue is when


punctuation marks have been used to set
off the meaning of a key word from the
rest of the words in the sentence.

Some of the punctuation used to set off


meanings are:
a dash or hyphen -- parentheses ( )
commas
Context
Sometimes you can guess the meaning of new words or phrases based on the
words around it (the context).
Follow these steps to help you guess the meaning of an unknown word:

Step 1 Identify the part of speech.

Step 2 Look at the words and sentences around the unknown word. Try and find
its synonym or antonym in the text.

Step 3 Look at information given later in the sentence to give you a clue.

Step 4 Look to see if there is a smaller, more common word in the unknown
word.
Step 5 Try a synonym in the sentence. Does it make sense?
For example, you can guess the meaning of, combatants in this reading passage by
following the steps above.

In the 1940s a group of peasants in northwest China unearthed fragments of a clay


soldier, the first evidence of what turned out to be one of the greatest archaeological
discoveries in modern times. These terracotta ‘combatants’ were buried underground
near the unexcavated tomb of a self-proclaimed Chinese Emperor who believed the
warriors in this 10,000 strong army would protect him in the afterlife.
Step 1combatants is a noun because it is plural, and terracotta is an adjective
Step 2soldier, warriors, army are all synonyms that help me understand the word
Step 310,000 strong army would protect him… tells me that the word is something to
do with fighters and the military
Step 4combatants has the common word ‘combat’ which I know means to fight
Step 5These terracotta warriors/soldiers were buried underground… makes sense in
the sentence when I replace combatants with a synonym

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