Advanced Reading Skills for Students of English as a Second Language

Reading Skills

1. To follow the ideas and information in readings
   • Follow written instructions
   • Use pre-reading techniques to prepare for a reading task
   • Follow organization of a text
   • Recognize purpose and/or issue overall key idea, main ideas, and key details in expository readings
   • Identify writer’s overall point of view, tone, bias, supporting argument and evidence in opinion readings
   • Identify character, conflict, theme, plot and setting in literature (e.g. short stories)
   • Identify components of a case study and analyze by applying a problem-solving process in case studies
2. To determine meanings of unfamiliar words in course materials
   • Use an English-English dictionary
   • Use word analysis
   • Use context clues within sentences and in surrounding sentences
3. To use library resources to locate materials
4. To use study skills
   • Place text material into visual form
   • Interpret and create visuals such as graphs and tables
   • Prepare study notes
   • Prepare for objective and essay tests
   • Learn content from text/class materials concerning economic, political, cultural, and socially relevant topics
5. Recognize cultural differences and show awareness of the general features of own culture and associated world views

Writing Skills

1. To write formal summaries and paragraphs based on assigned and self-selected readings.

Accuracy

1. To self-monitor for accuracy
   • Use and follow editing symbols
   • Use word processing editing aids (spelling, grammar check, thesaurus)
   • Apply knowledge of parts of speech, sentence elements, specified sentence types, and mechanics
   • Identify and correct errors for specified items
2. To identify and work on as need arises
   • Correctly form and use present perfect and past perfect tenses, present perfect continuous and past perfect continuous tenses
   • Correctly identify and correct sentence structure errors such as run-ons, fragments and missing sentence elements (e.g. missing subject)
   • Correctly identify and correct infinitive/gerund/base form errors
   • Correctly use articles and other determiners
   • All accuracy items from 100 and 200 levels

Classroom Skills

1. To take responsibility for the following:
   • attendance and punctuality
   • class work and assignments
   • participation and teamwork