Developing Materials for Reading and Writing Skills Essay

Developing Materials for Reading and Writing Skills - Essay Example Developing Materials for Reading and Writing Skills On the other hand, the skill of writing is difficult when compared to reading because writing requires more effort in terms of correctness of grammar, use, or appropriacy of expression, punctuation, spelling, and of comprehension on the reader's part. But, I think if a reader has world knowledge and has a habit of reading a range of texts across different domains, s/he will be able to comprehend unfamiliar texts with ease. This paper is presented with an assumption that reading texts of various genres is likely to enhance the writing ability of a student because a fluent reader's word knowledge as well as knowledge of the academic texts is considered to be high, as aptly reported by (Kintsch, 1998) that skilled readers are good decoders with an ability to recognize words twice as fast as unskilled readers. Therefore, I believe that the teacher's approach towards classroom instruction should focus on various academic genres, and in integrating reading and writing skills that help students develop relevant academic vocabulary used across various disciplines. Studies also indicate that readers' knowledge in a domain helps in understanding the text better than readers with little or no knowledge in a domain (Sampson, 2003). However, the ever changing scenario in education and teaching approaches nudges the students to learn various reading and writing strategies that would help them succeed academically. At the same time, teachers and researchers continue to churn out various curricula, and device a variety of reading strategies in order to determine the most effective strategy that would help students to be effective learners. Though, these strategies (Simpson, 2000) were assumed to be part of a hidden curriculum, realizing their importance various studies have been carried out since 1960 till today by researchers. As (Simpson, 2000) pointed out that "The advantages of teaching strategies within a context are numerous. Students can learn how to define and interpret academic tasks, establish goals, and select the appropriate strategies, and then evaluate the utility of those strategies in relationship to the specific contexts". Along side, latest research trends and best practices continue to evolve based on sound theory and research. The skill of reading The purpose of reading can be classified into two categories depending on what they are read for - for pleasure or for information. Similarly, the purpose of reading varies from situation to situation and from text to text. Since reading is an active process, a reader's understanding of any text depends on the application of mental faculties. Therefore, the reader should have the knowledge of the writing system, the language, the ability to interpret, the knowledge of the world and a reason for reading. Thus, while reading a reader interacts with a text decodes it and constructs meaning. In the process, what the reader constructs depends on what the writer writes. On the contrary, poor or passive readers lack certain abilities as (Farr, 2003) stated that poor readers fail to relate with background knowledge, make interpretations, or understand the purpose of reading, in short they do not think while reading. A number of reading strate