Learning Reaflection

English Reading Strategies 

 

What did I get from this course?

     This course taught me about the way to read faster, how to find the answers, obstacles that I have when I read, new knowledges and vocabularies from text, grammar such as part of speech, writing skill is better than before, and review the lesson everyweek.

     I found easy and difficult in the lesson. In my oppinion 'West meets East' is the most difficult lesson and 'Healty Diet' is the easiest lesson but 'Read faster' is the best for me because this lesson showed us about obstacles to faster effective reading and hint for reading practice. It can help us improve our reading skill and understand why we read slowly.

What reading strategies did I use in reading text?
- Skimming
- Scanning
- Think of the passage as a whole
- Pay attention to paragraph structure
- Guessing word meaning that you don't know from the context
- Don't stop and re-read word

      Absolutely, I had problems when I read. Most problems are vocabularies and can't find the correct main idea from the text. 

How did I solve the problems?
    
     Before I learned 'Read faster' I usually used a dictionnary and now I guess from the context and when I can't find the correct main idea, I prepare and practice myself by read a lot and sometimes I did the exercise before teacher assigned.


My attitudes for this course
   
     I have studied this course for 15 weeks. Before I studied, I hardly ever read in English because it's too hard to understand and make me feel unhappy. I tried to open my mind to learn it everytime. I know our teacher, she tried to teach us too. I'm very sorry to our teacher because sometimes I was bored to study and did'n pay attention to her. However, I would like to say thank you to her for everything that she did for us likes she told her experiences to advise us how to improve ourselves, she has encouraged us in everything, she tried to find the best way that students would like to study something like that.

Week 15 : Extensive reading

16 November 2015

Extensive reading

     This is last week for studying English reading strategies. The last lesson that we studied was 'Extensive reading'

What did I get from this lesson?

The article is Simply read. It is research on English language reading with a group og English language students in Japan. They had previously failed and disliked studying English.
The special class was an extensive reading course. Extensive reading is simply reading a lot of English at a fairly easy level. After the experiment, The students considerably improved in English and many enjoyed the class.

How can extensive reading help you?

- Helps you improve reading skills
- Improves reading speed by reading enjoyable and easy texts
- Improves your writing skills without even practicing writing at all
- Helps speaking skills, as well as listening skills to a lesser extend
- Tend to have high TOEFL/TOEIC scores
- It is one of the way to learn language
 

  

     We answered the questions in sheet, frist I read the question and then I found the answers by see the sub-heading and skimming texts in that paragraph. It was not too hard when I read it because vocabularies are easy but when I didn't know some word, I found meaning from the context. This strategy, I studied from read faster lesson.

 

Week 14 : The ASEAN Community 2015 and Extensive reading

9 November 2015

The ASEAN Community 2015

Today we studied 'The ASEAN Community 2015'. First, teacher answered the questions and told us to write the answers on the board.

Then teacher ordered us to work in groups about 4-5 person per group. The first topic that we got from her was 'The impact of the ASEAN Community'. My group has Phetcharat,Ruchira,Mechawee,Thuchanun and me. I will summarize what we got about this topic to show you.

The impact of the ASEAN Community
- Jobs and opportunities will increase
- ASEAN people can work in any member countries of their choice
- ASEAN citizens will be connected to the world
- Exchange culture, food, languages, products, and etc.
- The developed countries will be crownded because the people will come to find works that countries likes Singapore, The Philippines
- The employer would like employee who can speak English fluently. They will employ the foriegner more than their own country like Thailand and they will effect to people who use English for work such as English teacher, guide, air hostess, and etc.
- Free trade area

Teacher assigned each group to send someone in your group to present the work that we have done. The first lucky person was Phetcharat. She can speak very well. 

The next topic was 'How to prepare yourself for ASEAN Community. The second speaker was Ruchira. I summarized it already, see below

'How to prepare yourself for ASEAN Community

-  You should know about ASEAN information.

-  You should practice English skill, speaking, reading, listening as well as possible.

-  You have to know a culture and taboo of another country in ASEAN.

-  Find a chance to be student exchange for develop of yourself.

-  Not only study English language, but also ASEAN country such as Bahaza language and etc.

-  You should be a role model for your own country.

-  You should respect other opinions, religions and accents.

-  Don’t be shy to speak English to foreigner.

-  Don’t be scared to make a mistake in English practice.

 

      “Practice makes perfect”

 

After that teacher read text about ASEAN twice times and assigned us to make note about what she read. We shared the information that we got from her together to think about what the main idea and presented in front of the class. I presented it by myself.

Liberalization of ASEAN and Thai worker's weekness
ASEAN is coming by 2015. ASEAN Free Trade area makes free movement, duty free, earn better and occupational will come.
Thai worker will be force negative situation. Historical background of Thai worker is monolingual and weekness in English. They need to improve English skill, computer using because It has a lot of competetity.

Thailand, the country had never been under colonial rules so its education system is mainly monolingual.

 

From this activities I felt fun and paid attention all the time in class. I liked to work in group and discuss together with friends. Today I improved reading skill, listening skill, speaking skill, and writing skill even if just a little bit.



Then the new lesson was coming. Spider web was made by us about 'Research on English language reading

She gave us to read the text as fast as possible  and if we met the unknown words, did not stop reading. Before we finished teacher gave us to do exercise in sheet as homework

Week 13 : Read faster! (Continued) and The ASEAN Community 2015

8  November 2015

Read faster!

     Today we started class late because power outage we have to change the building to study. We continued the lesson from last week. First of all teacher asked us about our homework that she assigned from last week. Next she answered the homework, told what we got incorrect answer and edited to correct answer.

     The first passage was 'Obstacles to faster effective reading'. The second passage was 'Hints for reading practice'. We read the passage from beginning to end by do not stop and do not go back over what we have read. It was very hard to do because when I read the passage I usually stop to search meaning from dictionary and now I get it that dictionary is unnecessary for speed reading practice. The 2 passages helped us to improve speed reading skill. They told what the problems are and what we should do.


Obstacles to faster effective reading

- Very old people and very young children learn to read in much the same way
- Vocalizing will prevent readers from reading at speeds of more than 280 w.p.m
- They will focus on one word at a time when they pointing to each word
- Some students get discouraged when they first start reading faster, they fail to take in what they have read
- Reading practice material is not interesting and too hard


Hints for speed reading practice

Think of the passage as a whole
- Do not try to take in each word separately
- Skim through a passage first to get the general idea of each paragraph

Pay attention to paragraph structure
- Title and paragraph heading can help you to get the outline of a pasage
- the topic sentence of an information-giving paragraph in English is most often at the beginning
- The closing paragraph of a piece of writing often summarizes the essence of the passage

Dictionary slow you down!
- You will not to use a dictionary
- Context is a indicator of meaning
- Make a note and check later if you want to know what all the word mean.
 

The ASEAN Community 2015

    
     Teacher gave us to answer the names of the member of ASEAN and to write the words on the board about the ASEAN community.

     After that, teacher opened  the video about ASEAN in English version.

     The Associations of Southeast Asian Nations, better known  as ASEAN, was formed in 1967. ASEAN has ten members : Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. The ASEAN community is a place where all the ten countries come together to build a better life for everyone. The three doors of the ASEAN Community are as follows: Peace, Prosperity, and People.

One vision, one identity, one community

Week 12 : Ann Landers (Continued) and Read faster!

2 November 2015

     
     Today, I came to class late. It was my first time and I'm so sorry  but I did it by myself.
     We continued from last week about Ann lander, the advice columnist. Teacher gave us to write the answers on the board and then we helped her to check the answers to find the best answers.

     She read the letters that send to Ann Landers and her responses and translated it to help us understand what the problem  is and  Ann landers's advice is. We spent a long time to do this exercise

     Then we did next exercise. We read  the to Ann Lenders and gave our advice to the writer and shared how to we advise with our partner.

     After that we started the new lesson. It was 'Read faster'. Teacher gave us to think what is your obstacles to faster reading?. We wrote spider web on the board and I wrote one.

     We answered the question do you agree with? and tick in the box what statements we agree. We read the text ' Obstactles to faster effective reading 'and chose the answer by skim the passage.

     Today we don't have enough time to read passage and do exercises. Teacher assigned us to do sheet for next class.