A Journey to Reach Critical Reading and Effective Writing: A Text-Based Approach

 

Luciana

 

 

Having intensively examined thirteen English departments in various universities in Indonesia, including my own institution, I find that the four-semester teaching of reading has not been successfully empowering the student to be ‘a reader’. The reading skills learnt seem to narrowly operate within their reading subject only. The survey conducted to my students shows when confronted with texts of content subjects, most students encounter difficulties in grasping the meaning.

 

In an attempt to probe the problem, I assume that the missing link might stem from the reading instruction fully devoted to the development of reading skills and study behaviors, such as SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review). While these aspects are absolutely of great importance, they do not sufficiently evoke the students’ critical reading.

 

At this point, I contend that the reading instruction centres on how meaning is constructed from and into the text. Such a text-based approach would open the student reading horizon to understand how the intertwining choice of content, language, and the structure of the discussion can lead to conceptual and interpersonal meaning beyond what the text portrays. Adopting this approach to a content subject reading, this study reports and discusses the evolvement of the students’ critical reading. At last, I argue that the students’ deep cognitive processing in search of meaning would be the seeds for the development of their effective writing as to be good writers, they have to be good readers.

 

 

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Luciana. (2004, April). A Journey to reach critical reading and effective writing: A text-based approach. Paper presented at the RELC International Seminar on Approaches to Reading and Writing Instruction, Singapore.

 

 

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