Getting ready to read Learning Zone - Inglés Universidad Metropolitana Título V Campus

Getting ready to read

Learning Zone - Inglés

Universidad MetropolitanaTítulo V Campus

Introduction

• One of many projects we have to do in college includes “reading comprehension”. Here, we will discuss how you will integrate reading strategies to getting ready to read.

Purpose

• The author has a purpose with the text and a message to get across; also, the author will choose the facts and ideas.

The meanings you make as you read

The author’s background & purpose for writing

Your background and purpose for reading

• “In doing this, the author draws on his or her knowledge and feelings about a subject. Obviously, what the author’s write in a text determines what you learn from it”.

Steps to follow before, while & after you read

• “Because what you get out of a text depends on what you already know about the subject, take FOUR STEPS before reading.”

Steps to follow:

1. Previewing before reading –

• Think about all types of titles.

• Skim through the pages, there you may find more information about the text.

• There you will find words and terms that the author repeats; mostly written in bold or italics.

• You will find more information when you see sentences like “ This chapter includes information about…” or “ First we’ll consider… then we’ll consider…”

• Illustrations may give you a clue of what the text is about.

• Margin notes and/or footnotes are very helpful.

Steps to follow:

2. What you already know about & how it relates to you –

• Visualize what you already know.

• A helping tool is to brainstorm. Here, we have a little chart that will show you how to do it.

Brainstorming diagram:

Facts

topics

sentences

ideas

concepts

words

Brainstorming

Steps to follow:

3. Questions to improve your reading –

• Preparing questions and then answer with what you already read.

• A perfect question to start with would be “What do I expect to learn by reading this material?”

Steps to follow:

4. Reading difficulty or load –

• Estimate the amount of time it will get you to read the whole text & what is necessary for you to master it.

• You can predict if the text is “light” or “heavy”.

Read three times:

• How many times do I have to read the text ?

1.Relate yourself with the text.

2.Analyze what you read.

3.Corroborate what you read.

Practice: Read the next couple of paragraphs.

• A Nation on the Move: America Moves West

By: Henry Graff

• After the War of 1812, Americans turned their attention from problems of Europe to the promise of a growing nation. Vast of changes had begun to take place. One of the most exciting of these was the migrating of the people into the region between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. One visitor of the United States said in wonder, “American seems to be breaking up and moving westward.”

• A problem that faced every family deciding to move west was how to go. There was no easy, direct route to follow. Recognizable roads either did not exist or were in such poor condition that after a heavy rain, wagons and horses simply bogged down in the mud.

Introduction

The National Road

• In 1811 the construction of a road, called the Cumberland or National Road, began. This road would stretch from Cumberland, Maryland, to Wheeling, a town in western Virginia. The road opened seven years later, people by the thousands traveled on it, seeking a new life farther west. Conestogas, or covered wagons, filled with goods bound for market used to the road in both directions.

Channels

• In the early 1800’s shipping goods from one section of the country to another was expensive. The National Road had helped to lower this cost. American businesspeople still searched for ways to move freight across the country even more cheaply. A way truly to link the East and the west had to be found. The answer, some thought, was the channel, a waterway dug across land for ships to sail through.

Channels (continue)

• DeWitt Clinton, the governor of New York, began in 1817 to push for the construction of a canal linking the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean. Many people considered Clinton’s “Big Ditch”, as the project was nicknamed, doomed to failure. Finally, the massive project got underway. Eight years later the channel stretched from Buffalo, New York, to Albany, New York, on the Hudson River. The Erie Channel, costing $7 million, paid for itself within nine years. Its immense success encouraged other states to begin channel projects.

Steamboats

• Americans had always used the natural waterways to transport themselves and their goods from one place to another. When a boat was forced to sail against a current of a river, however, it was impossible to be sure how long the trip would take.

• Several Americans worked on an invention – the steamboat – that would greatly aid river travel. They believed that a boat powered by steam engines would be able to move upstream readily against a strong current. Robert Fulton’s Clermont sailed up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany in 1807. At that time, a new age of travel and transport was born. It was also needed was a faster means of transportation across land.

Railroads

• Some Americans were convinced that steam engines could also be used to move wagons faster on land. In 1828, investors in the city of Baltimore began to build a railroad to the Ohio River. The fist spadeful of earth was turned by Charles Carroll, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. The merchants of Baltimore hoped that the railroad would give faster, cheaper service to the West than available.

• By 1840’s railroad building was going on everywhere. During the 1850’s, the amount of railroad track in the United States increased from 9021 miles (14,343 kilometers) to 30,626 miles (49,002 kilometers). The East Coast was now joined to the land beyond the Appalachian Mountain by iron rails.

Practice: Fill the boxes with what you learned from the story.

Subheading What do you predict that section is about?

What do you already know about the text?

What does the text say about this subtopic?

What did you learn about this topic?

Prepared by:

• Nirazette L. Gonzalez Abella

• Cristabel R. Ocasio Ilarraza

Bibliography:

• Book: Reading with meaning• Strategies for college reading

(Fifth edition)

Revisado en mayo 2009.• Revisado por:

• Priscilla J. Pérez Morales

• Prof. María Isaac