The Bridge THE BRIDGE-HELPFUL READING LITERACY STRATEGIES | Page 6

2 . R e a d i n g s t r a t e g i e s
2. Reading strategies
Conscious reading understands a group of strategies which have recently been a frequent
topic. It is about skills and ways of getting to understand the reading text. Understanding is
the basis for learning, research, analysing, teaching, writing, creating.
Due to the importance of knowing reading strategies, one of the main teacher’s jobs is to
teach their students these strategies. The best way to teach the strategies is by using the
method of gradual responsibility transfer, i.e. the teacher first has to demonstrate the use of
a certain strategy and explain why and how he is doing it 3 .
Paris, Wasik and Turner (1996) categorise the reading strategies based on the chronological
component: whether they are used before, during or after reading and some of them can be
used in all the stages. The aim of these strategies is to activate ex isting knowledge, predict
the upcoming text, identifying the main idea, making conclusions, scanning the text,
contemplating about what was read, making a personal attitude towards the content of the
text, be critical whether or not the text is well written, interesting and informative 4 .
Karol Visinko (2014) 5 says the reading strategies we use while teaching are: applying
previous knowledge, reading supervision to check understanding, making visual
presentations, answering questions, making conclusions and/or interpretations, identifying
main ideas, connecting different parts of the text, summarizing, predicting, scanning the text
and cooperative learning.
From our reading experience we know that we are more successful at reading if we use
more strategies combined. It is crucial for a teacher, while teaching reading strategies, to
clearly point out which strategy is worked on at which point, what is it used for, and what
are its benefits.
3 http://www.azoo.hr/images/izdanja/citanje/04.html
4 http://www.azoo.hr/images/izdanja/citanje/04.html
5 Visinko,
K. Čitanje, poučavanje i učenje. Zagreb ꞉ Školska knjiga, 2014.
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