2 credits

Literal Reading is a basic course that introduces the students with the concepts of  reading, reading for pleasure, reading comprehension skills, reading faster and  thinking skills. This course aims to develop students’ reading strategies in order that  they can build their understanding and experience in getting to know with the ideas of  a passage and applies appropriate reading strategies. Through literal reading,  students can read by building the true meaning or the meaning according to what is  written in the text. In this course, students know and understand the content of pre intermediate level fiction and non-fiction texts by using reading comprehension skills  to identify the meaning of lexical words, topics and main ideas from supporting  information, understand explicit information, skim and scan specific information,  understand the communicative value of sentences and recognize the type of writing  (writing organization).  

Reading for Pleasure is designed to build the students’ habit for extensive reading and  give the access for students to choose their own reading material. Students will read  texts they like, such as short stories. Reading for pleasure will motivate students to  read, and at the same time enrich their reading skills according to their interests. 

Reading Comprehension skills will also be introduced in this course. In this part,  students will be familiarized with the specific thinking process, such as scanning,  previewing or predicting, building strong vocabulary, finding topics, paragraphs,  finding organizational patterns, making inferences, and skimming. Each reading skill  is designed to give focused instruction to the students, so that they can apply a certain  reading skill while they are reading. 

Next, reading faster will guide the students who have problems with the reading speed.  The students will do timed reading so that they can improve their comprehension  without reading very slowly, word by word, or often forget the ideas of the passage. Lastly, to understand the text effectively, students will also understand and apply the  way of thinking of native English speakers.  

In the beginning of semester, students will take diagnostic test in order to know the  strengths and weaknesses of the student when they are reading, to know students’  preferences and their previous reading experiences. During the learning process,  students will do individual assignments and peer work. Based on the program  learning outcome, students can show religious, responsible, and academic attitudes  and behaviours that can contribute to improving the quality of life in society, nation and  state. Students are expected to be able to master English according  to the purpose and context of its use. For specific skill, students have the skills to get  the idea of the passage through the implementation of appropriate reading skills  independently and in peer. Also, students can solve the learning problems they face  in accordance with the context to obtain the best learning outcomes and optimal  student development. 

At the end of this course, students will be able to:  

1. develop an understanding of the basic concepts reading for pleasure,

2. develop an understanding of the basic concepts of reading comprehension  skills, 

3. apply the reading speed by using timed-reading activity; 

4. develop the ability to follow logical sequence of ideas in English;