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;