Adjust & Vary Reading Speed and Style to Suit the Text Type, One’s Background Knowledge and Purpose in Reading and the Contact Material Needed

Monday, August 18, 2008


1. Activating Background Knowledge through Effective Titles

The dictionary defines tradition as “the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation. “It means that the things we know today are already inside of us- passed on by our parents. All we have to do is tap into them, somehow, to activate them, to use them. The same principle holds true when we are reading.

There are times when your teacher asks you questions about a picture, objects or a word introduce a lesson or before you read a selection. When she/he does that, your teacher is actually activating your background knowledge about something. This skills helps you understand better what you are reading or about to read. Can titles help your activate your background knowledge? How?

Look at the title of this lesson. What comes to your mind as you look at the word tradition? In groups of 5, work on the organizer that follows and give as many ideas, thoughts, or reminiscences that you can link with the word tradition.


2. Scanning Newspaper Headlines to Get Information

Newspapers are very much part of our tradition, culture, and history. In fact, they are very mush part of our lives, among students, the newspaper is a very good source of information, especially so, for their assignments and research work.

One of the important parts of the newspaper is the headline, for it carries or banners the most significant news of the day. As fourth year students, your skills in determining specific meaning and information by scanning the headline is another study skill you have to develop.

Go over the sample headline that follows. What information is given in each of the headline? What do you expect to find in the news stories which the headlines represent? What do these headlines mean to you?

1. Meralco Cuts Rates by 43C
Philippines Sunday Inquirer
August 5, 2007

2. RP kids bag gold, 13 bronzes in HK math tilt
The Philippine Star
August 5, 2007

3. Management Man of the Year is ‘every woman’s impossible dream’
Philippines Sunday Inquirer
August 19, 2007


Activity
Scan the given headlines and match them with the following extracts from the news stories.

Neither the rain nor flood could keep some of the countries top business executives from honoring one of their own. Much of Metro Manila was under water on August 15 when the Inquirer hosted a testimonial dinner in honor of Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, the Ayala Corp. chair and CEO.
Cuna said there were a number of the factors that helped to bring down the power distributor’s costs in July, resulting in the lower rates beginning August.
The Department of Education lauded the students who harvested the awards… “We are proud of our students and this will inspire us in MTG Philippines to continue developing the teaching skills of our math teachers and finding ways to encourage our students to have math skills, “ Myrna Agtarap of MTG- Philippines told the Star.



3. Utilizing Knowledge of the Different Text Types

As you have learned earlier, there are different types that you will come across. Some of them are technical, some journalistic in style, and some literary. Some examples of technical reports are scientific reports, studies. Researches and business reports. Journalistic texts include straight news or features articles, while literary texts include the different literary genre most commonly found in literature books like poems, essays, stories, plays, and novels, among others.

As students, your ability to recognize and use your knowledge of the differences among these text types will help in processing the information that you read.

Find out if you have developed this skill after reading the text that follows.

Do you know of a person who has been raised under different cultures? Which culture has he/she more dominantly shown?

Two in One

Throughout high school I chose to ignore my Filipino side. The most important thing for me was to fit in – wear the latest clothes, listen to the coolest music, speak the slang spoken between friends. If anyone asked me my ethnic background, I emphasized that I was half-white, leaving out that I was half-Filipino. If prodded any further, I said that my mother was born in the Philippines, but that she was definitely mixed with Spanish blood. Somehow I had come to the conclusion that to be American meant I should exclude my Filipino heritage. To include it also might mean I wouldn’t fit in with my teenager – I had never been to the Philippines, I spoke only English, and I practiced no Filipino customs.

Since I came to college I have been exploring the Filipino culture more as part of my own culture. This is a step toward true recognition of my Filipino identify. Though I have been raised in America and have lived the “American” culture, this doesn’t mean I should deny that I am also a Filipino. My Filipino heritage has a claim on me that has been waiting to be explored further – waiting to include me – and I in it. Growing up as mixed Asian and American has made me aware that it isn’t necessary for me to be 100% American. As I begin to study Filipino history and culture through research and from my mother, I integrate this new knowledge with my American culture. This process of integration bridges the two identities that make who I am. Now I no longer say I am all American or all Filipino, instead I can proudly say that I am both.


Comprehension Check
1.What is the text all about?
2.What did the writerfinally realized about the integration of different cultures in him?

3.Which culture, do you think, was predominant in him? Why do you think so?

4.What type of text is it? Why do you think so?

5.Who could have written it? Why do you think so?



4. Using Headlines to Set Purpose in Reading

Headings in text help you see the organization and main ideas of the selection. They also aid you while you skin through the text as you set your purpose in reading.

Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the World.
(An Excerpt)


So it happened that, on March 4, 1933 , this usually thoughtful energetic, and ungainly woman of forty-eight became the first Lady of the Land.

Lorena “Hick” Hicok, who covered politics for the Associated Press, had felt sure that D.D.R’s wife was an exceptional person, and the two women ha become close friends.

But it was not until Eleanor Roosevelt settled into the White house that the whole country began to see what hick had seen. Because she wanted warmhearted figure “to do something for women,: only women reporters were admitted to the First Lady’s weekly press conference, naturally, the handful of female journalist in Washington’s marveled at the American scene.

Mrs. Roosevelt was a person not only needed but also admired. In 1933 alone, three hundred thousand letters, from everywhere in the country were sent to her.

To friends like hick, Mrs. Roosevelt continued wailing about the loss of her personal freedom, what she hated most, she said, was being stared at by mobs of people.

Under ordinary circumstances, Eleanor Roosevelt would have stopped being the First Lady after the 1940 elections, but another terrifying was had begun in Europe the preceding year, and it seemed that the united States might not be able to stay out of the conflict much longer. Because of this great danger the Democrats chose Franklin Roosevelt as their candidate again – event though no other president had ever served more than two terms. Mrs. Roosevelt felt strongly that, for the sake of the nation, her husband be reelected.

“I seem to have a calming effect,” she wrote to her old friend Hick. On countless occasions already – in a coal mine, an auto factory, at the top of the mountain – someone had glanced up and seen a tall woman who looked familiar. Then came the cry: “Gosh, there’s Eleanor!” During the war, American soldiers all over the world had the same experience.

The First Lady became the symbol of home to millions of homesick fighting men. Everywhere she went, she copied down the names and addresses of “the boys” she talked with, and then wrote heart warming noted to their parents in her return.

But on April 12, 1945 , while he was resting in Warm Spring Georgia , Franklin Roosevelt suddenly fainted. A few hours later, while Eleanor was making a speech in Washington , he died.

Outwardly calm, Mrs. Roosevelt waited at the White house for Vice President Harry Truman.

Truman’s eyes were filled with tears. His first words to Mrs. Roosevelt were, “Is there anything I can do for you? Mrs. Roosevelt replied as if her own feelings did not matter: Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.”

Mrs. Roosevelt spent the rest of her life striving to promote the cause of peace. “The First Lady of the World,” President Truman would call her, she continued her work by joining the United Nations.

She retired from the U.N. when she was nearly seventy, but she still continued speaking and traveling. She went to Russia and Japan , to Israel and India , visiting peasants and prime misters, always spreading the message that world peace depends on international friendship.

By the start of the 60s, Mrs. Roosevelt’s health had begun failing. Yet she kept writing and speaking two more years – until a complicated blood disease made her enter a hospital. Shortly after her seventy – eight birthday, on November 7, 1962 , this world-famous woman died.

“She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness,” said Adlai Stevenson. “And her glow ha warmed the world.”
Source: Distant Shore, [n.p.] 1991


Comprehension Check
1.Why do you think Eleanor Roosevelt was called the First Lady of the World?

2.As you were reading the selection, what qualities of Eleanor Roosevelt do you admire most and why?

3.What does the last sentence of the text means?

4.If Eleanor Roosevelt were alive today, what difference, do you think, would she make in this highly modernized world?



SOURCE: Bermudez, V., Cruz, J., Gorgon, E., Nery, R., San Juan, M. English Expressways IV textbook

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