Intensive Reading

What it is

How it looks

Characteristics:

Materials:

Skills developed:

           -word attack skills


           -text attack skills
           -non-text information

Activities:

Intensive reading exercises may include:


Munby (1979) suggests four categories of questions that may be used in intensive reading. These include:

  1. Plain Sense -  to understand the factual, exact surface meanings in the text
  2. Implications - to make inferences and become sensitive to emotional tone and figurative language
  3. Relationships of thought - between sentences  or paragraphs
  4. Projective - requiring the integration of information from the text to one's own background information

Note that  questions may fall into more than one category.

Assessment:

Assessment of intensive reading  will take the form of  reading tests and quizzes. 
The most common  systems  of questioning are multiple-choice and free-response.
Mackay (1968) , in his book  
Reading in a Second Language, reminds teachers that the most important objective in the reading class  should NOT be the  testing of the student to see if they have understood. Teachers  should, instead, be spending most of the time training the student to understand what they read. 

When it is used

           - logical argument
           - rhetorical pattern of text
           - emotional, symbolic or social attitudes and purposes of the author
           - linguistic means to an end

 Role of the teacher

Advantages

Disadvantages