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Teaching Second Language learning
Journal assignment2

English Education Kim Hee jae.

During taking this course, I could learn a lot of reading skills that I haven’t known. Considering my university life, I have had many difficulty of reading for lacking reading skills although my major is English education. Frankly speaking, I am so regretful to studying English reading skills. However, I also have a question that all reading skills are useful to me or students.

Firstly, I think that I have rarely used “identify a writer’s technique’ during my English reading. I’m an English reader in the EFL environment such as Korea, I don’t have an ability to consider a writer’s techniques. I think it is important to focus on main topic and contents although the considering of a writer’s technique has an effect on reading comprehension. Frankly, this point is used when some reviewers criticize the reading materials, but most readers don’t need to use this skill as a reader. In briefly, the consideration of technique in reading material is some effective, but it is not a core point to understand the whole contents.

Second, many readers seem to use rarely ‘following the structure of a passage’. Frankly, I don’t understand this skill’s meaning. Usually, most reading materials have the structure ‘introduction-body-conclusion’, so students read the material successively. Most readers don’t have difficulty of understanding the whole contents following this process, so I have an opinion to focus this skill deliberately.

Lastly, I think it is an important skill the most, ‘make inferences of information in a text’. The ultimate purpose of reading is to gain information from reading materials, so readers focus on getting information effectively. In my opinion, readers should improve the ability to find the writer’s intention and information speedy and correctly. Good reader is to consider the reading materials macroscopically, not microscopically.

In conclusion, there are many reading skills, but readers don’t need all skills. By choosing some suitable skills for yourselves, it can be effective to achieve good reader. Of course, it is a difficult task as EFL students, we can achieve our goals if we do our best.