BEGINNING READING SKILLS IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND

The following is a description of a technique for beginning levels of an approach to teaching reading skills. This technique is a very effective tool for introducing students to a variety of reading skills, for creating an awareness of language complexity, while at the same time getting them personally involved in the reading passage at hand. For the teacher, this technique is a readily available guide to exploita-tion of ad hoc reading assigments, such as an article from one day's newspaper or a passage a student has just written. It also allows teachers to objectively evaluate "reading skills " textbooks, many of which are, in fact, "reading task " textbooks. However, this particular technique is not a panacea for every level of reading nor is it an exhaustive list of all skills, tasks, or question types. Some theoretical considerations For the purposes of this article, we will consider the three reading skills of "scanning, " "skimming, " and "reading for deeper comprehension&quot