Journal 3

Discuss readings skills that you have learned in this class, but have rarely used in your reading. Do you think they are really necessary ones for better reading? Why or why not?

Reading is one great habit that can truly change your life forever. Reading can entertain and amuse us, but most of all it enriches us with knowledge, and experiences narrated. Reading purely for leisure is fun as we all know but there exist certain reading skills and strategies, which if mastered at a nascent stage can help us, be better and far more comprehensive readers.

Gordon's (1982) indicates that there are three distincet sets of competencies that a students must develop in order to become an effective reader. Three competencies are; reading skills development, reading comprehension development, and reading research and study skills. In our class, we learnt many reading skills and strategies for better reading and we also covered Gordon's ideas.

Among them, I have used most of skills since I learnt them at school. However, I rarely use reading skills related to word sound such as 'Rhyming words', 'Hard and soft 'c' and 'g', 'Pronunciation key', etc. The reason why I don't use these skills is simple. The other reading skills development are good for understanding the text. such as, by knowing synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, prefix and suffix. I am not used to using these pronunciation related skills in my daily reading time. Of course, I have to use and teach these skills for students, so I use it on study purpose, not as daily habit.