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Reading and Understanding

Reading is considered to be an important receptive skill. It can be first thought of as a mechanical or a physical activity. Also it involves decoding and understanding. It is searching for meaning. The experts have given some common views on reading.

They are given below:

• Reading is responding to a fact actively
• Reading is trying to find the meaning of words being read
• Reading is making relationship between words
• The three elements of reading process are-
• The reader
• The text
• The writer

While reading there is a lot of activities that take place simultaneously and it is difficult for us to arrive at single comprehensive definition of reading. Reading is the active process of understanding print and graphic text. Reading is a thinking process. Reading develops imagination and creative side of the people. Reading helps to develop our self-image.

Reading Strategies

Effective readers use strategies to comprehend the text the read before, while, and reading after reading.

There are four types of reading:

1. Skimming
2. Scanning
3. Intensive Reading
4. Extensive Reading

Close Reading

Close reading is thoughtful, critical analysis of a text that focuses on significant details or patterns in order to develop a deep, precise understanding of the text’s form, craft, meanings, etc. It is a key requirement of the Common Core State Standards and directs the reader’s attention to the text itself.

Close reading includes:

Using short passages and excerpts

• Diving right into the text with limited pre-reading activities
• Focusing on the text itself
• Rereading deliberately
• Reading with a pencil
• Noticing things that are confusing
• Discussing the text with others
• Think-Pair Share or Turn and Talk frequently
• Small groups and whole class Responding to text-dependent questions
• Responding to text-dependent questions

Close reading is a way of analyzing a text that involves careful attention to a short passage or poem. When you conduct a close reading, you focus on a specific section of text and explain how language is used and/or how an author builds an argument. This attention to detail allows you to assess and discuss the larger themes or concerns of the text as a whole.

An effective close reading will discuss HOW the selected passage communicates meaning (what poetic or rhetorical strategies are used) as well as address WHY these strategies are used in this particular way—what is the author trying to communicate to the reader? What decisions has the author made?

When asked to produce a close reading of a text, students are often unsure where to begin. Below are some strategies you might find useful when attempting to begin the process of close reading.

1. Reading Comprehension:
2. Reading Comprehension
3. Summary Paraphrasing
4. Analysis and Interpretation
5. Translation (from Indian language to English and vice-versa)

I. Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension is the ability to process text, understand its meaning, and to integrate it with what the reader already knows.^[1][2] Fundamental skills required in efficient reading comprehension are knowing meaning of words, ability to understand meaning of a word from discourse context, ability to follow organization of passage and to identify antecedents and references in it, ability to draw inferences from a passage about its contents, ability to identify the main thought of a passage, ability to answer questions answered in a passage, ability to recognize the literary devices or propositional structures used in a passage and determine its tone, to understand the situational mood (agents, objects, temporal and spatial reference points, casual and intentional inflections, etc.) conveyed for assertions, questioning, commanding, refraining etc. and finally ability to determine writer's purpose, intent and point of view, and draw inferences about the writer (discourse-semantics).

An individual's ability to comprehend text is influenced by their skills and their ability to process information. If word recognition is difficult, students use too much of their processing capacity to read individual words, which interferes with their ability to comprehend what is read. There are a number of reading strategies to improve reading comprehension and inferences, including improving one's vocabulary, critical text analysis (intertextuality, actual events vs. narration of events, etc.) and practicing deep reading.^[5]

II. Paraphrase

When you paraphrase, using your own words you are explaining your source's argument, following its line of reasoning and its sequence of ideas. The purpose of a paraphrase is to convey the meaning of the original message and, in doing so, to prove that you understand the passage well enough to restate it. The paraphrase should give the reader an accurate understanding of the author's position on the topic. Your job is to uncover and explain all the facts and arguments involved in your subject.

The paraphrase:

• Alters the wording of the passage without changing its
• Retains the basic logic of the
• Retains the basic sequence of
• And it can even retain the basic examples used in the
• Most importantly, it accurately conveys the author's meaning and

III. Summary

A summary restates in your own words only the author's main ideas, omitting all the examples and evidence used in supporting and illustrating those points. The function of a summary is to represent the focus and emphasis of a relatively large amount of material in an efficient and concise form.

In your own words:

• State the thesis,
• main arguments and
• Conclusion of the original

In both the paraphrase and summary, the author's meaning and opinion are retained. However, in the case of the summary, examples and illustrations are omitted. Summaries can be tremendously helpful because they can be used to encapsulate everything from a long narrative passage of an essay, to a chapter in a book, to an entire book.

IV. Analysis and Interpretation:

Activities for Analysis and Interpretation enable students to analyze and interpret the text. Activities should include questions that go beyond the literal meaning of the text, as well as questions that relate to relevant literary terms. In addition, activities should include questions that relate to the specific higher-order thinking skills (HOTS). HOTS need to be taught explicitly. HOTS can be taught before, during or after reading a text. Decisions about when to teach them are driven by the following considerations:

1. The text being studied: length of text, theme, setting,
2. The choice of HOTS being introduced: Some HOTS cannot be taught after a text has been read (e.g. prediction) while others cannot be taught before the class has finished reading the text (e.g. synthesis).
3. The level of the Teacher

V. Translation

Translation is the communication of meaning from one language (the source) to another language (the target). Translation refers to written information, whereas interpretation refers to spoken information.

The purpose of translation is to convey the original tone and intent of a message, taking into account cultural and regional differences between source and target languages.

Translation has been used by humans for centuries, beginning after the appearance of written literature. Modern-day translators use sophisticated tools and technologies to accomplish their work, and rely heavily on software applications to simplify and streamline their tasks. Organizations around the world, encompassing a multitude of sectors, missions, and mandates, rely on translation for content as diverse as product labels, technical documentation, user reviews, promotional materials, annual reports, and much, much more.

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