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Friday, April 15, 2011

sekedar santai di selang jumat

Assalamualaikum wr wb

Jumat, mungkin segenlincir umat muslim seluruh dunia paling men-spesialkan hari yang penuh rahmat.
Hari yang juga menjadi siang yng asyik bwt para akhwat nongkrong sembari nggu ikhwan sholat..
Uhui..
Kayak siang ini ni.. ...
Makan, ngobrol, ngegosip, smbil bla bla bla....

So, met jumatan ceria aja yahhhh... :)

Wassalam

Teaching ESL Reading


Effective language instructors show learners how they can adjust their reading behavior to deal with a variety of situations, types of input, and reading purposes. They help learners develop a set of reading strategies and match appropriate strategies to each reading situation. Strategies that can help learners read more quickly and effectively include:
  • Previewing: reviewing titles, section headings, and photo captions to get a sense of the structure and content of a reading selection
  • Predicting: using knowledge of the subject matter to make predictions about content and vocabulary and check comprehension; using knowledge of the text type and purpose to make predictions about discourse structure; using knowledge about the author to make predictions about writing style, vocabulary, and content
  • Skimming and scanning: using a quick survey of the text to get the main idea, identify text structure, confirm or question predictions
  • Guessing from context: using prior knowledge of the subject and the ideas in the text as clues to the meanings of unknown words, instead of stopping to look them up
  • Paraphrasing: stopping at the end of a section to check comprehension by restating the information and ideas in the text
Tutors can help learners to understand when and how to use reading strategies in several ways:
  • By modeling the strategies aloud, talking through the processes of previewing, predicting, skimming and scanning, and paraphrasing. This shows learners how the strategies work and how much they can know about a text before they begin to read word by word.
  • By allowing time in class for group and individual previewing and predicting activities as preparation for in-class or out-of-class reading. Allocating class time to these activities indicates their importance and value.
  • By using cloze (fill in the blank) exercises to review vocabulary items. This helps learners learn to guess meaning from context.
  • By encouraging learners to talk about what strategies they think will help them approach a reading assignment, and then talking after reading about what strategies they actually used. This helps learners develop flexibility in their choice of strategies.
When language learners use reading strategies, they find that they can control the reading experience, and they gain confidence in their ability to read the language.
Reading to Learn
Reading is an essential part of language instruction at every level because it supports learning in multiple ways.
  • Reading to learn the language: reading material is language input. By giving learners a variety of materials to read, instructors provide multiple opportunities for learners to absorb vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, and discourse structure as they occur in authentic contexts.
     
  • Learners thus gain a more complete picture of the ways in which the elements of the language work together to convey meaning.
  • Reading for content information: learners' purpose for reading in their native language is often to obtain information about a subject they are studying, and this purpose can be useful in the language learning classroom as well. Reading for content information in the language classroom gives learners both authentic reading material and an authentic purpose for reading.
  • Reading for cultural knowledge and awareness: reading everyday materials that are designed for native speakers can give learners insight into the lifestyles and worldviews of the people whose language they are studying. When learners have access to newspapers, magazines, and Web sites, they are exposed to culture in all its variety, and monolithic cultural stereotypes begin to break down.
When reading to learn, learners need to follow four basic steps:
  • Figure out the purpose for reading. Activate background knowledge of the topic in order to predict or anticipate content and identify appropriate reading strategies.
  • Attend to the parts of the text that are relevant to the identified purpose and ignore the rest. This selectivity enables learners to focus on specific items in the input and reduces the amount of information they have to hold in short-term memory.
  • Select strategies that are appropriate to the reading task and use them flexibly and interactively. Learners' comprehension improves and their confidence increases when they use top-down and bottom-up skills simultaneously to construct meaning.
  • Check comprehension while reading and when the reading task is completed. Monitoring comprehension helps learners detect inconsistencies and comprehension failures, helping them learn to use alternate strategies.
Use pre-reading activities to prepare learners for reading:
Perhaps the most important step for effective reading instruction is providing your learners with pre-reading instructional activities. The activities you use during pre-reading may serve as preparation in several ways. During pre-reading you may:
  • Assess what learners already know about the topic
  • Give learners the background knowledge necessary for comprehension of the text, or activate the existing knowledge that the learners possess
  • Clarify any cultural information which may be necessary to comprehend the passage
  • Make learners aware of the type of text they will be reading and the purpose(s) for reading
  • Provide opportunities for group or collaborative work and for class discussion activities
Sample pre-reading activities include:
  • Using the title, subtitles, and divisions within the text to predict content and organization or sequence of information
  • Looking at pictures, maps, diagrams, or graphs and their captions
  • Talking about the author's background, writing style, and usual topics
  • Skimming to find the theme or main idea and eliciting related prior knowledge
  • Reviewing vocabulary or grammatical structures
  • Reading over the comprehension questions to focus attention on finding that information while reading
  • Constructing semantic webs (a graphic arrangement of concepts or words showing how they are related)
  • Doing guided practice with guessing meaning from context or checking comprehension while reading
Pre-reading activities are most important at lower levels of language proficiency and at earlier stages of reading instruction. As learners become more proficient at using reading strategies, you will be able to reduce the amount of guided pre-reading and allow learners to do these activities themselves.

(Adapted from materials developed by The National Capital Language Resource Center, Washington, DC.)

Thursday, April 14, 2011

CRITICAL READING STRATEGIES

Here I present seven critical reading strategies that I have shamelessly stolen from someone else. These are
strategies that you can learn readily and then apply not only to the reading selections in this class, but also to
your other college reading. Although mastering these strategies will not make the critical reading process an
easy one, it can make reading much more satisfying and productive and thus help you handle difficult material
well and with confidence.
Fundamental to each of these strategies is annotating directly on the page: underlining key words, phrases, or
sentences; writing comments or questions in the margins; bracketing important sections of the text;
constructing ideas with lines or arrows; numbering related points in sequence; and making note of anything
that strikes you as interesting, important, or questionable.
Most readers annotate in layers, adding further annotations on second and third readings. Annotations can be
light or heavy, depending on the reader's purpose and the difficulty of the material.

Previewing: Learning about a text before really reading it.
Previewing enables readers to get a sense of what the text is about and how it is organized before
reading it closely. This simple strategy includes seeing what you can learn from the headnotes or
other introductory material, skimming to get an overview of the content and organization, and
identifying the rhetorical situation.

Contextualizing: Placing a text in its historical, biographical, and cultural contexts.
When you read a text, you read it through the lens of your own experience. Your understanding of
the words on the page and their significance is informed by what you have come to know and value
from living in a particular time and place. But the texts you read were all written in the past,
sometimes in a radically different time and place. To read critically, you need to contextualize, to
recognize the differences between your contemporary values and attitudes and those represented in the
text.
Questioning to understand and remember: Asking questions about the content.
As students, you are accustomed (I hope) to teachers asking you questions about your reading. These
questions are designed to help you understand a reading and respond to it more fully, and often this
technique works. When you need to understand and use new information though it is most beneficial
if you write the questions, as you read the text for the first time. With this strategy, you can write
questions any time, but in difficult academic readings, you will understand the material better and
remember it longer if you write a question for every paragraph or brief section. Each question should
focus on a main idea, not on illustrations or details, and each should be expressed in your own
words, not just copied from parts of the paragraph.
Reflecting on challenges to your beliefs and values: Examining your personal responses.
The reading that you do for this class might challenge your attitudes, your unconsciously held beliefs,
or your positions on current issues. As you read a text for the first time, mark an X in the margin at
each point where you fell a personal challenge to your attitudes, beliefs, or status. Make a brief note
in the margin about what you feel or about what in the text created the challenge. Now look again at
the places you marked in the text where you felt personally challenged. What patterns do you see?

Outlining and summarizing: Identifying the main ideas and restating them in your own words.
Outlining and summarizing are especially helpful strategies for understanding the content and
structure of a reading selection. Whereas outlining revels the basic structure of the text, summarizing
synopsizes a selection's main argument in brief. Outlining may be part of the annotating process, or it
may be done separately (as it is in this class). The key to both outlining and summarizing is being able
to distinguish between the main ideas and the supporting ideas and examples. The main ideas formthe backbone, the strand that hold the various parts and pieces of the text together. Outlining the main
ideas helps you to discover this structure. When you make an outline, don't use the text's exact
words.
Summarizing begins with outlining, but instead of merely listing the main ideas, a summary
recomposes them to form a new text. Whereas outlining depends on a close analysis of each
paragraph, summarizing also requires creative synthesis. Putting ideas together again -- in your own
words and in a condensed form -- shows how reading critically can lead to deeper understanding of
any text.

Evaluating an argument: Testing the logic of a text as well as its credibility and emotional impact.
All writers make assertions that want you to accept as true. As a critical reader, you should not accept
anything on face value but to recognize every assertion as an argument that must be carefully
evaluated. An argument has two essential parts: a claim and support. The claim asserts a conclusion --
an idea, an opinion, a judgment, or a point of view -- that the writer wants you to accept. The support
includes reasons (shared beliefs, assumptions, and values) and evidence (facts, examples, statistics,
and authorities) that give readers the basis for accepting the conclusion. When you assess an
argument, you are concerned with the process of reasoning as well as its truthfulness (these are not
the same thing). At the most basic level, in order for an argument to be acceptable, the support must
be appropriate to the claim and the statements must be consistent with one another.

Comparing and contrasting related readings: Exploring likenesses and differences between texts to
understand them better.
Many of the authors we read are concerned with the same issues or questions, but approach how to
discuss them in different ways. Fitting a text into an ongoing dialectic helps increase understanding of
why an author approached a particular issue or question in the way he or she did.

Friday, April 08, 2011

LYRIC: NOT WITH ME- BONDAN PRAKOSO FEAT FADE2BLACK

Lirik Lagu Bondan Prakoso & Fade 2 Black Not With Me
Album: For All

Titz
I'm walking up from my summers dreams again
try to thinking if you're alright
then I'm shattered by the shadows of your eyes
knowing you're still here by my side
*reff:
I can see you if you're not with me
I can say to my self if you're OKAY
I can feel you if you're not with me
I can reach you my self, yuo show me the way
*courtesy of LirikLaguIndonesia.net
life was never be so easy as it seems
'till you come and bring your love inside
no matter space and distance make it look so far
still I know you're still here by my side
back to *reff

Bondan:
yea..you've made me so alive ,you give the best for me..love and fantasy
yeah..and i never feel so lonely, coz you're always here with me..yeah..always here with me
back to *reff
I'm walking up from my summers dreams again
try to thinking if you're alright
then I'm shattered by the shadows of your eyes
knowing you're still here by my side