Different reading styles


Types of Reading Skills | PlanetSpark

  • How To Help Your Child Become A Better Reader

    Reading is the foundation for success. When children develop reading habit early in their lives, they are more likely to be successful in school, work, and life in general.

    That said, learning to read isn’t always an easy task for children, and that’s why it is crucial that you, as a parent, work with your child and encourage the habit of reading early in their lives. Spend time with them to ensure that your child develops the following essential reading skills.

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8 Essential Skills for Reading Success

The different types of reading skills are:

  • Decoding

    Decoding is the ability to sound out words children have heard before but haven’t seen written out. This is a vital step in the reading process as it forms the foundation for other reading skills.

    Decoding heavily relies on an early language skill called phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate different sounds into words. Children develop this awareness when learning about syllables, words, and sounds (phonemes).

  • Phonics

    Phonics is the ability to recognize the connection between sounds and letters they make. This process of mapping the sounds in words to written words is a very important reading skill. Children first decode the words into sounds and encode the sounds into words as they write and spell.

  • Vocabulary

    A good vocabulary is a fundamental part of academic success. This reading skill is necessary to understand the meaning of words, their definitions, and their context.

    The more words a child knows, the better they are at reading and understanding the texts they read.

  • Fluency

    Fluency is the ability to read aloud with understanding, accuracy, and speed. It is a skill needed for good reading comprehension. Kids fluent in reading know how to read smoothly, at a good pace, using proper tone, and without making too many errors.

  • Sentence Construction & Cohesion

    Sentence construction and cohesion may seem like a writing skill, but it’s an essential reading skill. Connecting ideas between and within the sentences are called cohesion, and these skills are essential for reading comprehension.

  • Reading Comprehension

    Understand the meaning of the text – both in storybooks and information books. In fiction books, children imagine the characters and share an emotional and adventurous journey with them. In non-fiction books, children gain new information, which deepens their understanding of new topics and concepts. Reading comprehension is a complex skill that requires time and practice to develop fully.

  • Reasoning & Background Knowledge

    This skill helps the child use the background knowledge to make inferences and draw conclusions. Most readers can relate what they have read to what they know. They can also read between the lines to pull out the information when it’s not literally spelled out in the text.

  • Working Memory & Attention

    These skills are closely related but different and are part of a group of abilities known as executive function. When children read, attention helps them absorb the information from the text, and working memory allows them to retain that information. This helps them gain meaning and build knowledge from what they read.

4 Different Types of Reading Techniques

  • Skimming

    Skimming, sometimes referred to as gist reading, means going through the text to grasp the main idea. Here, the reader doesn’t pronounce each and every word of the text but focuses their attention on the main theme or the core of the text. Examples of skimming are reading magazines or newspapers and searching for a name in a telephone directory.

  • Scanning

    Here, the reader quickly scuttles across sentences to get to a particular piece of information. Scanning involves the technique of rejecting or ignoring irrelevant information from the text to locate a specific piece of information.

  • Intensive Reading

    Intensive reading is far more time-consuming than skimming and scanning as it needs the reader’s attention to detail. It involves close reading that aims at the accuracy of comprehension. Here, the reader has to understand the meaning of each and every word.

  • Extensive reading

    Extensive reading lays more emphasis on fluency and less on accuracy. It usually involves reading for pleasure and is more of an out-of-classroom activity. It is highly unlikely for readers to take up the extensive reading of text they do not like.

4 Common Reading Problems

  • Issues with decoding

    Beginner readers may struggle when they meet new or unfamiliar terms, but typically decoding becomes easier with repeated practice of reading the text out loud. If a child continues to struggle, there may be an underlying difficulty or a physical impairment that does not allow them to hear the sounds or see the letters.

  • Poor comprehension of reading skills

    Some children can read like a pro but may not be able to tell you what they have read. This indicates a problem of incomprehension. These children may find the same difficulty when their teachers or parents read aloud.

  • Speed

    The more children read, the more they expand their vocabulary. They begin to recognize more words by sight, enabling them to read faster. If speed is the issue with your child, slow processing of information could be the problem. Since reading is a cognitively demanding task, it involves holding information in the mind while continuously processing the text. This can exhaust the children with slow processing. Such children may require extra time to complete tasks that require extensive reading.

  • Mixed reading difficulties

    Mixed reading problems in kids include decoding words and difficulty with comprehension. They have challenges when it comes to reading words, retaining information, and understanding the text. These problems could be due to a reading disorder. Although some kids learn slower than others, if you notice any difficulty that affects your child’s daily life, it should be evaluated by a professional.

  • How to Improve Reading Skills of a Child

    Whatever reading problems your child is going through, there are always ways to help. Here are some ways you can help your child overcome their reading problems:

    • Take note of what you are seeing when your child is reading. When you observe your child, you may start seeing patterns. Talk with your child’s teacher or caregiver to find out if they have observed something similar.
    • Work on building reading skills at home. Teach sight words for fluency and quick recall. Use flashcards, point out words on the hoardings, brand names, or store names
    • Always remember that if your child is struggling with any skill, it can make them feel inferior, and that can take a toll on their self-esteem. As your child works on their reading skills, make sure you praise their efforts and celebrate their small wins.
    • Choose books that contain detailed visual illustrations to help your child connect the text with the scene.
    • Get your child enrolled in online classes. PlanetSpark’s programme uses the essential skills for reading success to unlock all aspects of reading focusing on phonics, comprehension, vocabulary, phonemic awareness, and reading for meaning.

7 Reading Techniques for Increasing Learning & Knowledge

Reading is a method of communication that enables a person to turn writing into meaning.

It allows the reader to convert a written text into a meaningful language with independence, comprehension, and fluency, and to interact with the message.

7 Reading Techniques or Styles are the following:
  1. Scanning.
  2. Skimming.
  3. Active Reading.
  4. Detailed.
  5. Speed.
  6. Structure-Proposition-Evaluation
  7. Survey-Question-Read-Recite-Review.

Reading is a great habit that can change human life significantly. It can entertain us; amuse us and enrich us with knowledge and experiences narrated.

There exist some reading techniques, which if mastered at a growing stage can help us, be better and far more comprehensive readers.

These skills might not necessarily be learned as rigid theories or rules but if understood well once they can definitely enhance the reading skills and increase the quality and quantity of output that we get from after reading.

The followings are seven styles/techniques of reading used in different situations:

1. Reading Technique-Scanning

Scanning through the text is a reading strategy that is used for getting some specific points by looking at the whole text.

For highlighting the important points of a book the readers can skim through the summary or the preface or the beginning and end chapters of that book.

For example,

This technique is used for looking up a name from the telephone guidebook.

2. Reading Technique–Skimming

This reading technique is used for getting the gist of the whole text lead. We generally use this technique at the time of reading a newspaper or magazine.

10 Tips to Read Faster with Better ...

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10 Tips to Read Faster with Better Comprehension

Under this technique, we read quickly to get the main points and skip over the detail.

It is useful in getting a preview of a passage before reading it in detail or reviving understandings of a passage after reading it in detail.

Related: 8 Reason Why Reading is Important for a Student

3. Active Reading Style

Active reading aims to get an in-depth understanding of the text. Under this technique, the reader actively involved with the text while reading it.

Getting in-depth knowledge of the text at hand is not possible by reading to skim through or scan through the text.

4. Detailed Reading

This technique is used for extracting information accurately from the whole text. Under this technique, we read every word for understanding the meaning of the text.

In this careful reading, we can skim the text first for getting a general idea and then go back to read in detail. We can use a dictionary to find the meaning of every unfamiliar word.

Related: 15 Techniques to Develop Writing Skill

5. Speed Reading

Speed-reading is actually a combination of various reading methods.

The aim of speed-reading is basically to increase the reading speed without compromising the understanding of the text reading. Some of the strategies used in speed reading are as follows:

  • Identifying words without focusing on each letter;
  • Not to sounding-out all words;
  • Not sub-vocalizing some phrases;
  • Spending less time on some phrases than others;
  • Skimming small sections.

6. Structure-Proposition-Evaluation

This is an interesting reading technique suggested by Mortimer Adler in his book How to Read a Book.

This reading technique is mainly applicable to non-fiction writing. This technique suggests reading as per the three following patterns:

  • Studying the structure of the work;
  • Studying the logical propositions made and organized into chains of inference;
  • Evaluation of the merits of the arguments and conclusions.

7. Reading Techniques: Survey-Question-Read-Recite-Review

This method aims to facilitate a clear understanding of the text that the reader would be able to teach whatever he has learned during the process of reading.

The process involves five different steps, which are as follows:

  • Survey
    The survey involves getting a quick idea of the whole writing piece. For example, reading the introduction or summary of a book will be enough to get an idea of that book.
  • Question
    We are not just reading the words or looking at the words but are actually trying to make out the underlying meaning of the text. So we should prepare questions in our mind and look for the answers while reading the text.
  • Read
    The reader should read selectively if they are looking for any specific.
  • Recite
    The reader should answer the questions in his own words using only the keywords that are required to sum up the complete idea.
  • Review
    The reader should review the entire things in his mind.

Reading is the basic foundation on which academic skills of individuals are built. As we know the paramount importance of reading, it is given the top priority in primary education.

Many believe that reading is a true measure of a person’s success in academics. Most of the subjects taught to us are based on a simple concept – read, understand, analyze, synthesize, and get information.

Text styles - what is it? What are text styles?

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Style is the main element of speech. In fact, this is the “clothing” of the text, its design. And people's clothes say a lot.

A man in a formal suit is probably a business worker, and a guy in sneakers and stretched sweatpants either went out for bread, or is still an athlete.

Similarly, by the stylistic “clothes” of the text, one can understand in what area it “works” – it functions.

Speaking scientifically, style is a system of various language means and ways in which they are organized, which has developed over the entire historical period of the development of the language . The use of each of the established systems is typical for a strictly defined sphere of human communication: for example, the scientific sphere, official business, the sphere of mass media, fiction, or the sphere of communication in everyday life or the Internet.

By the way, note that in some sources text styles are called speech styles . Both phrases are one and the same.

Types of text (speech) styles

Four functional styles have historically developed in the Russian language. Later, the style of fiction emerged from the journalistic style.

Thus, five styles of speech are currently distinguished:

  • scientific,
  • official business,
  • journalistic,
  • artistic,
  • colloquial.

How to distinguish one style from another? For example, a men's business suit is a combination of trousers, shirt, tie, jacket and shoes. And style is also a combination of certain "objects" - elements: words, sentences (syntactic constructions) and text structure.

Characteristics of speech styles

So, how to identify scientific style by “clothes”?

Articles, monographs, dissertations, etc. are written in scientific style. What are its prominent features? Abundant and often unfamiliar terminology. Cumbersome sentences and voluminous half-page paragraphs. Maximum nouns and minimum verbs. Impersonal "we" instead of "I".

How to recognize the official business style?

All official documents are written in this style - from laws to business notes exchanged between employees of government and commercial institutions. This is the language of instructions, reports, reports, and so on. It is characterized by verbal nouns, long sentences, direct word order, rigid logic and extreme accuracy in the presentation of information (to the detriment of ease of reading and ease of perception), the widespread use of clichés and language clichés.

How to recognize the journalistic style?

Publicistic style we meet, first of all, in the media - newspapers, magazines, news websites, articles in public blogs, etc. It is characterized by a strong focus on results - to provide information that will affect the worldview of a large number of people and influence their attitude to social affairs and problems. Therefore, the journalistic style loves abstract words and concepts of great social, political or moral significance, for example, “progress”, “development”, “freedom of speech”, “patriotism”, etc.; actively uses consistency in the presentation of information, imagery, richness of emotions, assessments and calls to action.

How to identify an art style?

Rich expressive and emotional vocabulary. Metaphors and comparisons at every turn. "Tint" words - slang, abusive, outdated. Sentence constructions that are easy to understand (“Darkness”). Bright author's position.

How to recognize the conversational style?

First of all, this is a style for everyday live communication between people. In writing, it is used when the author wants to establish closer, personal contact with his readers. The conversational style often contains personal notes on a blog, selling texts, notes from social networks, etc. It is characterized by lively speech, pronounced expression, colloquial and colloquial words and phrases, colorfulness, high subjectivity and evaluativeness, repetitions, incomplete sentences . Sometimes obscene language is also used.

Thus, when working on a text, it is important to follow the rules - combinations of stylistic elements. Otherwise, you run the risk of being left without a reader, and the manuscript is closed in the table. Why? Are you going to get a job in the office in torn jeans and an elongated T-shirt? It seems not.

So a novel should not be written in a scientific style. However, in an artistic style, you can use elements of each - scientific, colloquial, journalistic ... The main thing is to understand why you are doing this, for what purpose, what effect you want to achieve.

Therefore, in order not to look stupid, learn the features of different styles, their elements and learn how to work with them.

And don't forget - you are greeted by clothes. And not only people, but also texts.

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Benefits of reading books of different genres

By Bryan Ye

High school killed my love of fiction. So I caught up with the self-development craze and started reading the classics: How to Win Friends and Influence People, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, The 48 Laws of Power, and other self-improvement books everyone loves. All year I read only books on self-development. I learned a lot, but at some point I stopped learning. Every author wrote the same thing; each story was already in another book; each book was the same book. I read the same book over and over and over again.

When I read books on self-development, I began to write as someone who tells others to improve their lives. Of course, this was the result of the authors I read passing on their style to me. Since personal development books were the only books I read, the style of their authors was the only style I could write. Then I started reading autobiographies and memoirs. I began to write differently: I added personal stories and descriptions. Later, somewhere on the verge of becoming a voracious reader, I found my love for fiction again. And thus myths, storytelling, rhetoric and other features became part of my writing.

I noticed a pattern: every time I read a book, I studied part of the author's writing style. I took my favorite elements and integrated them into my work. I wanted to improve my writing skills. I unintentionally read books from different genres, and it's time to do it intentionally. It worked.

Explore different styles

The most impressive benefit of reading different genres is that you experience different styles of writing. Of course, each book is unique, but each genre has certain conventions that book authors follow. Every self-development book has an author who tells you what to do; each memoir has deeply personal stories that strike you to the core; every coming-of-age novel has a protagonist who learns from experience.

If you want to write like an author of a particular genre, then of course read only that genre. But for the rest of us who want to find our voice, a little study is very helpful.

Imitate other writers

Humans are imitators, so whether we like it or not, we are going to - in some way - imitate the authors we read. We may not copy entire sentences, stories, or books, but we do copy their themes, style, and storytelling. Most of us take what we can get from an author, mix it with our own writing, and then throw the rest away. And thus, learning different styles of writing helps you develop your own style. You take what you want from different genres (and genres vary widely) and add it to your work.

In 1934, Arnold Samuelson showed up at Ernest Hemingway's door and asked for advice. One of the tasks Hemingway gave Samuelson was to read every book in a long list of classic novels. He told him that reading stories from different authors would teach him how to create different stories.

We can go even further and read different genres. Read the best books in each genre and you'll find out how they create stories in their genres.

I recently read Jamie Marina Lau's Pink Mountain on Locust Island: an experimental story by an aspiring author. Lately I've been reading classic novels and memoirs and it has caused a dramatic shift in perspective. Lau writes in prose that breaks all grammatical rules but conveys the story masterfully. Some of its chapters are only one page long; some of its pages are just one sentence. The book breaks all the conventions historically shaped by the most famous authors and somehow still presents a compelling story. Sure, it's not the best book in the world (is there even one?), but I learned more from this book than I would from reading another classic.

Expand your reading taste

Style is the main advantage of reading books of different genres. But there is also a hidden benefit to readers: variety is fun. If reading your favorite genre is like eating your favorite food, then learning different genres is like trying new cuisines. Exploring new genres expands your taste for stories, and just as a gourmet must eat different foods to expand his taste, we must read different genres to expand ours.


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