my seminar topic in soft skills is "deciding what to read in reading skills".?
I need to prepare for this topic .Plzzzz somebody help me .
It has long been argued that learning to read, like learning to understand spoken language, is a natural phenomenon. It has often been suggested that children will learn to read if they are simply immersed in a literacy-rich environment and allowed to develop literacy skills in their own way. This pernicious belief that learning to read is a natural process resulting from rich text experiences is surprisingly prevalent in education — despite the fact that learning to read is not only unnatural, it is one of the most unnatural things humans do.
There is a difference between learning to read text and learning to understand a spoken language. Learning to understand speech is indeed a natural process; starting before birth, children tune in to spoken language in their environment, and as soon as they are able, they begin to incorporate a language. If the linguistic environment is not sufficiently rich or if it is confusing, the innate drive to find a language is so strong that, if necessary, children will create a language of their own (examples of this include twin languages and pidgin languages). Given the opportunity, children will naturally develop all of the essential comprehension skills for the language to which they are exposed with little structured or formal guidance.
By contrast, reading acquisition is not natural. While the ability to understand speech evolved over many, many thousands of years, reading and writing are human inventions that have been around for merely a few thousand years. It has been only within the past few generations that some cultures have made any serious attempt to make literacy universal among their citizens.
If reading were natural, everybody would be doing it, and we would not have to worry about dealing with a "literacy gap." According to the National Institute for Literacy and the Center for Education Statistics, more than 40 million adults in this country alone are functionally illiterate, and despite our best educational efforts, approximately 40 percent of our fourth graders lack even the most basic reading skills. These staggering numbers provide evidence that reading is a skill that is quite unnatural and difficult to learn.
Hope it will be of help.
hsj
It has long been argued that learning to read, like learning to understand spoken language, is a natural phenomenon. It has often been suggested that children will learn to read if they are simply immersed in a literacy-rich environment and allowed to develop literacy skills in their own way. This pernicious belief that learning to read is a natural process resulting from rich text experiences is surprisingly prevalent in education — despite the fact that learning to read is not only unnatural, it is one of the most unnatural things humans do.
There is a difference between learning to read text and learning to understand a spoken language. Learning to understand speech is indeed a natural process; starting before birth, children tune in to spoken language in their environment, and as soon as they are able, they begin to incorporate a language. If the linguistic environment is not sufficiently rich or if it is confusing, the innate drive to find a language is so strong that, if necessary, children will create a language of their own (examples of this include twin languages and pidgin languages). Given the opportunity, children will naturally develop all of the essential comprehension skills for the language to which they are exposed with little structured or formal guidance.
By contrast, reading acquisition is not natural. While the ability to understand speech evolved over many, many thousands of years, reading and writing are human inventions that have been around for merely a few thousand years. It has been only within the past few generations that some cultures have made any serious attempt to make literacy universal among their citizens.
If reading were natural, everybody would be doing it, and we would not have to worry about dealing with a "literacy gap." According to the National Institute for Literacy and the Center for Education Statistics, more than 40 million adults in this country alone are functionally illiterate, and despite our best educational efforts, approximately 40 percent of our fourth graders lack even the most basic reading skills. These staggering numbers provide evidence that reading is a skill that is quite unnatural and difficult to learn.
Hope it will be of help.
hsj
References :
Southwest Educational Development Laboratary (SEDL)