December 5-10 week two for this semester.

Before I enter the class I prepared myself and mind for our first quiz. Our first quiz was all about Reading Process. It was a 50 item quiz with enumeration, identification and true or false items. The whole quiz was given orally that’s why we have to listen attentively; some haven’t had the chance to take the quiz because they were late comers. I was not 100% confident while taking the exam because I had a hard time remembering some information on my notes. But in the end it was fun because now I know that I should prepare more for the next quiz.

We had a new topic discussed. It was all about Reading Difficulties and Reading Strategies. On the topic about Reading Difficulties I learned that there are 3 different Reading Difficulties. These are Decoding Difficulties, Comprehension Difficulties and Retention Difficulties; it was all connected with each other. One cannot understand what he or she is reading if he or she had a hard time recognizing its content, which is the Decoding Difficulty. You can say that you have a Comprehension Difficulty if you cannot understand the meaning of the words and sentences you are reading. While in Retention Difficulty if you are having a hard time remembering what you have read.

Our second topic was all about Reading Strategies. I learned that scanning is different from skimming. I also learned that in each Reading stages has their own Reading Strategies. Pre-Reading has three strategies. Reading has four strategies. And After Reading has two strategies. Having information about this topic gives you tricks and tips as to how you can maximize your time reading articles and stories and can help you remember the main idea and knowledge that can help you answering its comprehension questions.

We also had our first group activity about Reading Comprehension. Each group comprises of four members.  Our first activity was all about the story of Jacob the Great. Jacob gets fed up with a lot of things immediately that’s why he never sticks to any of them. But at the end of the story for me it was just that Jacob is exploring himself as to what he really wants in life. The second activity was entitled “Click!”, it was all about the importance of using seat belt whenever you are riding in a vehicle. The third activity was making a graph about a news article. And lastly the fourth activity was creating a cause and effect drawing about the story “Click!”.

And that concludes all of our activity for this week.

My best reading experience is when I read story “Click!” . It was so good for me because to be honest I was also one of the people who doesn’t like wearing seat belts. It makes me feel uncomfortable and I also hate it when it crumples my clothes. This story reminds me that using seat belt is a lot safer and comfortable in real life situations. That I should sacrifice a little for my own safety.

 

My most frustrating reading experience is when I read the news article. I was frustrated because I need to focus on looking for a topic or sentence with a convenient datum listed and good explanation about it. It was also frustrating because there are a lot of good articles listed with fewer data and information specified, I had a hard time choosing one. With the short amount of time left I also haven’t had the chance to read the entire article and compare each articles with one another.

 

Significance of reading and writing to Engineering & Technology students and connection between reading & writing

(photo credits: University Maine)

Reading and writing for engineering and technology students is significant because it is important for everyday activities. Students are expected to be familiar with various engineering and technological terms for effective performance on their field, also for them to help non-technical individuals to understand easily each technical terms.

Each individual should have the right knowledge on how to right good reports, researches, proposals and advertisements to further discuss the objective of their program to everyone. Engineering and technology students must present their selves properly and read and write clear sentences with correct grammar. Having the right knowledge and self confidence about your field will give you the advantage to gain the trust of your audience. Gaining technical writing skills will help the student pass or succeed both academically and professionally.

Reading, which builds the knowledge base of written texts, helps language 2 learners acquire necessary language constructs such as grammatical structures and discourse rules for writing, and facilitates the process of language acquisition (Krashen’s (1984)). Both reading and writing are acts of communicative purposes and are inseparable (Internet TESL Journal).

Through reading, students gain the knowledge on how to write sentence properly, gain knowledge in vocabulary and reading grammar correctly. One cannot  write something correctly  if he/she doesn’t know how to read the text in front of him or her. Reading something involves a lot of texts that are written, that’s why both reading and writing are connected with each other.