Saturday, March 19, 2011

Seongju X minute Reading

This week's topic is focused on reading strategies. Reading is particularly difficult for international students due to our imperfection in the language. I could definitely state that the x minute reading strategy helps greatly. Before this exercise, I used to summarize after finishing the entire book or article. I usually forget key points in between or was confused by the end of my readings. Now that I have adapted the x minute reading strategy on the article "A Boyhood Friendship in a Divided Valley", I begin to deepen my understanding by dividing the article into subgroups of 2 minutes intervals.




This strategy emphasizes on the importance of every paragraph or section. This strategy consists of five steps, including survey, read, summarize, review, and reward. Before digging into the details of the story or article, I first start with the "Survey" step - getting a general idea of the text by reading the title, introduction, objectives, summary, headings, subheadings, and list of terms. First start by brainstorming the text by knowing the title and determining the time interval according to my attention span. The title "A Boyhood Friendship in a Divided Valley" suggests a story regarding a friendship that was divided by an environmental conflict. The title also implies the importance of friendship despite race, ethnicity, culture, traditions, backgrounds, language, nationality, and preferences. I jot down notes for every section of 2 minutes intervals. There is a total of six sections in the reading I chose from ENL 211. After reviewing the important points and keywords from previous sections, I carefully make a conclusion on what I read on the current part. Therefore, I simultaneously read, make notes, and review. The very last step, reward, induces motivation and confidence for reading. I rewarded myself with computer games and  This strategy is not at all complicated or time consuming but even helpful and efficient for slow readers.
It will be helpful to understand and organize the stories better. Since I have classes that deal with a lot of writings and readings, this strategy will be useful for me to adapt to my reading assignments.

3 comments:

  1. Very nice. It looks very organized and useful. Not only would this help for international students but for everyone because after each reading, if we summarize sections, then later on we dont have to worry much about reading the whole thing over again for a test.

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  2. This is a great strategy. I wish I could think of using this for my classes but they seemed not to allow me to use starategies other that TART. Anyways, I think I should use X minute for classes that require me to read a whole story book or something. Summarizing sections just look good when I try to chunk a story. I will try this in other semester when I take an English course.

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  3. It is actually first time seeing a X-minute stradegy. And I am glad that this stradegy worked for you well. But I don't know, I would not have tried this stradegy. It seems to me that this stradegy is to complex and not getting to the main focus on the reading. That is just my opinion but you should also use TART or NSAS stradegy as well. Nice blog!

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