Unquestionably, communicative methodology is gaining momentum. Also the idea that the skill of reading involves a specific mental process has been growing in favor. It is still a fact, however, that the teaching strategies adopted by most teachers, while aiming to incorporate these movements, do not make the students aware of reading process; example students still schematize reading as passive activity or an activity, in which one must catalogue bits of information verbatim to a teachers questions.An active processIn this article, a teaching process that aims at helping readers become active readers-readers who see reading as meaningful; communication- is suggested. This process departs from traditional strategy of asking students questions during and after reading. Instead, it focuses on teaching students to formulate their own questions. The purpose of such a process is to help students acquire a reading schema that emphasize the reader’s purposes and the dynamic interaction between the reader and the printed page.Basic to this process is also the point meaning does not lie “in text” and that what students already know mill affect what they can come to know.In teaching active reading, students may be asked a question that gets an answer. For example, a teacher may hold up a picture for students to look at. Instead of asking questions about the picture that fields answers- “What is going happen?”-The teacher says, “Look at the picture. What would you like to know about the picture?”The questions the students ask in response to this question are often surprising.Questions that student’s initiative when presented with pictures, texts, and other reading material reflect to their perceptions, backgrounds, and cognitive development, some student’s main idea while others may start with the theme before progressing to details. In the foregoing example, student might ask. Why is the boy on the bicycle? Does the girl see the boy on the bike? Will they crash?Question can refer to classroom, and then the teacher might ask. What would you like to know about what happened next?The latter question direct thinking toward a solution to a problem. After several solutions have been elicited, the teacher can say, “Let’s turn the page, read, and see how the person who drew those picture (the author) solved the problem. After the student have gained an understanding of the author’s solution, the teacher can initiate an evaluation of the solution with a question, Is it the best way of preventing a crash compare with the author’s? Thus students develop critical and affective schemata.Questions can be elicited in many ways. The teacher may introduce a book or a text by having someone read the title and then ask the students what they want to find out about the rearrange for a competitive situation in which the class is divided into two groups, with two students at the chalkboard to write down questions and then try to outdo each in answering their questions raised by the title and the first paragraph.
By: Diana B. Caberto | Teacher III | Limay Elementary School Limay,Bataan
