UNIVERSITI PUTRA MALAYSIA

LHE3215
CONTENT-BASED SECOND LANGUAGE
INSTRUCTION

THE GOLDILLOCKS STRATEGY OF CHOOSING
READING MATERIALS




NAME : Mohd Ikram Bin Mohd Fakhri (160767)
Amir Hamzah Ramli (160753)
Teoh Yong Cun (160749)
GROUP : 21
FOR ATTENTION : Dr. Nooreen Noordin

INTRODUCTION

In order for readers or teachers to choose the appropriate materials which to be
used for reading purposes, Goldillocks Strategy would be a suitable way to do it.
Goldillocks Strategy is a method for choosing books for independent reading, which
developed by Ohlhausen and Jepsen in 1992. The models of this strategy would be;
too soft, just right and too hard reading materials.











TOO SOFT

The graphic novel Black Beauty written by Anna Sewell was chosen as one of
our reading materials. We came to a conclusion that this story is too soft for tertiary
level students as suggested by the Goldilocks plans for struggling readers. Even though
this book has a very interesting topic that would capture most readers, the reading level
is way too low for tertiary students. We read this book several times and we were able
to comprehend the story easily. In addition, this is a graphic novel where readers have
visual assistance as they read through the story. Readers might get bored after a few
more times reading the same story. As tertiary students, we are not like young children
and we seek for more information and adventures when choosing a reading material.
We as readers were able to predict the content of the story by looking at the
graphic drawn in the novel. The words selection in this graphic novel is quite easy for
tertiary students as we were able to understand and retell the story without much effort.
We feel very confident in sharing our reading experiences about this graphic novel.
Even though we are very comfortable in reading this book, we felt that we could not
improve much skills though this reading experience because it is just repetitions of
knowledge that we have learned over and over again. Tertiary students need a wider
variety of texts with high level vocabularies to help them in academic writings and
readings.
We were able to understand and pronounce almost every word precisely and
construct new sentences out of it. This showed that the book is too easy for tertiary
students like us. Readers need to choose a book that has a level that is just right to help
them improve their language proficiency. A book that is too easy and not up to the
readers level will not lead to any improvement in their academic development. Even
though at many times, readers will think it is good thing to reread a book which is easy
and familiar because they will not do any mistakes, teachers should take the
responsibility to tell readers that they need to have mistakes in order to learn better.
We were able to read this graphic novel smoothly and fluently without much
practice. Most of the inferential questions asked by our group members were easily
answered correctly. Hence, there were not much discussion took place in sharing the
content of the story. There were not much complication and questions raised after
reading the story a few times. This has proven that this graphic novel is categorised as
too soft for tertiary level students. A much more challenging reading materials could
have make much more impact on us.







JUST RIGHT

As for the material for the just right level discussed in the Goldilocks Strategy,
we have selected an article entitled Driving Hazard (p. 46-48) from Just English
magazine. As discussed in the Goldilocks Strategy, this article meets the first criteria
outlined in the strategy whereby the content is familiar to the students of tertiary level.
This is because almost all students possess a driving license, had an experience or at
least know how to drive. We also find that the content of the article are interesting,
beneficial and appropriate for tertiary level students.
Despite of having to reread some part of the article, we are able to retell what the
article is all about to other people when we finish reading it. This indicates that this
article is somehow challenging but manageable for students of tertiary level. From our
discussion regarding the article, we discover that the usage of simple, compound as
well as complex sentences have contributed in making this article a little bit challenging.
This is also added by the usage of a few difficult words such as cocoon, fatality, and
lethal. Other than that, the author uses standard and commonly used words thus
makes the article easy to read and appropriate for tertiary level use.
In addition to that, we also think that this article is suitable for tertiary level
students because they will only requireminimum help on the vocabulary and
comprehension. Thus we agree that this reading material has a smooth flow and not
choppy. It is a good thing because this will encourage the students to read more when
they discover that reading is fun, beneficial and easy. We also think that this kind of
material will leads to academic improvements and prevent frustrations caused by a too
soft or too hard reading materials because students can figure out most of the words
and understand what is going on in the text.
Another reason why we think that this is a just right material for the tertiary level
students is because of the moral values that are inculcated. Some of the moral values in
this article are not to eat and uses mobile phone while driving because it will reduce
drivers alertness and will lead to accident. Moral values are just as important aspect as
content familiarity, smoothness when reading and easy to understand in choosing a
perfect reading material. This is because we do not want students to read materials that
have no moral values in it.









TOO HARD

The Story of Science from Antiquity to the Present, by R.R. Subramaniam,
Shobhit Mahajan, Archana Madhukar, Suman Sahay and G.S. Roonwal, was chosen as
our too hard reading materials, even for the tertiary level students. We would say
although this book is interesting for some from other aspects, but this book is too hard
for the tertiary level students to comprehend. We have to read this book over and over
again in order to gain the information from this book due to some of the characteristics
found, as according to the Goldillocks Strategy.
First of all, I would say the book has long content and most of the words are hard
to be decoded. Though the book is only 216 pages long, but the content is being written
in two column style in each page. So that means the book is actually longer than how it
is written, maybe double or triple in pages. In addition for that, the words used are quite
hard to be understood. This is because the book is filled with facts and histories of
Sciences. For those who are not majoring in Science or Science-based course would
find this book hardly to be understood. For example, the words of quantum mechanics
and quantum electrodynamics from page 49.
Next, the print used in the book is small and the pictures provided in the book do
not provide enough assistance towards the information provided. As stated previously,
as the book is being written in the column of two, so the size of the print becomes
smaller and it seems crowded with words in one page. So, the size of the words might
be lesser than standard size of 11 or 12. So it might be in 8 or 9 of size. This will make
the readers to become more discourage to read the book. Besides, in almost of each
page, there will be at least one picture. These pictures will add on more crowdedness of
the books page even more. These pictures are also not much of help in giving
assistance or clear ideas of what or how certain theories would be.
Last but not least, this The Story of Science from Antiquity to the Present book
is not something can be read by readers who are not familiar with this topic. This is
because, for those who do not really have the knowledge or do not have gone depth
within the Science subject matter before, they would not be able to understand and then
correlate with their schemata or prior knowledge. Moreover, without any help from
someone from the field will make the readers hard to obtain the knowledge of the book.
This will consume more time to the readers, even for the tertiary level students, to read
the whole book to get the concepts or main ideas of the book.
In conclusion, the book is a too hard reading material as according to
Goldillocks Strategy of choosing the best reading materials as it is long and hard to
comprehendible contents, has crowded contents and requires prior knowledge and
assistances in order for the readers to be able to understand. So readers might need to
be spend more time to read the book for a few times and need to find help from those
who are familiar with the subject for them to grab what the book is all about.



REFERENCE LISTS

Hann, E. (2013). Driving Hazard. In Just English Vol. 9 Issue 6 (pp. 46-48). Kuala
Lumpur: Just English Sdn. Bhd.

R.R. Subramaniam, Shobhit Mahajan, Archana Madhukar, Suman Sahay &
G.S. Roonwal, (2010). The Story of Science from Antiquity to the Present.
Potsdam: h.f.ullman publishing.

Sewell, A. (2010). Black BEauty. Johor Bahru: IMS Trading.








APPENDICES
TOO SOFT

JUST RIGHT

TOO HARD