Language IV IES Olga Cossettini

READING SKILLS
Source: Paths to Proficiency, by H. Naylor and S. Hagger

Introduction
Reading at an advanced level sometimes seems synonymous with trying to cope with
rather abstract or “difficult” texts. This section isolates the problems when reading, and
aims to build up our reading skills, starting with word problems, working through
sentence level to full text interpretation.

The aim of Awareness activities is to expose ourselves to reading difficulties in a gradual and
manageable way, by isolating and focusing on one aspect of the problem at a time.

The Practice exercises are based on authentic texts taken from a wide variety of sources, and
allow us to identify and tackle the same problems in context.

The purpose of the Summary exercises is to get ourselves into the habit of looking for salient
points.

Reasons for Reading

People read, in their own language or a foreign one because

a) they want to
b) they need to, or
c) they are made to

a) If your aim in reading is pleasure or instruction, you yourself choose what to read from
all the material available; you knew in advance what the subject-matter is, and expect to
enjoy it or learn from it.

b) If you hope to achieve something as a result of reading (for example an instruction

booklet, a textbook, a report, a timetable), you again know the subject-matter, and have a
clear and authentic reason for choosing it.

c) If you are required to read something and show your understanding of it, as in an
examination, many problems arise which do not occur in the “real" situations described
under a) and b). You do not know the subject-matter, or the context, before you start to
read. The text may not be one that you would normally choose to read outside the
classroom or examination room, and material is always more difficult to understand if it is
outside your personal taste, experience or interest. You may not even be allowed the use of
a dictionary to help you with words you do not know.

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In this section we suggest a systematic approach to solving the problems presented by an

'unseen' text which you are required to read without access to a dictionary.

Approaching the Problems Systematically

1. Read a paragraph, page or passage in full, preferably more than once, before looking at
parts of it that you do not understand.

2. Satisfy yourself that you have a clear idea of what it is - a part of a story, a humorous
essay, a serious discussion of a topical issue, etc.

3. If there are individual words, word combinations or sentences which you do not
understand, use the methods suggested below to deduce possible meanings.

4. Always read the whole passage through again before trying to answer questions about
it.

1. Words I. Unknown Words

What to look out for

1. The grammatical function of the word in its sentence.

2. Clues in the word itself (negative prefixes such as un- or dis-, other prefixes or suffixes
such as re- or -ness). If you know other European languages, do you recognise a
possible Latin, Greek or other derivation?

3. Clues in the context of the sentence or paragraph. Does the word seem ‘negative' or
'positive'? Does it involve movement? Is it referred to elsewhere by a different name?
Could it be a thing, a substance, an emotion?

4. If you replace the word in your mind with a blank space, remembering its function, are
there any words in English or your own language which you could put into this space,
which would give a reasonable meaning to the sentence?

5. If there is still something illogical or strange about what you have read, is it possible
that the writer may ironically be saying the opposite of what he or she means?

6. Does the general meaning which you have deduced for the 'unknown' word make
sense in the context of the whole paragraph or passage, when you re-read it?

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The starting point for dealing with an unknown word is to work out what grammatical
function that word has in the sentence.

In the following sentences, the word “prin” has no meaning. Read the sentences carefully
and try to identify the grammatical function of the word. Then, think of a real word that
could replace it.

1. She makes me so prin that I could kiss her.

2. Whenever she prins her cat, it wants food.
3. Mary had the fire prinning in no time at all.
4. He left the prin and walked slowly downstairs.
5. Although unprinnily full, she managed to eat two more cakes.
6. Her grandmother was full of good prin which she passed on to her grandchildren.
7. You have to develop prins to get you out of difficult situations.
8. He sat, prinned and silent.
9. Prin her, no matter what happens.
10. She tried to see prin the building but it was too dark.

Now think of 3 further sentences using the word “prin” to share with the class.

Awareness Activity 1
Look at the following extract about a man who confuses all his friends by changing the
way he uses words. Although the result looks nonsensical, it is easy to deduce all the
objects in the last paragraph from the context, and from clues like at or on.

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Now look at the last paragraph of the above text and find the meanings of the following:

picture newspaper carpet
photograph album chair mirror
wardrobe alarm clock table


Awareness Activity 2
Write a paragraph describing what you did yesterday, replacing some of the verbs with
completely different English verbs. Exchange texts with a classmate and try to deduce
what he or she originally wrote.

Awareness Activity 3
Read the following sentence and answer the questions which follow.

Her dissertation on the breeding habits of the spur-winged plover was couched in such abstruse
terms that nobody could understand it — except possibly a plover, as her professor jocularly
suggested.

1. What is the grammatical function of 'couched'?

2. Is 'abstruse' negative or positive in general meaning?
3. If someone handed you a 'dissertation', would you
a) sit on it
b) write it?
c) read it?

4. Which word(s) give a clue as to what a spur-winged plover is?

5. Which word is the best definition of 'jocularly'?

a) angrily
b) humorously
c) sadly

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Practice Exercise 1

Dervla Murphy is an Irish travel writer who travels to remote parts of the world on a
bicycle. In this extract from Full Tilt, she is describing the unwanted passionate attentions
of a Kurd on the Turkish-Iranian border in 1963.

Read the text below: there are fourteen nonsense words in the text which have been put
there in place of fourteen difficult items of vocabulary. As you are reading, see if you can
identify these words and at the same time think what real world could be used instead.
Look closely at the word endings (suffixes), which should help you to work out the
functions of the words and to find alternatives with the same grammatical function.

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2. Words II. Hidden Difficulties

What to look out for

You may apparently 'know' all the words, but still find it difficult to understand a sentence.
There can be various reasons for this:

• You may have misunderstood the grammatical function. Newspaper headlines

present particular problems of this kind, but –s, -ed and -ing can always be
misleading,
e.g. This building houses valued items from the last century.
• Simple words often have more than one meaning (e.g. purely, pretty, till)
e.g. l found the way in which he had designed the building pretty ugly.
• Proper names at the beginning of a sentence cannot be identified by their capital
letter.
• Words may be used literally or figuratively.
• Words may have to be understood as combinations, not as individual words.

Awareness Activity 4

Discuss what grammatical functions the following words can have. Where the word is
used in a less common way, think of an illustrative sentence.

eg. commercial : adjective, noun (= a TV advertisement)

Michal Jackson appears in Pepsi-Cola commercials.

short work record

past talks reading
set stroke lounge
searching living match


Now look at the following sentences and say what functions the underlined words have.
Look back to the points above to remind yourself of the possibilities.

1. Support programmes for the unemployed should be introduced.

2. There is one outing to the Eastern Isles weekly, when people view seals and
seabirds.

3. No barrister will further her legal career by consistently refusing briefs simply
because she does not approve of those she would be required to defend.

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4. Murders expose the surroundings in which they happen, and present intimate
portraits of stressed human beings which the most searching profiles of the living
can never match.

5. Drive, Hackforth! Have you lost yours? We're not the kind of organisation that
discards its executives after forty, but we need to be sure that our top people still
have all their energies.

6. Reading, next stop! He closed his book.

7. Penguins first brought classics of fiction within the price range of ordinary people.

8. Imports Fuel Trade Deficit.

9. $600,000 Health Cuts Spark Row.

10. Many wanted men from high security prisons found hiding in Black Basil's Surbiton
retreat were rounded up by the police.

11. Few old parliamentary hands remembered anything like it.

Awareness Activity 5
Look at these extracts and answer the questions below.

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Practice Exercise 2

The following text is taken from an article by Jim Home in the Guardian newspaper. Read
it and do the exercise which follows.

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3. Word Combinations I

What to look out for

• Words which may belong together, even though at first sight this is not obvious.

• Verb and preposition combinations.

• Difficult-looking words which may not be a problem if understood as part of a

phrase.

Awareness Activity 6
Read the following sentences and underline the word combinations that have to be
understood as a single unit. Then, re-express them in simple language.

e.g. If you're out of sorts, you may have to take time off work.
If you're not feeling very well, you may have to be absent from work.

1. It was touch and go as to which one of them would reach the end first.

2. When you see him in the flesh, he's disappointingly ordinary-looking.

3. Nobody has been granted paid leave before.

4. Our horses were none the worse for their long journey.

5. She felt resentful about always being at his beck and call.

6. There was a time in the Sixties when mini-skirts were all the rage.

7. She was at her wits’ end after the theft of her credit cards.

8. The old man had kept his wits about him even though he was confined to a
wheelchair.

9. He was very hard-working and well-meaning, but prone to errors of judgement.

10. He reached his present position only by dint of hard work.

11. Many people are all too prepared to criticise what they do not understand.

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Awareness Activity 7
Read the following paragraph. Underline the word combinations that function as a single
unit. Then rewrite the paragraph, replacing the underlined phrases with the simple
definitions given after the text.

“I’ll just run through your statement, sir, before we type it up for you to sign,” the
desk sergeant told Howard. “When my girlfriend chucked me up and turned me out, I
was really cut up about it. I think I’d always taken it for granted that she’d put up with
me even when I was messing her about. I hit a bit of a low then, and I’ll grant you
that doing over that shop was out of order - but if you’ll let me off this time, I’m
determined to go straight.”

tolerate behave badly eject

become depressed towards wrong
not punish reject copy
repeat very upset admit
assume behave well rob


Practice Exercise 3
Read the following text. In one simple sentence, say what happened.

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Now read a second version of the same incident, and answer the questions below.

1. Where do you think the two passages might have come from?
2. Which is harder to read/understand, and why?
3. By using Passage 1 to help, can you work out the meanings of the underlined word
combinations in Passage 2?

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4. Word Combinations II. Figurative Use of Language.

What to look out for

• Words used singly or in combinations, whose literal meanings you may know, but
which are being used more 'colourfully'. Often, these will be well-established
‘idioms', whose meaning can be found in a dictionary.

• Metaphorical use of words - describing something more vividly by using language

from a different context.

• Similes - comparing something colourfully with something unexpected - introduced

by like or as.

Awareness Activity 8
In each of the following sentences, choose the words which do not have their literal
meanings; if possible, rewrite the sentence replacing the words with non-figurative
language.

e.g He came thundering into my office like a herd of wild bulls.

He came into my office very noisily (and angrily).

1. Although I had no reason to believe the police were waiting for me, l walked straight
past the restaurant without going in: l suppose something just smelled fishy.

2. The snow lay in a thin covering on the hillsides, like long torn bedsheets, the earth
showing through in black streaks.

3. Vodka is said to bequeath no headache to its victims, only a painless anaesthesia, but
my head throbbed and filled my eyes with lead.

4. I was deeply wounded by what she said.

5. You'll recognise her by her flaming red hair.

6. What a pig he is! Look at the way he shovels food into his mouth!

7. After the wedding, well-wishers launched our raft with champagne; lashed together,
not far out, we sank.

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8. They stared out of the train windows at the houses, and the houses returned the
stares.

9. Like triffids on the march, politicians have surged out of their normal habitats -
Newsnight, Any Questions, Question Time, Today in Parliament, World at One,
People and Politics, party political broadcasts and every news programme - and are
intent on colonising hitherto politician-free zones, popping up in situation comedies,
in plays, on videos, on panel games, in pulpits.

10. The Fitness Action Research Trust is a rubber-stamp organisation set up by the beer
trade to investigate everything but the effects of alcohol. When the Government's
own Commission for Research into Alcohol Problems crossed swords with it recently
over the extent of alcohol addiction among young drinkers, it was the latter, not the
former, who were carpeted by Whitehall.

11. Steering a perilous course through icy, uncharted political waters, Captain Jacques
Yves Cousteau was in dangerous mood launching his campaign to save the Antarctic
in Britain years ago.

Awareness Activity 9
In the following short passage, the writer describes her reactions to being married.
Underline any examples of figurative language, metaphor or simile

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Awareness Activity 10

In the following passage, the writer is describing tourists at Ephesus in Turkey, but using
language normally associated with the description of a military invasion. Read carefully,
and answer the questions which follow.

1. Underline all the words or phrases involving ‘military’ vocabulary.

2. Substitute alternative words or phrases of a non-military nature.
e.g. in the combat zone = in an area with a large number of tourists
the prime object of attack = their principal destination
3. Why do you think the writer chooses to write in this way, and do you think it is
effective?

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Practice Exercise 4

Two stories of childhood

Read the following two texts. Identify the examples of figurative language, and retell the
story using non-figurative language. Discuss which examples of figurative language you
find particularly successful.

Text B: Childhood memories

Use the following questions to help you focus your thoughts.

1. What is the paragraph about? (1 sentence answer)

2. What does it show of the author’s feelings?
3. Describe what happened either on that day (Text A) or in general (Text B).

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